ZHANG Xinyang has been in the limelight since he was 10. Then he became the youngest person in China to study at a university.
At 13, he continued his master’s degree at Beijing University of Technology. Yet again the now 16-year-old genius made history when he was accepted by Beihang University in Beijing last month to study doctorate in mathematics.
Zhang’s fast-track education has sparked a debate over whether it is against the law of nature or whether it is the right thing for China to do to encourage young children to jump classes and grow to become adults though in reality they are not ready or mature.
In his recent interview with China Central Television (CCTV), Zhang showed his childishness and unreasonable thinking by saying that he had on several occasions threatened to stop his studies if his parents refused to buy an apartment for him in Beijing.
Genius or rebel?: A photo of Zhang grabbed from the Insight programme broadcast on China Central Television recently.
His remarks have caused a stir on the Internet, with many netizens saying that he should not pressure his parents who obviously cannot bear the exorbitant house prices and he should earn his own money to buy the apartment instead.
“What a selfish boy! What use to receive so much education?” said a netizen. Another commented that Zhang should be labelled as an “abnormal kid” instead of genius.
Others said that if Zhang were not China’s youngest doctorate student, his words would not have weighed so much.
“It was we who had different thoughts on an ordinary 16-year-old kid because of his reputation. He is only a rebellious boy like many at that age,” they said.
Zhang was raised by an ordinary middle-income family from Liaoning province. His father Huixiang, who works as a civil servant, discovered that he was smarter than his peers when he was very young.
Since then, Huixiang has educated his son to be an active learner and encouraged him to think and question.
The boy would speak about serious topics from the Iraq war to city image. Sometimes he would argue with his father when they have different views on certain subjects.
Fun it might seem for Zhang to bury in his books, walk into the examination hall together with his older classmates and skip so many levels of education. But, he revealed, in the interview, that it was not enjoyable after all.
When Zhang started to distract from his studies and play with computer games, his father scolded him. At the heat of the argument, his angry father walked out of Zhang’s hostel and walked 50km home in Langfang, Hebei province that night.
“He wanted to punish me but in reality, he was actually punishing himself,” Zhang said of his father’s reaction during the incident.
He said his father would certainly suffer from a more painful heartache than other parents of normal children if he failed to do well in his studies, because of the way his father had groomed him.
“He wished he could feed me with milk forever but it would not happen.
“The later he loosens his grip and let me go, the greater the repercussion would be,” he said.
With tremendous pressure from his parents and high expectations he had on himself, Zhang failed some subjects during his master’s degree and faced the danger of not able to complete his studies. He even thought of killing himself.
In the interview with CCTV, Huixiang said he could not make a difference throughout his life and all he could do was to cultivate his son hoping that he could spread his wings in future.
Huixiang has come out with a book titled The Miracle of Learning.
The book relates how he and his wife raised their son – they had never watched television nor muted TV programmes when their son was around.
When his son threatened him to buy an apartment, Huixiang and his wife had no choice but rented an apartment near his son’s university to persuade him to finish his studies.
Zhang said he started to think about having their own house in the Chinese capital after studying at university and being influenced by the media and the materialistic world.
He claimed that it was his parents who wanted him to pursue his studies in Beijing and realise a dream that they could not fulfil themselves.
“I am not sure if they impose their thoughts or dream on me or not, but I am inheriting my father’s dream. They wanted me to stay in Beijing so they should work hard for it,” he said.
Huixiang said his son changed after coming to Beijing and being exposed to the pomps and vanities of city life.
“He is after only money. He came into contact with such things too early and thought it would be hard to survive without money or even if he has knowledge and ability,” he added.
Zhang was quoted by Beijing Evening News as saying that he had reasoned to his parents, when they were staying in Tianjin, that if they did not buy an apartment then it would be too late as house prices would continue to increase.
He said he was aware of the debate on the Internet over what he said but added that it would impossible for everyone to understand him.
“I would rather maintain a positive thinking. Now I just want to forget about the episode, remain low-key and continue with my studies,” he added.
Will they ever get a job? Will they ever keep that job for more than a few months? Will they ever have enough money to pay their student loans and still be able to spend $100 a week on pot? Will they ever put their pants on the right way round at the first attempt?
