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I love reading the comments on stories like this and consider these comments to be a bellwether as to the current state of inequality in our society. Unfortunat

I love reading the comments on stories like this and consider these comments to be a bellwether as to the current state of inequality in our society. Unfortunately I tend to consider myself one who exists on the lower part of the wealth distribution logarithm within the western world, globally it's a different story. Just as anyone tweeting on their smart phone or tablet claiming to be part of the 99% might want to rethink that in a global context, most of us in the west are global 1% ers. Could it be that the rise in terror incedents recently may in fact be caused by this inequality and not just radical religious zealots? Even if this is not the case we may want to make sure that our empathy does not diminish to the point where we suggest that the starving people of the world eat cake if there is no bread.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Maybe not - globally, the 1% own just over half of everything. The 99% includes almost everybody everywhere. Even working-class Americans.
- sigmaprimus 10y ago
  Fair enough maybe not 1% but the metric you are using does not exclude us from the 1%, keep in mind that 2.7 billion people are trying to survive on less than 2 dollars a day. Eg, there are 1000 people in a group, one of which has 1 million dollars, 9 others have 100 dollars each and the rest only have 1 dollar each there are still 10 people in the top 1%.
  - otalp 10y ago
    >2.7 billion people are trying to survive on less than 2 dollars a day 2 dollars a day isn't all that little in places like say, India. Sure, they're not going to be living a life of luxury, but it's very different from $2 a day in the US, and you shouldn't have trouble feeding yourself and having shelter with $2 a day in India, which amounts to about Rs.50,000 a year. In fact even though inequality is increasing, a number of studies have confirmed that poverty and extreme poverty have drastically reduced over the past few decades. It still exists of course, but much better than what it used to be.
- coredog64 10y ago
  I found Branko Milanovic's "The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality" to be an eye-opener. Roughly paraphrased, if you're in the top half of the US, your equivalent in India would be the top 1%. I don't remember if it was that book or something similar I read around the same time, but I have a faint memory of membership in the Indian middle class essentially being "owns a household appliance".
kayoone 10y ago
I agree and am pretty sure that at least some of the islamists are people that feel left behind by the west, maybe would like to have a similar live but grow to hate them because they just can't have it and use the religion find likeminded people. And i say that without any elitism. It is similar to trying to understand where all the Trump votes come from when you are more liberal.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Its a bit of a mix as best i can tell. Those that are recruited in "the west" are younger people straddling two cultures. The one of their immigrant parents, and that of the culture of the community they grow up in. Over time the stress of this life makes them lash out and open for recruitment. Those from "the east" see their way of life encroached by "westernization" just as much as certain right wing groups in "the west" fret about "islamization". And over time the fear and frustration grows until they become violent.
- timthelion 10y ago
  The original Al-Qaida (every major member is now dead) which planned 9/11 actually didn't feel left behind at all. They were trying to fight change and westernization. I think that most of the current batch of terrorists, however, are just a bunch of primitive drug addicted machos who want to blow things up (and I'm serious about that, go read the Wikipedia articles on the people who have made attacks in Europe lately).
  - boomboomsubban 10y ago
    > The original Al-Qaida (every major member is now dead) which planned 9/11 actually didn't feel left behind at all. They were trying to fight change and westernization. Go read the Wikipedia article about 9/11, they were fighting against the US attacks on Muslims, their influence on local politics, and their support of Israel. Why do people think it takes more than that?
    - timthelion 10y ago
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Islamic-inspired terrorism draws a direct lineage from the writings of Sayyid Qutb (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb), an Egyptian civil servant who studied in America and was aghast at how consumerism subversed communal and religious virtues, and even more shocked to see the same transformation occurring in the Arab world. He eventually drew the conclusion that consumerism sequestered people away from reality, and so he came to advocate for terrorist attacks on civilians specifically to force people to look at and confront what he perceived as poisonous Western values. To say that all those poor misguided young men just need jobs and money misses the point entirely. The problem is with society itself. They yearn for an alternative, but we in the West are too much a part of the system to imagine life outside of it.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Note that his thinking didn't turn militant until he was jailed and tortured by the Egyptian government. That at the time had backing of USA, and thus trained by the CIA.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Yes, and this is vital. Thank you for mentioning this. A lot of radicalization occurs for a reason. People don't just stumble across radical outlets and casually indoctrinate themselves. They are catalyzed first.
  - akurtzhs 10y ago
    His Wikipedia article disagrees with this, saying "Upset that Nasser would not enforce a government based on Islamic ideology, Qutb and other Brotherhood members orchestrated a plot to assassinate the Egyptian president in 1954. The attempt was foiled and Qutb was jailed soon afterwards;"
