Do you think that revolution in Egypt might have something to do with the fact that President Mubarak is worth $70 billion while the average person makes $2000. a year? I think so. How long will a people live in poverty while their ruler lives in opulent splendor? And most of the young people in Egypt fomenting revolution, the unemployed, are college educated because college education is free in Egypt. So they are smart enough to know that Egypt's elite class, the ones who left Egypt on private jets when the trouble started, are ripping them off. And then we talk about corruption. Is it corruption? No, not at all. Egyptian law requires that foreigners give a local business partner a 51 percent stake in most ventures. And who do you think that foreign corporations chose as their most favored business partner? Corruption? No, not when it's the law. The corruption lies with the lawmakers.
Rioting over food prices is nothing new in Egypt. While an elite class lives in splendor in gated communities, the middle class finds it increasingly difficult to make ends meet:
Twenty percent of Egypt's population lives on less than $2 a day. After a protest over food prices in which three people were killed, the Egyptian government was forced to subsidize the most important food item in Egypt: bread. However, not all Egyptian bakeries sell subsidized bread, which has created huge pressures on those that do.
As a result, it is common for many Egyptians to wait many hours before being able to buy bread at subsidized prices. In an average store, one beta costs 10 cents, while in a subsidized shop it costs only one cent. "Unsubsidized bread used to be affordable, but now the prices have skyrocketed," one bakery owner told Al Jazeera.
After long hours of waiting in long lines to buy bread all over Cairo, people sometimes lose their temper, with fatal results. Eleven people have died in bread feuds – some in knife fights – in the past 11 months. If the price of food continues to rise, more violence is expected. According to Al Jazeera, Egypt saw widespread riots over bread in 1977, which left up to 70 people dead.
Meanwhile, some families have become vegetarian, since they can no longer afford to buy meat. Most Egyptians now rely on potatoes and rice to feed their large families.
A mother of five, Hala Suliman told Al Jazeera, "I was forced to give up many important things in my life due to the rise in food prices. My kids want meat and fruits, but I have no money." Suliman and her husband work at a coffee shop and have a combined income of $4 a day, but they have five children to feed. Each day, Suliman's oldest son waits three or four hours in bread lines instead of going to school.
Egyptian journalist Mahmoud El-Askalani told Al Jazeera, "Of course, as a journalist, my salary isn't bad, but I've been affected because the increase in food prices is too high even for the middle class."
In fact, he felt so strongly about the rise in food prices that he started an organization called Citizens Against Price Rises. El-Askalani told Al Jazeera, "I want to achieve through this organization a popular movement that stands up to the rise in food prices." He believes that the pro-business government has allowed businesses to make huge profits while many people go hungry.
Some families in Egypt have taken their children out of school, are visiting doctors less, and eat smaller meals. According to Heba Kamel of the World Food Programme, the rise of food prices has created "new faces of hunger" as "more and more middle income earners are feeling the crunch of food prices."
So Egyptians are rioting because of vast disparities in wealth, but inequality is actually greater in the US than it is in Egypt.
Egyptian, Tunisian and Yemeni protesters all say that inequality is one of the main reasons they're protesting.
However, the U.S. actually has much greater inequality than in any of those countries.
Specifically, the "Gini Coefficient" - the figure economists use to measure inequality - is higher in the U.S.
Gini Coefficients are like golf - the lower the score, the better (i.e. the more equality).
According to the CIA World Fact Book, the U.S. is ranked as the 42nd most unequal country in the world, with a Gini Coefficient of 45.
In contrast:
- Tunisia is ranked the 62nd most unequal country, with a Gini Coefficient of 40.
- Yemen is ranked 76th most unequal, with a Gini Coefficient of 37.7.
- And Egypt is ranked as the 90th most unequal country, with a Gini Coefficient of around 34.4.
And inequality in the U.S. has soared in the last couple of years, since the Gini Coefficient was last calculated, so it is undoubtedly currently much higher.
So why are Egyptians rioting, while Americans are complacent?