Now it seems that something they do for recreation, in order to take their mind off their worries, is having increasingly worrying effects.
My hard-core reading of Psychology Today caused me to come across a pained and painful piece called "Porn-Induced Sexual Dysfunction is a Growing Problem."
The thesis behind this frightful news--supported by research performed in Italy and elsewhere--is that Internet porn desensitizes young men to such a degree that, when actually faced with a real human from their target sex group, they are entirely unable to participate as they should.
No, no. Not a good idea.
(Credit: CC AmusingThailand/Flickr)
Indeed, research from the University of Padua in Italy suggested that erectile dysfunction due to excessive Web porn begins for many men in their teens. 70 percent of those young men who came to seek help for performance issues said they were Web porn habitues.
The weary and wise might offer that this problem must be psychological. Yet the researchers declare: "Hold on there, big brains."
For their belief is that Web porn simply numbs men's pleasure receptacles, desensitizing responses to the neurochemical dopamine. This is a chemical associated with reward and, in young men, researchers believe that gorging on Internet porn simply shuts down the physiological sense of reward from sex.
Because the Web allows for so many different--and, if the user so chooses--ever more intense stimulations, the mind-body continuum begins to feel nothing at all. Yes, it's a little like 15 minutes of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians."
It seems that when these young men are suddenly confronted with a real sexual encounter, the idea of coupling with a real human being feels suddenly numbing--and therefore frightening.
You might wonder what happens when young men try to wean themselves off their Web porn habits. Studies show that they experience all sorts of withdrawal pains, including insomnia and catchall flulike symptoms.
I know that the Web is supposed to be the repository of all that is open and shared and loving. It seems possible, though, that its very ease offers so much of a good thing that the put-upon males of Generation Y just can't cope, poor dears.
Perhaps all porn Web sites should exclude anyone under 35. For public health reasons, you understand.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.
In the heat of battle, vengeance is once more mistaken or substituted for justice.
Technically, Gaddafi was treated much the same way he had treated his enemies
SHOUTS of jubilation were punctuated by celebratory gunfire.
It was the Wild Wild West Asia and North Africa show in real time. Whoops of triumphalism rang out through Sirte, then all of Libya, at a tyrant’s death.
More than anything else, confusion reigned over the death of Col Muammar Gaddafi.
United States President Barack Obama indicated the US role made it all possible. Nato intimated it was the chief sponsor of the military effort.
France claimed credit for this biggest kill of their air campaign. French warplanes had strafed a convoy whisking the fallen strongman from Sirte.
The National Transitional Council (NTC) claimed credit for locating and killing Gaddafi. It said a comrade had shot Gaddafi dead with a 9mm pistol.
Then confusion deepened when they seemed to distance themselves from the killing. The certainty of Gaddafi’s death was matched only by the fuzziness of how he had died.
He was said to have been shot in both legs, then just one, and also in the abdomen or back. He was then shot in the arm and in the head and, in between, he was beaten.
Throughout this messy melee, thoughtful considerations became obscured as vulgar festivities and gloating hung over his murder.
The rabble loosely identified with the NTC were full of it. For them there would be no trial, no sentencing, no execution, not even a kangaroo court.
Some foreign leaders felt similarly even if they used different words. It went with the kind of mentality that would bomb and strafe civilian populations in Libya.
Technically, Gaddafi was treated much the same way he had treated his enemies.
There was therefore a sense of equivalence and much vengefulness, but justice would be something else.
Mob violence
If he had been tried in a court of law, he might well have been sentenced to death. But there he would have been subjected to due process, placed at the mercy of judicial institutions that a new Libya is supposed to build.
Instead, he was subjected to mob violence and an extra-judicial killing.
By treating him the way he had treated his enemies, the rag-tag militants showed they were no better and no nearer their supposed ideals of democracy and constitutionalism.
Both sides indulged in political violence and routine summary killing.
Beyond the shade of their sentiment, and the tenor of their rhetoric to distinguish them, was only the duration of their bloodfests.
Gaddafi was not only a wanted man in Libya by Libyan jurists, he was a wanted figure by the International Criminal Court.
Dispatching him with a bullet helped him evade both.
NTC officials were first keen to claim credit for his capture and defeat. But they failed to bring him to justice nationally and internationally.
