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What is modern Egypt?
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by YankeeJim | February 2, 2011 at 11:43 am
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When Westerner’s see the rock throwing crowd of Egyptian freedom fighters up against an obviously government-backed Mubarak crowd, led by stampeding horsemen and camel drivers, how do they calibrate this? Mubarak and his government should know emphatically that Americans are aligned with the freedom fighters and anti-government Egyptians even though our government’s official stance must be feigned neutrality. Thankfully, Americans are pleased that Obama is keeping the heat on Mubarak to get out, even though it is not our position to manipulate.
The presence of horses and camels may have had an effect unanticipated by Mubarak backers. It underscores the extreme gap between 21st century developed nations and those of the Middle East for which large segments of the population have fallen far behind.
Surely, Saudi Arabia can point to huge modern urban developments in which some Saudi’s flourish, but what is the ratio of extremely rich to poor?
Probing to ask those questions, the Arab world may ask Americans, what is the gap between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest? What is the size of wealthy America versus the size of poor Americans? What is the trend?
The baseline for modern America is vastly higher than that of Egypt, for instance.
One Egyptian pound = 17 US cents/.17 US dollars. An average Egyptian earns between 600 to 800 pounds per month, though many people live on 300 pounds per month.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Egypt_average_income#ixzz1CpZ398Tn
What is the average quality of life in terms of water, sewers, electricity, appliances, transportation?
Back in 2008, here is what Mubarak was saying:
Egypt Mubarak: Population rise affects the quality of life
“Egyptian President Mubarak warned on Monday that the unchecked rise of the population would wipe away all the returns of the Egyptian economic growth
The Egyptian Mubarak's remarks came during a Cabinet meeting to address the acute shortages of subsidized bread that have hurt millions of the nation's poor as well as a lack of housing to meet the rising demand.
"The unrestricted growth of the population is a national issue that affects the quality of the citizen's life and the nation as well," the president was quoted as saying by his spokesman Suleiman Awwad.
Awwad added that Mubarak stressed the need for more efforts to drop the birth rate in Egypt where the population has tripled since 1952 to 76 million people in 2006, according to the latest census.
During times of economic stress in Egypt, the president has often cited the population growth as a major obstacle to the country's economic development.
According to Egypt’s Health Ministry, Egypt's birthrate has dropped from 2.8 percent in 1994 to 1.9 percent in 2007, but the population will still exceed 100 million by 2020.
Mubarak told the government to launch a campaign to raise awareness over the problems of a rising population and its negative effects on efforts to provide more drinking water, improving the sewage system and building more hospitals and schools.
The Egyptian ministers also discussed how to alleviate housing demands by building new towns to absorb the increase in the population and to build more industrial projects to provide jobs for the rising work force.”
Egyptians and Americans can’t say that Mubarak lacked foresight. The issue of population size to a nation’s self-sustainable resources is one shared by a global population that is living with scarce and depleting resources.
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at 11:50 on February 2nd, 2011
Lessons for American government are numerous, though there is this to which I call attention.
American government policy cannot permit the gap to widen further between rich and poor and the number in the middle must increase, and not shrink and slide to the bottom. The moving quality of life must trend forward as a leader in the world to keep Americans satisfied, and to that end, We the People share responsibility.
The burden to prove that the American way is best is evidenced by the production of superior products and services for global consumption. To that end, the present trend is not in the right direction.