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Discuss this article (1 Comments)Balancing act
by This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it on Thursday, 27 August 2009
In figures released by the Office of National Statistics today, it was revealed that one in six households in Britain have nobody working.
In contrast, within the construction industry of the GCC, a typical room houses six workers.
Those that believe capitalism will trickle wealth down to the poorest parts of the world population appear to be wrong. Either that or capitalism has been distorted by a bloated benefit system in the UK or by lack of freedom to move up or out for GCC labourers.
The world does not conform to the theoretical models of economists. Pure capitalism no more exists in the free market cities of the lower Gulf than it does in the UK or US.
In the real world, politicians have a duty to blunt the cruellest barbs of capitalism; curbing its Darwinian forces that would lead to the strongest amassing collosal amounts of money and power, while the lives of the weakest are left to whither.
The nannyism of Gordon Brown's Britain has failed the country's poorest: locking them into benefit dependency that creates and perpetuates an entire society of unproductive families.
But the GCC is worse. The poorest people here have no voice, no independence, no respect and no freedom to leave for home.
Thanks to decades of abusive recruitment and employment practices, and governments that have been too slow or too reluctant to intervene, one third of the GCC population will spend their entire working lives in debt, impoverished, and living with six or more coworkers in their soulless dorms.
The GCC must not make the mistake of pampering its poor into a lifetime of dependence on the State, the UK has shown that route fails, but nor can it support a form of capitalism that benefits the rich and emaciates the poor.
READERS' COMMENTS
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The Gap won't wither so soon..
Posted by Kaptain, Abu Dhabi, UAE on Friday 28 August 2009 at 19:15 UAE time
Voice of the less privileged was never before nor now. Capitalism takes away the essence of work. Dependence reaps away freedom and dependence is sold for the lack of food, amenities, education, loans.
GCC wouldn't have grown this exponentially if home made but imported crises weren't introduced in South Asia which exports the majority of labour force in the GCC.
Posted by Kaptain, Abu Dhabi, UAE on Friday 28 August 2009 at 19:15 UAE time
Voice of the less privileged was never before nor now. Capitalism takes away the essence of work. Dependence reaps away freedom and dependence is sold for the lack of food, amenities, education, loans.
GCC wouldn't have grown this exponentially if home made but imported crises weren't introduced in South Asia which exports the majority of labour force in the GCC.
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