Perhaps it's because Americans don't have to wait in long lines just to get a loaf of bread. The poor can get food stamps, and charities give away free meals. Life at the bottom in America is not that bad - at least yet. But Republicans are working on taking away what social programs there are that still exist in the US. They want austerity for the poor, opulence for the wealthy. Eventually, this will lead to Third World conditions for the poor in the US as well. The neocon model for developing countries is austerity for the poor and laissez faire capitalism for the rich. Young Egyptians are complaining that there are no jobs. We Americans know how to create jobs - you give tax breaks to the rich. Ha! Ha! By this token the Egyptians should give tax breaks to Mubarak and his cronies. This is the neocon model espoused by Milton Friedman that was used so unsuccessfully in Latin America. Will neocons see Egypt as a perfect opportunity for "disaster capitalism"? They would if they were still in charge. But, fortunately, George W Bush, has been replaced by Barack Obama. The neocons are out. Mr. Civility is in. Whewww!
Latin America has always been the prime laboratory for this doctrine. Friedman first learned how to exploit a large-scale crisis in the mid-1970s, when he advised Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Not only were Chileans in a state of shock following Pinochet's violent overthrow of Socialist President Salvador Allende; the country was also reeling from severe hyperinflation. Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of the economy--tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation. It was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted, and it became known as a Chicago School revolution, since so many of Pinochet's top aides and ministers had studied under Friedman at the University of Chicago. A similar process was under way in Uruguay and Brazil, also with the help of University of Chicago graduates and professors, and a few years later, in Argentina. These economic shock therapy programs were facilitated by far less metaphorical shocks--performed in the region's many torture cells, often by US-trained soldiers and police, and directed against those activists who were deemed most likely to stand in the way of the economic revolution.
And surprise, surprise, the neocons were active in Egypt during the 1990s with equally unsavory results leading to today's riots:
Any number of political and social factors underpins the current unrest in Egypt—and as always, economics figures in. The upheaval has shined a light on two serious problems facing the country: Most jobs pay too little, and most food costs too much.
First, the structural issue: Egypt has posted solid economic growth numbers, particularly in the past half-decade, but that growth has failed to improve the quality of life or income of most of its 80 million citizens. In the 1990s, Cairo embarked on a broad privatization and liberalization project, redoubling its efforts to attract foreign investment again in the mid-2000s. Those efforts succeeded, boosting GDP growth from about 4 percent in 2004 to more than 7 percent in 2008. Egypt has also fared well through the global recession, with gross domestic product increasing 4.7 percent in 2009 and 5.2 percent in 2010, even as other developing economies faltered.
But those gains have not been shared broadly. According to World Bank statistics, Egypt's top quintile of earners has increased its share of income since the 1990s, while the country's bottom quintile has seen its portion of the pie get smaller. Poorer Egyptians feel no richer, despite the recent gains. Youth unemployment remains a particularly pernicious problem. About two-thirds of Egyptians are under the age of 30—and that age cohort makes up a whopping 85 percent to 90 percent of the unemployed. In comparison, youths make up about 40 percent of the unemployed in nearby Jordan. (Jobless youths, particularly jobless young men, tend to pose instability risks in general.) Millions more face underemployment or the prospect of dead-end careers in the civil service. And overall, the country remains poor: About 40 percent of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day, and the nation's total GDP is about the size of Connecticut's.Then, there is a secondary problem: a huge run-up in food costs in recent months. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the worldwide food price index is at an all-time high—surpassing its 2008 peak, when skyrocketing costs caused global rioting and pushed as many as 64 million people into poverty. The price of oils, sugar, and cereals have all recently hit new peaks—and those latter prices are especially troubling for Egypt, as the world's biggest importer of wheat.
Neoconism, globalization, laissez faire capitalism, Milton Friedmanism - call it what you will. The results have been predictable - the enrichment of a small global class of elite wealthy people and the immiseration of the masses. The elite of Cairo live in gated communities sequestered away from the stink and poverty of downtown Cairo. As the protesters continue their quest for a decent life, one must ponder the question: will the revolution in Egypt turn out to be a "people's revolution," perhaps led by the Muslim brotherhood? Western business interests would prefer that this not happen. Instead they would prefer that the present regime shuffle its players and co-opt any true revolution, a revolution that would put the interests of the people first instead of the interests of a wealthy elite in bed with transnational corporations. The Mubarak family owns real estate in Paris, New York, Beverly Hills and many other places around the world. Although Mubarak has said he wants to die on Egyptian soil, Parisian or American soil might do just as well. He could avoid the stink that way.
