Opinion: When Wealth Breeds Rage
Nairobi, Kenya ACROSS the Middle East and North Africa, superficial political calm has been shattered by convulsions of rage. Idealistic young protesters have toppled some of the most ruthless and well-resourced political strongmen on the planet. In sub-Saharan Africa, many are asking: will the Arab Spring spread south? Thus far, the authoritarian leaders who dominate the continent have withstood protests, stubbornly maintaining that tribalism will save them. They and their loyal supporters insist that African societies are so fragmented along ethnic, sectarian and regional lines <a href="http://newerahatstock.com/dc-hat-c-12.html"><strong>dc hat</strong></a> that it would be impossible today to whip up the perfect Tahrir Square storm; instead, they believe, an outcome like Libya’s civil war or the messy departure of Yemen’s president is more likely. And yet many of the underlying realities are the same. As food and fuel prices rise, inflation is driving millions of Africans below the poverty line just when the world’s great aggregators of economic data have been preaching the opposite: that growth will benefit <a href="http://www.newerahatstock.com/"><strong>wholeslae new era hats</strong></a> all. Radical and growing economic inequality animated much of what was at stake in the various Arab uprisings, and it will play a major role in shaping African politics for years to come. The Tunisian street vendor who set himself alight was not so different from the disaffected young men of Nairobi’s and Kampala’s slums. They are Africa’s overwhelming majority: poor, marginalized and angry about corruption and soaring food and fuel prices. It is those young men and women who endure the daily humiliations of poverty, struggling to find jobs as elites crow about “growth” and an African renaissance. But the much-vaunted middle class remains a tiny sliver of the population in most African countries — one that is largely dependent on state patronage for its survival. Africa’s middle class has grown in recent years, but its members are politically and economically vulnerable and their lives can be overturned by the whims of elites who rule instead of govern. Meanwhile, the poor are assaulted daily by the potent symbols of rising inequality: glitzy malls filled with designer goods and status-enhancing baubles that cost 10 times the monthly minimum wage. Jealousy of ill-gotten gains is particularly acute among members of the giant youth bulge across Africa and the Middle East — in Kenya, for example, over 78 percent of the population is younger than 34, and that population is growing <a href="http://newerahatstock.com/nfl-hats-c-18.html"><strong>nfl hats</strong></a> at one million a year. Their resentment is only heightened by the tools of the information age, which remind them that they have been excluded from feeding at the trough enjoyed so blatantly by the nouveau riche — a lifestyle that is showcased by the newly minted wealthy on television, Twitter, Facebook and the Web in infuriating detail. Globalization has changed the aspirations of the poor, and their expectations will follow. Indeed, it is resentment of the president’s son’s Ferrari, more than envy of Europe and America’s comparative wealth, that is driving young Africans into the streets to challenge their kleptocratic governments. If the Arab revolutions have taught us anything, it is that inequality and perceptions of inequality within poor countries have now replaced poverty as <a href="http://rooyee.org/view.php?id=20759"><strong>BB gets WordPress, Disqus, new machines</strong></a> the No. 1 development challenge facing the world. And consequently, the struggle to mitigate inequality, rather than “making poverty history” through debt relief has become the most urgent task. Narrowing wealth disparities within nations rather than among them is now paramount. The world has seen a dramatic decline in global poverty over the last decade. The total number of poor people around the world fell to under 900 million in 2010 from over 1.3 billion in 2005 — most of them in China. Although the Chinese Communist Party celebrates the nation’s economic progress, it also recognizes that growth has been far from evenly distributed. The latest Chinese development plan specifically confronts inequality and attempts to mitigate it. African leaders have yet to catch on, and consequently inequality has been left to fester.
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