INEQUALITY: The Scourge of Civilization.

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/yellow/35746/inequality-the-scourge-of-civilization

One historic look at the poorest and least developed countries, presently and in history, and one thing becomes clear; they were all plagued by vast and growing inequality both socioeconomic and political. This is surely true in all those countries in the Middle East where uprisings in one country after another spreads currently like proverbial wildfire.

In the case of the Middle East, only sub-Saharan Africa is has consistently been much poorer and had lower per capital economic growth each decade since 1970 according to one report recently released by the Economic Research Forum called Equity and Inequality in the Arab Region which states in it's abstract;

"As a whole the region shows moderately high levels of inequality in terms of household expenditures compared to other regions of the world. At the same time overall regional inequality appears to be relatively stable, or changes are not statistically significant over the last 20-30 years for which comparable data are available."

The consistent and "stable" levels of inequality seems to imply that there is very little social, economic or political change in this part of the world. Such patterns of unchanging conditions and entrenched political leadership usually give rise to stagnation and poverty. Doubtless things would be even worse without oil revenues which are promptly recycled through western capital markets instead of invested domestically to improve the overall standard of living of the people. This is another sure indication of political repression and the dramatic social inequality that it preserves. The report stresses that the regions vast oil wealth allowed many governments to avoid taxing the rich and instead fund social development out of oil revenues. So dependant on oil rents did the region become that with the collapse of world oil prices in the late 1980s, the development agenda of these governments collapsed never to revive. Growing inequality became entrenched and by the time world oil prices spiked up again, the political will to invest internally was eroded. As the authors of the report explain;

More at the link --