Everyone cannot be "urban elite"

[SoCalDem]

This single fact is probably what keeps many a country in poverty.

Urban elites tend to "run things"..... they hang out at chi-chi cafes..... they are educated..they are clean and well dressed. They rarely "cause trouble".

Let's say that a country HAS natural resources and a possibility to develop them. Foreign interests WANT access, so they work deals with the ruling elite. (It's always been that way, and is unlikely to change soon).

Theoretically, the WHOLE populace of the nation "should" share in the wealth, but the paternalistic greedy side of leadership always rears its ugly head.

Poor people tend to be uneducated (very helpful when a country needs low-skilled field-workers), and they also tend to have large families.

NO amount of national resources will ever truly "lift up" a LARGE population of poor people who are continually "renewing" their numbers and who often lack a permanent home anywhere (hard to know who and where they are).

Band-aid approaches may nibble at the edge of the "problem", but barring a massive and systematic program of education, housing and generous financial support for at LEAST a generation, nothing will ever truly change.

As situations improve in ONE country, the impoverished masses of neighboring countries often "crash the party", hoping to get some of that for themselves.

Even IF a massive program were to work, and millions of people were lifted out of poverty, where would they all end up? In cities? Where would they live? How would the massive influx affect the infrastructure? Would the people already there, accept them? Where would they all find jobs? What about the women? Cultures that discount women, often do not want women educated, or employed.

Could any government survive through a generation of such policies without the "already elite" crushing them in their tracks?

Chavez comes to mind. I am sure he has high hopes for "curing" poverty, but he's only able to do it now because oil prices have given him a lot of money to use. The task is Herculean though, because he will have to use Venezuelan money to shore up all the economies of South America, or Venezuela will just end up a magnet for all the poor on that continent.

He has some latitude now, but how long will it last?


China is excoriated for their "one child' policy of old, but that generation-long "experiment" may have actually set the stage for their success now. Imagine the single child families of China today..what if all those singlets had been one child of 9 or 10? Would China still be poised on the edge of "SuperPowerdom" if their population had not been held down for a generation?

Right now there are many angry young men who have no way to find brides because so many girls were killed at birth, so that one child could be a son. A large population of unmarried young men (many of them quite angry & frustrated) makes for a rather "edgy" army..

There's a saying that goes "The poor will always be with us", but as long as the poor are the fastest growing part of the world population, there will be a tipping point when nothing will work to alleviate their plight (or the mischief their unhappiness will cause..wordwide)

The "Wonderful World of W's Perpetual War Machine" is relying on the fact that the poor will always need smacking around. Poor people with no hope of a better life do desperate things to get attention to their troubles... toss in fanatical end-of-times /death-cult religion, and things look pretty gloomy for leaders and urban elites.


Lacking a military commensurate with the "superpowers", the downtrodden's tactics can be downright nasty.


The 21st century is going to be a long, hard slog...