Libyans, particularly those vehemently opposed to Gaddafi, missed an excellent opportunity to defeat what he had stood for.
By subjecting him to due judicial process, they could have shown everyone that a once-mighty tyrant could be humbled and humiliated by the strength of their own country’s judicial and democratic institutions.
If the Western powers that had hastily hounded Gaddafi had helped Libyans subordinate him to a trial, they too would have scored better by demonstrating the power of democracy over dictatorship.
But all that was not to be, once the political process was subjected to the baser instincts and appetites of the trophy hunter’s self-gratification.
There was the argument that Gaddafi refused to quit like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, as if to justify his killing.
By staying on Gaddafi made things tougher for the NTC, but that would not affect the course or demands of justice.
Adding to the confusion was US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who visited Libya on Tuesday, saying she hoped Gaddafi would soon be captured or killed.
Then she added: “Revenge attacks and vigilantism have no place in the new Libya.”
That was some 48 hours before Gaddafi was attacked and killed by Libyan vigilantes. Sifting through Clinton’s “wow” factor when she first learned of his killing, it is unclear what her stand is.
Legitimate government
Through this hazy surrealism, it seemed only natural for the leading punters to contradict themselves.
Countries like the US that were among the first to recognise the NTC as Libya’s legitimate government saw a “new era” for Libya only upon Gaddafi’s death.
The same shallow sentiment rang through the streets of Sirte and the corridors of the United Nations in New York.
The fact is that Gaddafi’s regime had fallen months ago, on Aug 21 when Tripoli fell. Since then he was never able to mount a return, nor could any of his sons have succeeded him.
The new Libya had sprouted two months before. The fall of Sirte defended by dwindling loyalists was irrelevant because it was only symbolic, the city being Gaddafi’s birthplace and his final bastion after Bani Walid.
For the French President and the British and Turkish Prime Ministers, then Clinton, to confidently visit Tripoli showed that Gaddafi and his forces had long been defeated.
In confusing Gaddafi’s regime with Gaddafi the man, they also confused actual triumph with mere triumphalism.
On the day Clinton was in Tripoli, Amnesty International released a report detailing how the US, Britain and France were among the Western countries that supplied arms to Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad and others in troubled countries since 2005.
What better way to boost their arms industry than to supply weapons to both sides, then use them on Libya as well? Such was the irony that among Gaddafi’s “golden guns” retrieved by the Sirte mob was reportedly a gilded Browning .45 automatic.
The gun used to kill him might have been a Western weapon as well. The same goes for many of the other guns dangerously circulating around the country.
Commentary by: Colonel Lim They are not telling us about Gaddafi
HOW MUCH OF THIS IS TRUE?
The international media, influenced by the Americans, has successfully painted Gaddafi as a hard-core dictator, tyrant or whatever you want to call him. However, the media as usual has also failed to show the kind, giving Gaddafi we never heard of. Gaddafi unlike most dictators has managed to show his humane side, the very side we dream of seeing in other dictators. I consider Libyans lucky to a certain extent and one wonders with the new democratic rule they cry for will it improve or worsen life for them. Yes, Gaddafi has spent millions of Libya`s money on personal ventures but is the average Libyan poor? We know others who take a country and destroy it until you feel like there is no hope of restoring this country… looting some prefer to call it. Did Gaddafi loot Libya in any way?
Now let us get to the unknown facts about the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi: 1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free for all its citizens. 2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are state-owned and loans given to all its citizens at 0% interest by law. 3. Home considered a human right in Libya – Gaddafi vowed that his parents would not get a house until everyone in Libya had a home. Gaddafi’s father has died while him, his wife and his mother are still living in a tent. 4. All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 Dinar (US$50,000) by the government to buy their first apartment so to help start up the family.