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      I guess someone will have to take that up with Adam Curtis... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares
Retric 10y ago
Only if you ignore PPP and use exchange rates do you get ~33k/year. However, even then plenty of people in the US make less than that.
throwaway_374 10y ago
The rise in terror is not caused by radical religious zealots. It's caused by bombs raining down everyday on your life from foreign occupation.
- pc86 10y ago
  This is just as simplistic - and wrong - a view as the one you're opposing.
  - throwaway_374 10y ago
    Well pardon me for my over-sensitive reductionism and not contemplating the geopolitical subtleties of the situation while my town, family, children and everything I can see around me is being flattened by your tax payer funded bombs. Is it still over simplistic now?
    - pc86 10y ago
      Yes
- abiox 10y ago
  can it be both?
SpaceDingus9000 10y ago
So this is a good example of how the 99% vs 1% meme falls short. It's a description of wealth inequality, which is a symptom of the larger conflict between workers and business owners (proletariat vs. bourgeoisie). The central issue isn't that we have wealth inequality, it's about power. Capitalists get to control our economic planning, have a closer ear of our governments, and have an advantageous negotiating position compared to workers allowing them to pay us little while they receive huge profits (leading to inequality). Often times it is in the interest of certain capitalists to get our government to engage in imperialism, or destabilize certain regions, which helps lead to the awful conditions for some people in the Middle East, and I think this helps pave the way to religious extremism. They rightfully recognize nations like the U.S. are partially to blame for their conditions, and unfortunately lash out at the everyday citizens who often had no part in the matter.
- edblarney 10y ago
  "Often times it is in the interest of certain capitalists to get our government to engage in imperialism, or destabilize certain regions, which helps lead to the awful conditions for some people in the Middle East, and I think this helps pave the way to religious extremism." This is patently false. The US - and 'capitalists' do not want 'destabilization' - over and above all they want 'stability'. Case and point: Saudi Arabia. Here you have an 'extremely conservative Islamic state' - which is culturally the furthest thing from the American ideal - and yet the Americans are their protectors - doing pretty much anything to preserve the stability of that regime. And for what: direct access to Oil - at market prices. That's it. Same thing for Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Egypt, Tunisia. And almost Libya until Gaddafi went to far oppressing an uprising, and remember the US supported Saddam so long as he wasn't invading allies like Kuwait. Prosperity is not a zero-sum game. 100% of the Middle East could be thriving and plentiful if they organized themselves in a responsible manner. Most of them should have ample Oil surpluses to found basic progress.
  - SpaceDingus9000 10y ago
    I'm not saying all capitalists, I'm saying it is in the interests of certain capitalists. I'm sure McDonald's would love to have a stable region to begin building franchises in. On the other hand, a military contractor's profit is in part tied to conflict ridden regions. I don't really see what your example of Saudi Arabia proves. We sell them arms and purchase much of their oil, it's in a lot of people interests to keep them stable. I'm saying in some cases it is in business interests to keep a region in conflict, and sometimes imperialism leads to instability or a lack of material wealth, promoting extremist thought.
edblarney 10y ago
"Could it be that the rise in terror incedents recently may in fact be caused by this inequality and not just radical religious zealots? " The prosperity of nations is not a zero sum game. Many of those 'terrorist nations' have ample natural resources, in the way of Oil - and would be prosperous, glorious civilizations were it not for their totalitarian means, and total lack of intelligent social organization. The USA is not 'rich' because of something the Middle East gives them. The US purchases Oil from some of these nations, giving them massive trade account surpluses that they should be using to build their civilizations. But they don't. I'd argue the 'root cause' of their failure may actually have a lot to do with their 'cultural ideologies' which are related to their specific local religion. I'm not against religion or Islam, rather pointing out that some flavours may be detrimental to some forms of secular progress. Surely - the perception of inequality and anger may be a driving factor, but their anger may be misguided. Also - I think many of them understand this - the #1 ire of terrorist groups such as ISIS etc. is not 'The West' - it's what they perceive to be their local tyrannical governments: Saddam, Assad, 'House of Saud' etc..
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  > The prosperity of nations is not a zero sum game. Yes, but violence is mostly powered by irrational impulses, at least to get started. It may co-opt reason later in the process, but initially it's just a visceral eruption. So it does not care at all about zero-sum games and whatnot. It only cares that the bastard over'ere seems to have too much stuff and I don't have any.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    Yeah, I agree with that. 'Perception of inequality' is perhaps all that matters.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  > Many of those 'terrorist nations' have ample natural resources, in the way of Oil - and would be prosperous, glorious civilizations were it not for their totalitarian means, and total lack of intelligent social organization. And a worrying number of them turned out that way thanks to outside meddling in internal affairs...

