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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEconomist Has Convincing Theory on How Extreme Inequality Creates Extremist Violence
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/30/economist-has-convincing-theory-how-extreme-inequality-creates-extremist-violenceInfluential French economist Thomas Piketty is begging important questions this week after positing a theory that the rise of the Islamic State (or ISIS) can be attributed, at least in part, to extreme regional inequality in the Middle East fueled largely by oil wealth.
Piketty argues in a column published Le Monde last week and translated by the Washington Post on Monday that the concentration of wealth in the hands of just a few petro-monarchies has made the region the "most unequal on the planet."
In those states, Piketty says, the have-nots, including women and refugees, are often kept in a state of "semi-slavery." This, combined with a series of foreign interventions, have created what he described as a "powder keg" for terrorism.
The Post notes that "Piketty is particularly scathing when he blames the inequality of the region, and the persistence of oil monarchies that perpetuate it, on the West."
Recursion
(56,582 posts)So there may be something to that.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)would be Recursion's nether region.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)The past 20 years have seen the largest drop in global inequality and global violence in recorded history. Learn something. The world is more than US suburbia.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)It's probably the two most important social changes of this generation, and people keep sticking their heads in the sand about it.
Violence:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/22/world-less-violent-stats_n_1026723.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-decline-of-violence/
Inequality:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/recent-history-in-one-chart/
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/08/12/338347325/inequality-is-falling-on-planet-earth
http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/ethics_online/0101
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2015/mar/27/income-inequality-rising-falling-worlds-richest-poorest
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/upshot/income-inequality-is-not-rising-globally-its-falling-.html
Seriously. These are the two most important trends of the last 20 years.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Response to Scuba (Reply #6)
Recursion This message was self-deleted by its author.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)So, in very very rich countries like ours, we see income stratifying, just like we do in very very rich neighborhoods within the US. It's kind of a fractal. Global inequality is falling, has been falling for 20 years, and looks to continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)From somebody who is ideologically blind to the simple fact that inequality has gone way way down over the past twenty years. Grasping at straws about a recent local uptick is amusing, but also an admission that the point stands.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)You may be correct in you point. However, one doubts that statistics have much meaning to the families or friends of the victims of mass shootings or other forms of violent events be they in Europe, The Middle East, Asia, Africa, The US or anywhere in the world. We may indeed be seeing less violence as you suggest, however we need to see much, much less and at least I believe and have believed that economic inequality is a driving force behind a host of societal problems, violence being one of those.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Or the 1820s. The 1860s were pretty violent here.
So much depends in such conclusions on the metric selected and the period examined.
And anyway the Neolib dogma requires it, so it must be so, because "progress".
I want to add that slavery is a rather extreme form of inequality, so that does much to explain the extreme violence of the Civil War, and our racial inequalities explain the racial violence here very well too and our continuing state of misrule and misconduct in foreign affairs.
And I have been expecting another dose of that here since Raygun came in, because he was all about inequality, right from the start.
And I think we are about there now.
Divided and unequal societies tend to be more violent both internally (enforcement) and externally (displacement).
pampango
(24,692 posts)within countries, including the US. Most are happy about the gains of poor people in poor countries, not so happy about the increase in inequality in our country. But progressive countries have shown that domestic inequality is not inevitable and that domestic income equality is not inconsistent with gains in global income equality.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Too wealthy and well armed now to be stopped. International terrorism is a self-perpetuating cycle of economic concentration until it destroys itself.
Democat
(11,617 posts)I don't doubt that income inequality can be a contributing factor to crime.
However, when innocent people watching a concert are shot to death, the people to blame are the people holding the guns.