Traditional wedding in Tripoli, Libya
5. Education and medical treatments are free in Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25% of Libyans are literate. Today the figure is 83%. 6. Should Libyans want to take up farming career, they would receive farming land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and livestock to kick-start their farms – all for free. 7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical facilities they need in Libya, the government funds them to go abroad for it – not only free but they get US$2,300/mth accommodation and car allowance. 8. In Libyan, if a Libyan buys a car, the government subsidized 50% of the price. 9. The price of petrol in Libya is $0.14 per liter. 10. Libya has no external debt and its reserves amount to $150 billion – now frozen globally. Great Man-Made River project in Libya… $27 billion
11. If a Libyan is unable to get employment after graduation the state would pay the average salary of the profession as if he or she is employed until employment is found. 12. A portion of Libyan oil sale is, credited directly to the bank accounts of all Libyan citizens. 13. A mother who gave birth to a child receive US$5,000 14. 40 loaves of bread in Libya costs $ 0.15 15. 25% of Libyans have a university degree 16. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation project, known as the Great Man-Made River project, to make water readily available throughout the desert country.
Which other dictators have done so much good for his people?
Best Regards, Col.Lim
I have to agree with you Colonel, as that was my reading in between the lines when I heard about him in London decades’ ago. He is humorous too.
In an interview decades ago by BBC ( ?) asking him for his opinion on Ronald Reagan who call him a terrorist, Colonel Gaddafi replied “ whatever he calls me, I am a Colonel.
Whatever he says about himself, he is an actor !”
The minority govt could not have overthrown him without NATO’s military might ( a combinations of the Great might of the US, Britain, France ..etc. to bully a 3rd world country ) especially the bombings.
You wonder why they don’t want to bomb Burma’s dictator, NO OIL ? Hypocrites championing human rights where they have monetary interest !
Founder: A man can have simultaneous, spiritual sex with wives in separate locations. Sex is the main reason people get married. The climax is like heaven on earth - Hatijah
PETALING JAYA: The Obedient Wives Club (OWC) stirred up fresh controversy when its founder claimed that spiritually, a man can have sex with all his wives simultaneously.
Club founder Hatijah Aam, who is also the author of the controversial book Seks Islam Perangi Yahudi Untuk Kembalikan Seks Islam Kepada Dunia (Sex in Islam Wage War Against Jews To Return Islamic Sex To The World), said that when a man reached the highest spiritual level, “he can appear in multiple apparitions and have sex with his wives even though they are in separate locations”.
“We never said that a man can have an orgy with all his wives on the same bed.
“That is not allowed.
“What we meant is when a man has reached the highest spiritual level, he will be granted the ability to have sex with his wives spiritually,” she said.
“This is how men who were at war in the past satisfied their needs,” she said at a press conference here yesterday from Mecca, Saudi Arabia, via Skype.
The club is going ahead with the global launch of the controversial sex guide despite protests from women's groups.
Hatijah said the book would soon be launched globally in countries where OWCs have already been set up, including Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Britain and France.
However, the club does not intend to launch the book in Malaysia. “The book was meant to be circulated among our members only.
“We knew that the public's reaction to the book would be negative because they do not understand the concept,” said Hatijah, who is also the wife of late Al-Arqamfounder Ashaari Muhammad.
Women's groups like Sisters in Islam, All Women's Action Society and the Women's Aid Organisation described the book as a cheap publicity stunt designed to raise the profile of the club.
Hatijah defended the importance of the detailed sex guide on grounds that sex is God's gift to married couples and they should be educated on the ways to approach it.
“Sex is the main reason people get married. And in a way, the climax is like heaven on earth,” said Hatijah.
She also explained that like praying, sex between married couples was also a pious act.
“So, why can't we teach people how to do that in a pure way?” she asked. (The Star)
Taking sex to the PhD-level?
One Man's Meat By PHILIP GOLINGAI
The Obedient Wives Club wanted to keep it under the covers but since it leaked out, interest for its sex-guide book has yet to reach a climax.
FRIDAY’S press conference by the Obedient Wives Club (OWC) reminded me of Salt-n-Pepa’s 1991 hit song Let’s Talk About Sex.
The hip-hop song goes: “Let’s talk about sex. Yo, I don’t think we should talk about this. C’mon, why not? People might misunderstand what we’re tryin’ to say, you know? No, but that’s a part of life.”
That about sums up the exasperation of the club embroiled in a controversy after it published a pocket-sized 115-page Malay-language book titled Seks Islam, Perangi Yahudi Untuk Kembalikan Seks Islam Kepada Dunia (Islamic Sex, Fighting Jews to Return Islamic Sex to the World).
Embroiled in controversy: The sex guide which was published by OWC.
