Why is Egypt so Poor?

One can ask...why are most countries poor? The US - and other Western countries too, of course - have been pouring money into these poor countries for decades, trying to make up for mistakes and inequities of the past. [Yes - inequities. As far as the USA Is concerned, such things as white businessmen staged a coup in Hawaii and took the country form the rightful ruler, we made treaties with Native Americans and then broke them, we moved people from their island homes so we could use their land as nuclear test sites...) Now we're trying to make up for those past mistakes by pouring money into their countries or into their charities (if in the US) - With what result?

As far as foreign countries are concerned, the governments get rich - cuz they take all the money - and the people stay poor. [As far as the poor in the US - American apartheid rules on reservations, where most people live poor and die poor, except for the top percentile who make the fortunes from casino gambling.] Instead of making constructive progress, we're just making the same mistakes over and over again, of pouring money into a bottomless well.

It's time the US stopped sending money to these other countries until their governments promise they won't appropriate the money for their own use. The problem is...the US is so afraid that China or Russia will step in... but we're at a point now where we can no longer afford this largesses that doesn't bring us anything in return, least of all good will.

Here's what Rush had to say on the subject:

If you have a problem with poverty, what is the solution to that? Okay, creating wealth. But you gotta define that. We have had, in this country, a whooole lot of programs to fix poverty. We've had the Great Society. We've had the War on Poverty. We have had any number of welfare programs, and I would ask you: "Have we reduced poverty as an expression or as a percentage of our population?

No. Now, compared to poverty in Egypt, our poverty isn't poverty. But compared to the standard of living in this country, we do have poverty, but not when compared to poverty in the rest of the world. So we arguably in this country do far, far better with our underprivileged than many other countries do. Why is that? The answer is very simple, folks. It's what's so frustrating about the election of Obama in the first place. The answer is the unequal distribution of capitalism around the world. If you want a prosperous population with robust opportunity, you have to have free markets. You cannot have a command-and-control economy. You cannot have, as your standard operating procedure, the notion that you are going to transfer from earners to non-earners or from producers to non-producers and create wealth.

That is not creating wealth, it's destroying it, which is all governments can do. Governments cannot create wealth. All they can do is destroy it, and that is happening in this country. I'm sure it's happened in Egypt. I don't doubt these people in Tahrir "Circle" are ticked off because of poverty concerns, standard of living concerns. But they're not gonna have a solution to it with just a new figurehead. They're not gonna have a solution. If the military ends up running the show or Suleiman, they're not gonna have a significant change in economic circumstances until there is a significant change in economic structure -- and even then, it isn't going to happen overnight.


We can sit here all day and lament the fact that Mubarak lives in a palace and these people in the protest live on $2 a day. That's not gonna change tomorrow when Mubarak's gone. It isn't going to change next year after Mubarak's gone. What has to happen is an accompanying change of structure, free markets -- and even then, with free markets, not everybody is going to be wealthy. Not everybody is going to be as prosperous as others. You are still going to have gradations of it, of income and wealth. You can divvy ours up into five quintiles, which is done for study purposes. Bottom fifth, second fifth, third fifth, middle fifth, the top fifth, whatever. You could divide it into tenths or quarters if you want to, but you're still gonna have a disparity, and the best efforts to make everybody the same always fail. It's not possible.

Every effort made by command-and-control structure -- economy, government, what have you -- to equalize outcomes under the premise of fairness or whatever is dismal failure. That primarily is what Egypt is based on. Any socialist, authoritarian country is based on the false premise that everybody's gonna be equal; everybody's gonna be the same; everybody's gonna be comfortable. It never works out that way. It all goes back to why and how did this country in 230 short years outrun, outperform every other civilization in history -- and it's the way we structured ourselves, which allowed for our true freedom, intelligence, ambition to surface and prosper and function unimpeded for the most part. Most people in the world do not have that basic structure in which to function -- and, sadly, many people in the world don't want to take the risk.

They'd just as soon sacrifice a little freedom, sacrifice a little liberty for a guaranteed meager wage rather than take the risk or doing hard work or what have you. It depends on how they've been conditioned. But to sit here and say, "They live on two bucks a day. We have to have compassion for 'em"? We do, but you just can't start passing out money to them, because when do you stop? If you start doing that, you're not changing anything. You are prolonging the problem and actually making it worse. The true creation of wealth, the true generation of wealth resulting in legitimate economic growth -- the expansion of the pie -- cannot happen under an authoritarian. I don't care how well intention. It cannot happen under a socialistic government.

I don't care how well-intentioned. I don't care how much passion is behind it. I don't care how much good intention is involved. It is not structurally possible to grow an economic pie. We, the United States of America, are the textbook lesson in how to do it, and I'm amazed. I'm amazed that there have not been greater attempts to emulate what we do. We're surrounded by people who want to stamp us out. We're surrounded by people who want to tamp us down. Sadly, some of those people now are in positions of power in our own government, which is why there is a Tea Party made up of people who understand that the greatness of America is under assault. So, yeah, it sounds really good.

"Oh, yeah, we've gotta redistribute. We have to be fairer as we distribute the wealth." Well, somebody's gotta create it first. Somebody has to earn it before somebody else can take it and give it to somebody else, and as long as there is an animosity and a hatred for those who do that creating of wealth, who do the generating, who create and grow the economy -- so long as we have people who foster a resentment and hatred for those people -- it's going to be very difficult to be constantly successful at doing it. People don't want to feel like targets. People doing good things, people playing by the rules, people using their natural talents are sick and tired of being blamed for what other people don't have. It's not their fault.

It's not Walmart's fault that somebody doesn't have something. It's not the fault of anybody or company or group of prosperous people that somebody else doesn't. But the way we've set things up it's a zero sum game and if there's a bunch of rich people it means there had to have been, at one time, other rich people to have things stolen from 'em. So the socialists and communists come along and say, "We're gonna equalize things. We're gonna get these people that took your money in the first plaace and we're gonna get it back," but you never get it back, because you never had it in the first place. Because the whole premise that you've been stolen from, robbed, or what have you, is flawed.

It's a message and a premise put forth by shameless politicians who have tried their best to convince people, "You just vote for me! Vote for me and I'll end your poverty -- or I'll end your misery, or I'll end your unhappiness -- and I'll make sure these people stealing from you, these unfair people taking your wealth, they stop that. I'm gonna get it back for you. I'm gonna make sure." It never works out, does it? You end up with Egypt every single time. So, yeah, it's frustrating to get somebody calling, "Well, we need to give 'em some more money. We need to transfer more money. That's the solution." Yeah, immediately it is, but unless they figure out a way to produce it for themselves and make it long-lasting and systematic and institutional, it isn't gonna matter a hill of beans.