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Maybe not - globally, the 1% own just over half of everything. The 99% includes almost everybody everywhere. Even working-class Americans.

sigmaprimus 10y ago
Fair enough maybe not 1% but the metric you are using does not exclude us from the 1%, keep in mind that 2.7 billion people are trying to survive on less than 2 dollars a day. Eg, there are 1000 people in a group, one of which has 1 million dollars, 9 others have 100 dollars each and the rest only have 1 dollar each there are still 10 people in the top 1%.
- otalp 10y ago
  >2.7 billion people are trying to survive on less than 2 dollars a day 2 dollars a day isn't all that little in places like say, India. Sure, they're not going to be living a life of luxury, but it's very different from $2 a day in the US, and you shouldn't have trouble feeding yourself and having shelter with $2 a day in India, which amounts to about Rs.50,000 a year. In fact even though inequality is increasing, a number of studies have confirmed that poverty and extreme poverty have drastically reduced over the past few decades. It still exists of course, but much better than what it used to be.
coredog64 10y ago
I found Branko Milanovic's "The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality" to be an eye-opener. Roughly paraphrased, if you're in the top half of the US, your equivalent in India would be the top 1%. I don't remember if it was that book or something similar I read around the same time, but I have a faint memory of membership in the Indian middle class essentially being "owns a household appliance".

kayoone 10y ago

I agree and am pretty sure that at least some of the islamists are people that feel left behind by the west, maybe would like to have a similar live but grow to hate them because they just can't have it and use the religion find likeminded people. And i say that without any elitism. It is similar to trying to understand where all the Trump votes come from when you are more liberal.

digi_owl 10y ago
Its a bit of a mix as best i can tell. Those that are recruited in "the west" are younger people straddling two cultures. The one of their immigrant parents, and that of the culture of the community they grow up in. Over time the stress of this life makes them lash out and open for recruitment. Those from "the east" see their way of life encroached by "westernization" just as much as certain right wing groups in "the west" fret about "islamization". And over time the fear and frustration grows until they become violent.
timthelion 10y ago
The original Al-Qaida (every major member is now dead) which planned 9/11 actually didn't feel left behind at all. They were trying to fight change and westernization. I think that most of the current batch of terrorists, however, are just a bunch of primitive drug addicted machos who want to blow things up (and I'm serious about that, go read the Wikipedia articles on the people who have made attacks in Europe lately).
- boomboomsubban 10y ago
  > The original Al-Qaida (every major member is now dead) which planned 9/11 actually didn't feel left behind at all. They were trying to fight change and westernization. Go read the Wikipedia article about 9/11, they were fighting against the US attacks on Muslims, their influence on local politics, and their support of Israel. Why do people think it takes more than that?
  - timthelion 10y ago

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

Islamic-inspired terrorism draws a direct lineage from the writings of Sayyid Qutb (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb), an Egyptian civil servant who studied in America and was aghast at how consumerism subversed communal and religious virtues, and even more shocked to see the same transformation occurring in the Arab world. He eventually drew the conclusion that consumerism sequestered people away from reality, and so he came to advocate for terrorist attacks on civilians specifically to force people to look at and confront what he perceived as poisonous Western values. To say that all those poor misguided young men just need jobs and money misses the point entirely. The problem is with society itself. They yearn for an alternative, but we in the West are too much a part of the system to imagine life outside of it.

digi_owl 10y ago
Note that his thinking didn't turn militant until he was jailed and tortured by the Egyptian government. That at the time had backing of USA, and thus trained by the CIA.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Yes, and this is vital. Thank you for mentioning this. A lot of radicalization occurs for a reason. People don't just stumble across radical outlets and casually indoctrinate themselves. They are catalyzed first.
- akurtzhs 10y ago
  His Wikipedia article disagrees with this, saying "Upset that Nasser would not enforce a government based on Islamic ideology, Qutb and other Brotherhood members orchestrated a plot to assassinate the Egyptian president in 1954. The attempt was foiled and Qutb was jailed soon afterwards;"
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I guess someone will have to take that up with Adam Curtis... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares

Retric 10y ago

Only if you ignore PPP and use exchange rates do you get ~33k/year. However, even then plenty of people in the US make less than that.

throwaway_374 10y ago

The rise in terror is not caused by radical religious zealots. It's caused by bombs raining down everyday on your life from foreign occupation.

pc86 10y ago
This is just as simplistic - and wrong - a view as the one you're opposing.
- throwaway_374 10y ago
  Well pardon me for my over-sensitive reductionism and not contemplating the geopolitical subtleties of the situation while my town, family, children and everything I can see around me is being flattened by your tax payer funded bombs. Is it still over simplistic now?
  - pc86 10y ago
    Yes
abiox 10y ago
can it be both?

