| Put mildly, you are mistaken about Mexico. From ECLAC [1]: >It should not be surprising that today more than half of its population is poor (CONEVAL, 2014), a proportion similar to the one prevailing three decades ago. Thus, more than 55 millions of Mexicans live in conditions of poverty. >In these years, What happened to inequality? Well for anyone that visits Mexico, the words of Alexander Von Humbold (1811), more than two hundred years ago, still ring true: >“Mexico is the country of inequality. Nowhere does there exist such a fearful difference in the distribution of fortune, civilization, cultivation of the soil, and population. …The capital and several other cities have scientific establishments, which will bear a comparison with those of Europe. The architecture of the public and private edifices, the elegance of the furniture, the equipages, the luxury and dress of the women, the tone of society, all announce a refinement to which the nakedness, ignorance, and vulgarity of the lower people form the most striking contrast.” >As the writer Augusto Monterroso wrote in 2002 (p.60): “the unique, truly hyper-real characteristic of Mexico is its social inequality; the misery that marks the everyday life of the immense majority of Mexicans.” >The figures corroborate this image. As Table 1 shows there is an almost 27-fold difference between the average incomes of the top and the bottom deciles. This difference is in stark contrast with the average ratio of 10 to 1 in the OECD (OECD 2014). More worrying, the top 1% of Mexico’s distribution has an average annual income 47 times that of the poorest 10% (del Castillo Negrete Rovira 2012). It is very likely that, were there numbers for smaller slices at the top, the ratios would be astronomical. Likewise, I admire your optimism that Chinese inequality will be solved just as soon as the newly rich realize that they're Communists. I hope the future will prove you right. Neither a race war nor a class war will happen in the US. Seriously? Even ignoring your optimistic assumptions of organized minorities (speaking as one, there are shockingly few war pacts among us), how exactly would such a revolution be organized, funded, armed, or fed? How would they conduct communications? More to the point, what possible ideology would unite these revolutionaries? The Arab Spring had fundamentalist Islam as a unifying identity, but the US is nowhere near as sympathetic to fundamentalism... and even if it were, Christianity has proven far less conducive to the sort of grassroots-organized violence you see in MENA or South Asia. At worst (best?), you'll see the sort of anarchic lawlessness you see today in Detroit or Flint. I'm not being sarcastic when I say I admire your idea of revolution. Many in the Arab Spring shared the same ideals, and were in for a rude awakening when their revolutions were instead dominated by religious fundamentalism and racial/cultural feuds. But the US lacks the strong cultural/religious ideologies necessary to organize armies and instigate revolutions -- which is a damn good thing, but it also limits possible plebeian uprising. Which is also a very good thing. [1] http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/newsletterarticles/... |
You seem to be saying that the revolution didn't work out as hoped. Which isn't surprising; many things don't. But that doesn't mean the revolution didn't happen, or that it wasn't motivated by inequality.
> Likewise, I admire your optimism that Chinese inequality will be solved just as soon as the newly rich realize that they're Communists. I hope the future will prove you right.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that China has already had one revolution where inequality was a driving force. That the inequality is returning is again no proof that a revolution couldn't happen.
> Neither a race war nor a class war will happen in the US.
The US has a long history of racial violence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_Un...
Further, unrest usually starts with the people getting the shortest end of the stick, and in the US that has a strong racial component. That sort of unrest quickly sets off white people; during Ferguson, for example, you had heavily armed white people coming to Ferguson to "help" and plenty more offering.
I agree they are unlikely to happen in the next couple of decades, though.
> the US lacks the strong cultural/religious ideologies necessary to organize armies and instigate revolutions
Keep telling yourself that. We've already had two organized revolutions in the US: the War of Independence and the Civil War. The latter of which was a war driven by race and economics.
Further, there are plenty of ideologies available on the fringe. See, e.g., Niewart's long look at the US protofacist right.