One of the most insensitive,
clueless and just plain warped statements Romney has made in the campaign was
when he spoke in Israel and said that the reason why Israel had a per capita
income of $20,000 while the Palestinians only had $10,000 was due to a superior
culture. To begin with his numbers were off by a factor of ten: The true
numbers are $31,000 for Israel, $1500 for the Palestinians. You’d think someone
in his entourage would take a minute to do an internet search to get the
correct numbers. His statement was roundly criticized by many Israelis, and
rightly so.
In the event, I’ve been pondering
for quite a while how culture impacts a nation’s intellectual and economic
advancement. Why is it that some nations are hopelessly poor while others are
fabulously wealthy?
All peoples are not the same, all
cultures are not the same, though political correctness places taboos on us making
certain types of judgments and assumptions.
But even before you start judging
a nation’s cultural status based on per capita income, you’ve got to step back
and check for outside forces that might’ve affected those numbers. In the case
of Israel versus Palestine, you have Israel, an already wealthy nation that
receives $4 billion per year in military aid as well as an additional large
amount more in private donations from Jews around the world and ‘Palestine’ –
in quotes because it’s not a nation – which has been under military occupation
for 45 years during which time it’s seen its land stolen, its water stolen, its
access to the outside world strictly controlled by another country, which
decides, based on how much pressure or difficulty it wishes to burden the
Palestinian people with, what can be imported and what can be exported, it’s
people subjected to more than 500 checkpoints in an area equivalent to
Delaware, America’s second smallest state, so that merely going from one
village in your ‘country’ to another is regularly designed to be a frustrating
and humiliating experience, where guards routinely make Palestinians, including
the elderly and pregnant women, wait out in the elements - women have been
forced to give birth out in the open because the guards won’t to let them
through to nearby hospitals, where... well I could go on and on and on, but
suffice to say it’s a ludicrous comparison to make considering the
circumstances.
However, it’s entirely possible
that, even on a level playing field, Israel would have a higher income than a
true, free Palestinian state. Culture undeniably has an impact on a people’s
drive for financial success, though concurrently, financial success isn’t the
only determinant of the value of a culture. It’s especially dangerous, not to
mention morally and philosophically corrupt to try to equate a nation’s value
based solely on its income.
First a little digression on per
capita income. There are two ways to calculate it. One is to simply covert
local currency to dollars. That method seriously understates quality of life in
developing countries, since a dollar goes a lot farther in a poor country than
in a rich. Before you come to the third world, you just can’t imagine how
people can survive on $800 per year, Cambodia’s current nominal per capita
income. But I can go to a local produce shop, which is a bit more expensive
than the public market, and get two tomatoes, a small green pepper and an onion
for 35¢. The same is true for almost everything produced locally. The second is
Purchasing Power Parity in which the skewing against poor countries is
corrected by adjusting for the greater purchasing power of a dollar in those
places. On that basis Cambodia’s income is more like $2400 per year.
Back on subject: Qatar,
calculated by PPP, has the highest income in the world at about $100,000. Does
that mean Qatari culture is three times better than Israeli culture? Or merely
superior? German income is close to $40,000. Do we really want to suggest that
German culture is superior to Jewish culture because their income is higher? In
the cases of both Germany and Israel there are special circumstances that have
brought their income down. In Germany’s case they spent fabulous amounts of
money in the cause of bringing East German society up to western standards. In
Israel’s case they’ve spent vast sums on their colonization project in the West
Bank and concomitant occupation and suppression of the Palestinian people.
Still, setting the mitigating factors aside, one may well have a ‘superior’
culture when it comes to income and maybe other factors also. Every race,
nationality, culture is different.
Income is an essential factor in
determining a country’s progress and advancement. Without a certain minimum
income some people will be hungry, or be without access to education or health
care. But that doesn’t mean a low income country has an inferior culture, only
that it either isn’t focused on income or mitigating factors have brought
income down.
Cambodia’s current poverty is
mostly a result of its sordid history. Back in the sixties the country was one
of the area’s wealthiest. While nobody but the Khmer can be blamed for the
gruesome years of the Khmer Rouge, their takeover of the country did not happen
in a vacuum. In the early sixties, King Sihanouk abdicated his throne to become
the country’s political leader. That time was the heyday of Cambodian culture.
While he wasn’t faultless, he was a respected and often revered leader; he also
was a leftist with affinity for Mao and communist China. This did not sit well
with the CIA so they staged a coup in 1970 in which the former king was deposed
and Lon Nol, an imposingly corrupt right-winger was put in his place. That in
turn did not sit well with the Khmer Rouge and the king who sided with the KR.
Nixon’s ‘secret’ Cambodia bombing campaign in which more bombs were dropped per
capita than any time in history, gave the KR a fantastic recruiting tool and
sealed Cambodia’s fate. BTW, 40 years after the bombing ended Cambodians are
still dying from UXO’s, unexploded ordnance, left in the countryside. The US
always has the money to start new wars but somehow can’t find the relative
pittance needed to clean up after the old ones.
While only the Khmer people could
produce a Pol Pot, it’s reasonable to conjecture that the KR might never have
been able to take over had the US not intervened in Cambodia’s affairs.
Cambodia’s $2400 per year per capita income doesn’t compare favorably with the
US income of $45,000, but is it entirely culture that made the difference? Had
Cambodians been left to their own devices, they would be far above that figure
today, but who knows exactly where they would stand?
Cambodia’s people may not compare
in income, social advancement or intellectual attainment but it’s a hell of a
lot easier to live here than in the states. The atmosphere is friendly,
easygoing and relaxed, exemplified by the fact that the country has 26 public
holiday days a year and that underestimates how much time people take off for
Khmer New Year. The official holiday is three days but the private schools I
taught at scheduled a full week off and nobody ever showed up for classes the
last couple of days before the scheduled break. And that also doesn’t include
Chinese New Year, a three day unofficial holiday that almost everyone who can
takes off. We celebrate the new year three times in Cambo.
Speaking of the Chinese, when it
comes to financial success, they undeniably have a superior culture. Nearly
everywhere you go in southeast Asia they control a disproportionate share of
the businesses and own an outsized share of the wealth. But does that mean
their culture overall is better? For instance, when Chinese summon a waitress
they use the term for servant and it’s always spoken in a gruff haughty voice.
In contrast when Cambodians do the same they use a word that roughly translates
as good person and they speak naturally.
I could go on, I intended to go
on, but I’d just get into trouble. Suffice to say, there’s a lot more to
culture than income. Leave it to vulture-capitalist Romney, the richest man
ever to run for president, to see value exclusively in terms of material wealth.
