« Freakonomics 2.0 is out | Main | Guilt »
The best fragment I read today
South Asians call it “the best run Indian city,”...
That is Dubai. Here is today's NYT article on the limits of tolerance in Dubai. Here is a good Michael Davis neo-Marxist deconstruction of the place.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 19, 2006 at 03:14 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
I see where you called this article good, but that doesn't make it any easier to stomach his depiction of the Chicago Economics department.
Posted by: Mike at Oct 19, 2006 7:14:21 PM
Too much components of Jealousy here is in this case.
In addtion, women should not only hide in their abayas or shails to stand up!
Posted by: sue at Oct 20, 2006 6:13:52 AM
I thought Dubai was the obvious sign of problems with the limitations of Sharia restricted economies. There's so much money available from oil profits, but it can't be invested back into other businesses, thanks to anti-usury laws and limitations on corporations and investments.
Posted by: Xmas at Oct 20, 2006 7:18:09 AM
Xmas:
Commerce and finance in Dubai are not Sharia-limited. There are many, many financial vehicles here that are not Sharia-compliant. For example, on my car loan from the National Bank of Abu Dhabi I pay good old-fashioned interest. (I could take out a sharia-compliant car loan from an Islamic bank, but I decided to stick with the bank that I do all my other banking with.)
In the UAE, the Sharia courts are basically limited to family law (divorces, inheritance disputes, etc.) The criminal and civil courts are not sharia courts, they are staffed by professional judges who are lawyers, not imams.
Abu Dhabi and Dubai both have few problems soaking up all the investment a person can make here. There are massive amounts of both domestic and foreign investment - much of it in real estate. There's something surreal about watching a cluster of 45 high-rises, all between 33 and 66 floors, all being erected *at the same time*
Posted by: bartman at Oct 20, 2006 10:01:29 AM
Tyler -- thanks for the link to Michael Davins
article.
Posted by: brad setser at Oct 20, 2006 8:18:22 PM
Mike's article is a remarkable summary of what westerners think of Dubai.
Unfortunately none of the westerners here in Dubai takes time to speak to these 'exploited' workers. Next to my building there are three construction sites. Workers usually stay at 'labor camps', which are similar to trailer-home communities in the US. Relative to my living conditions, of course, they live in 'crapper'. But that's a wrong comparison. Accroding to workers that I meet daily on my way home, these 'labor camps' are much better than what they have back home (Kerala or Karachi or any other city in India or Pakistan). They have access to clean water, better health care than in their respective countries, and most importantly they have jobs.
The recent strikes took place not because of poor working conditions, but because some employers had not paid salaries to workers for months. These events do take place, but on a larger scale majority of workers 'enjoy' steady stream of income. Here is a quote from Yale Global:
The some 3.1 million Indians in working in the Persian Gulf send home about US$7 billion a year, according to the most recent figures available, a 2003 report by the Indian Bureau of Foreign Employment. Neighboring Bangladesh has about 1.8 million workers in the Gulf who send home US$2.9 billion annually, followed by Pakistan with a million workers who remit US$1.3 billion. Figures for Sri Lanka are less precise, but in 2001, the nearly one million Sri Lankans in the Gulf sent home about US$700 million.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/article.print?id=5992
Posted by: ken sagynbekov at Oct 21, 2006 5:19:35 AM
Weight loss is easier than you think!
Posted by: adipex at Mar 6, 2009 4:41:18 PM