SpaceDingus9000 10y ago

So this is a good example of how the 99% vs 1% meme falls short. It's a description of wealth inequality, which is a symptom of the larger conflict between workers and business owners (proletariat vs. bourgeoisie). The central issue isn't that we have wealth inequality, it's about power. Capitalists get to control our economic planning, have a closer ear of our governments, and have an advantageous negotiating position compared to workers allowing them to pay us little while they receive huge profits (leading to inequality). Often times it is in the interest of certain capitalists to get our government to engage in imperialism, or destabilize certain regions, which helps lead to the awful conditions for some people in the Middle East, and I think this helps pave the way to religious extremism. They rightfully recognize nations like the U.S. are partially to blame for their conditions, and unfortunately lash out at the everyday citizens who often had no part in the matter.

edblarney 10y ago
"Often times it is in the interest of certain capitalists to get our government to engage in imperialism, or destabilize certain regions, which helps lead to the awful conditions for some people in the Middle East, and I think this helps pave the way to religious extremism." This is patently false. The US - and 'capitalists' do not want 'destabilization' - over and above all they want 'stability'. Case and point: Saudi Arabia. Here you have an 'extremely conservative Islamic state' - which is culturally the furthest thing from the American ideal - and yet the Americans are their protectors - doing pretty much anything to preserve the stability of that regime. And for what: direct access to Oil - at market prices. That's it. Same thing for Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Egypt, Tunisia. And almost Libya until Gaddafi went to far oppressing an uprising, and remember the US supported Saddam so long as he wasn't invading allies like Kuwait. Prosperity is not a zero-sum game. 100% of the Middle East could be thriving and plentiful if they organized themselves in a responsible manner. Most of them should have ample Oil surpluses to found basic progress.
- SpaceDingus9000 10y ago
  I'm not saying all capitalists, I'm saying it is in the interests of certain capitalists. I'm sure McDonald's would love to have a stable region to begin building franchises in. On the other hand, a military contractor's profit is in part tied to conflict ridden regions. I don't really see what your example of Saudi Arabia proves. We sell them arms and purchase much of their oil, it's in a lot of people interests to keep them stable. I'm saying in some cases it is in business interests to keep a region in conflict, and sometimes imperialism leads to instability or a lack of material wealth, promoting extremist thought.

edblarney 10y ago

"Could it be that the rise in terror incedents recently may in fact be caused by this inequality and not just radical religious zealots? " The prosperity of nations is not a zero sum game. Many of those 'terrorist nations' have ample natural resources, in the way of Oil - and would be prosperous, glorious civilizations were it not for their totalitarian means, and total lack of intelligent social organization. The USA is not 'rich' because of something the Middle East gives them. The US purchases Oil from some of these nations, giving them massive trade account surpluses that they should be using to build their civilizations. But they don't. I'd argue the 'root cause' of their failure may actually have a lot to do with their 'cultural ideologies' which are related to their specific local religion. I'm not against religion or Islam, rather pointing out that some flavours may be detrimental to some forms of secular progress. Surely - the perception of inequality and anger may be a driving factor, but their anger may be misguided. Also - I think many of them understand this - the #1 ire of terrorist groups such as ISIS etc. is not 'The West' - it's what they perceive to be their local tyrannical governments: Saddam, Assad, 'House of Saud' etc..

Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> The prosperity of nations is not a zero sum game. Yes, but violence is mostly powered by irrational impulses, at least to get started. It may co-opt reason later in the process, but initially it's just a visceral eruption. So it does not care at all about zero-sum games and whatnot. It only cares that the bastard over'ere seems to have too much stuff and I don't have any.
- edblarney 10y ago
  Yeah, I agree with that. 'Perception of inequality' is perhaps all that matters.
digi_owl 10y ago
> Many of those 'terrorist nations' have ample natural resources, in the way of Oil - and would be prosperous, glorious civilizations were it not for their totalitarian means, and total lack of intelligent social organization. And a worrying number of them turned out that way thanks to outside meddling in internal affairs...