IMF, the MF

 The New York Times reported today that the IMF has a plan to lessen the growing inequality caused by the corona-virus. They will create a fund just shy of a trillion dollars of imaginary money, that countries can exchange for real money. Exactly how this works requires one to know a lot of economics, but believing this will reduce inequality requires one to be ignorant of basic multiplication. The problem is that each country's share of the imaginary money is proportional to their wealth. So the richest countries will get 80% of the benefit.

Realizing that giving oneself a ton of money doesn't actually look like giving money to poor countries, the US has pledged to give 20% of their share to poor countries, and encourages other rich countries to do the same. Let's assume they do. That means that 20 rich countries get 64% of the benefit, and 173 poor countries split 36%. Roughly 3.2% for each country that doesn't need any help, and 0.2% for each country that does. Put it another way, rich countries get 16x the benefit that poor countries get.

Okay, people, what happens to the gap between rich and poor if you give the rich 16x as much money as you give the poor?

As Bruce Cockburn sagely put it: "IMF, dirty MF."