U.S. median income in 2013 was a mere 4 % higher than in 2008; meanwhile, Chinese & Vietnamese median incomes increased more than 100%, while Thailand’s median income increased by 85% & India’s by 60%.
China has played an enormous role in lowering global inequality. The economic growth of its 1.4 billion people has reshaped wealth around the world. But China has become so wealthy that its continued growth no longer plays such an important role in lowering global inequality.
India, with a population that is still relatively poor, now plays an important role in making the world more equal. In the last 20 years, China and India have driven the reduction in global inequality. From now on, only Indian growth will perform that same function.
Africa, which boasts the world’s highest rates of population growth, will become increasingly important. But if the largest African countries continue to trail behind the Asian giants, global inequality will rise.
If China’s growth continues to top Western countries’ growth by 2% to 3% annually, in a decade middle-class Chinese will become wealthier than their counterparts in the West. For the first time in two centuries, Westerners with middle incomes will no longer be part of the top 20%
Gloomy forecasts are plausible. The opposite of growing equality of globalization might come to be: the gap between US & Chinese middle classes may be preserved if the present trade war heats up, but at the cost of the slower (or negative) income growth in both the US & China.
Improvements in real income would be sacrificed in order to freeze the pecking order of the global income distribution. The net real income gain for all concerned would be zero.
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1. This is a turning point for the region and the axis of resistance. Israel has made a stunning show of its power, intelligence capabilities, and of Western technological and military superiority. If anyone had any doubts about Israeli power after Oct 7, those doubts have been dispelled. Iran turns out to be the paper tiger that many said it was.
2. The root problem of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians has not been solved, indeed, it will only get worse. There are 7 million Palestinians living in historic Palestine. The 5.5 million living in the occupied territories have no rights, no sovereignty, no hope of self-determination. Netanyahu will come out of his Lebanon gambit a towering hero, who has secured his legacy and life’s work, which is to frustrate the two-state solution, ensure that no Palestinian state emerges in any part of historic Palestine, and that the occupied territories become Israeli territory. It is a great day for the messianic wing of Israel. Israel is likely to lurch to the right, disregard Palestinian hopes, and exacerbate its infractions of international law and norms.
3. The Arab World and Middle Eastern states must engage in self-criticism after the defeat, as Sadiq al-‘Azm so eloquently wrote following the 1967 debacle. The root cause of the weakness of Middle Eastern states is that they are not nation states. By this, I mean that their peoples share little common identity. They are not united around common goals and do not accept shared rules of citizenship, which prevents the rule of law from becoming internalized as it prevents the emergence of viable democracies in the region. Middle Eastern countries will fail to modernize or know stability so long as the victor of the moment is unable to accommodate the aspirations of the vanquished. This is true of Bashar al-Assad and the Alawi community that supports him in Syria, as it is of the rulers of Lebanon, Iraq, etc.
As Joel Rayburn explained: US sanctions immiserate average Syrians because the Caesar Act "lowered the bar" for imposing them.
"With sanctions, oftentimes there can be a very high hurdle for the evidence that you have to gather in order to prove legal sufficiency under certain… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
US policy makers had decided by 2013 that they did not want to see the Syrian military destroyed b/c they feared that the opposition was dominated by radical Islamists & the country might fall apart.
The US chose Assad over the alternatives.
Blaming Russia is disingenuous
Read the Deputy Director of the CIA in 2013
"it's going to take the institution of the Syrian military and the institutions of the Syrian security services to defeat al Qaeda when this is done."
“The international sanctions on #Syria must be lifted, and Jordanian-Syrian economic relations must return to the status quo ante,” wrote Musa Al Saket, a member of the Amman Chamber of Commerce.
“The sanctions are unfair to our economy & the Syrian people,” he wrote. “Twelve years since the war broke out, more than 90% of the #Syria population lives below the poverty line, with limited access to food and medicine. This is a major catastrophe,” Saket added:
Russia wants us to seek an agreement #Syria, Kobani told Zaman
“As for the U.S., they need to articulate a policy on Syria. They have no strategy beyond fighting [ISIS] and have failed to formulate a clear policy with regard to the future of the areas under our control.
"The absence of this policy makes it harder for us to negotiate successfully with Damascus,” adding that the US does not oppose talks with Assad’s government.
But Syria’s not ready, “and Russia is not applying enough pressure on them,” adds Kobane.
Shifting energy import patterns enhance China’s clout in the Middle East
China became in 2016 the largest investor in the Arab world with investments worth $29.5 billion, targeted at infrastructure, industrial parks, pipelines, ports, and roads.
Total bilateral trade b/n Saudi Arabia & China grew from $42.4 billion in 2010 to $76 billion in 2019, quickly making China the top trading partner for Saudi Arabia.
In 2020, China replaced the European Union as the GCC’s largest trading partner.