To clarify media reports that the book encouraged a man to have an orgy with all of his wives, five OWC officials (including two men) met the press.
At the start of the 90-minute press conference in Petaling Jaya, OWC national chairman in Malaysia Fauziah Ariffin read a statement from Hatijah Aam, the club founder.
Hatijah, one of the wives of the late Al-Arqam founder Ashaari Muhammad, said the sex guide was only for OWC members who were married.
“We are disappointed with those who distributed the book without our knowledge until it created a misunderstanding,” she said.
Fauziah then tackled the controversial issue of “seks serentak (simultaneous sex)”.
“Simultaneous does not mean that on the bed there is one man and four women,” she said with a sarcastic laugh.
“When a man has reached a high level of spirituality, his wali (spiritual guardian) can come in contact with his wives wherever they are.
“Maybe one wife is in Ipoh, another in Kuala Lumpur, in Singapore or in Johor but he can ‘come’ to his wife simultaneously. That is the wonder of spiritual sex.”
Wow! I thought. Note to myself: evolve from missionary position. But was “spiritual sex” possible, I wondered.
As if reading my thoughts, Dr Azlina Jamaluddin, a dentist and OWC leader, said it was not something a common person could comprehend.
“To you there might be no logic to what we are saying,” Dr Azlina explained. “But when Prophet Noah built an ark on a mountain at that time there was no logic in what he was doing.”
Mohd Rasidi, a male member of the panel, claimed what was taught in the book was “high level” sex. “It is PhD-level,” he said.
“To understand the book,” said Fauziah, “the author of the book herself wants to talk to the media via Skype from Mecca.”
And Hatijah’s voice filled the conference room.
In an exasperated tone, the 57-year-old Malaysian woman based in Saudi Arabia said the club purposely did not sell the book to non-members because the public would not be able to comprehend it.
In other words, you and I are practising “kindergarten-level sex” as compared with “PhD-level sex”. And, quoting the Quran, Hatijah went deep into the theory of “spiritual sex”.
Here are some of Hatijah’s insights on sex.
> If your spirit is pure you can have sex with your wife even though you are abroad fighting a war. > God allows sex sports. And to be good in sex you need practice.
> Orgasm releases a pain killer and helps with fever. But don’t have affairs on the pretext of curing your fever.
> Orgasm prevents wrinkles.
> Sex can make you younger. Jogging can be replaced by “sexcercise”.
> Only animals have sex without mukadimah (foreplay).
> It is important for a woman’s breasts to be sucked in order to prevent breast cancer (quoting a BBC news report).
During the Q&A session, I asked: “I’m curious, has the panel experienced simultaneous sex? Have you reached the PhD-level of sex?”
And – I’m not sure whether I imagined this – the panel members lowered their heads as if they felt sexually inadequate.
After a hush-hush discussion among themselves, Mohd Rasidi said: “So far, it is a knowledge that we are still trying to understand.
“We have not experienced it as our roh (spirit) has not reached PhD-level,” he explained.
“How about Hatijah?” I asked.
And Azlina, the dentist, said: “We have not experienced it yet. We are still trying. The person who has experienced it is Hatijah Aam. Hopefully one day, God willing, we can reach that level.”
Hatijah also revealed that she was writing a second sex guide book.
“The first book revealed 20% (sex knowledge). But the second book will reveal 100%. But we will make sure the public will not get their hands on this book about heaven on earth,” she added.
Anti-climax in ‘Seks Islam’ book
One Man's Meat By PHILIP GOLINGAI
The Obedient Wives Club (OWC) controversial pocket-sized Malay-language sex guide sold exclusively to its members is more of a mother’s labour of love for her son who was getting married.
IF I got RM50 for every time someone asked me a copy of Seks Islam, I would be as rich as Alex Comfort, the author of The Joy of Sex.
On Oct 21, in Petaling Jaya, at a press conference organised by Obedient Wives Club (OWC), the author of Seks Islam, Perangi Yahudi Untuk Kembalikan Seks Islam Kepada Dunia (Islamic Sex, Fighting Jews to Return Islamic Sex to the World), Hatijah Aam (pic) gifted the book to journalists.
Speaking via Skype from Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Hatijah, the OWC founder, told the club members: “Please present the book now to the media representatives.”
“We don’t want to hide it. We want to be transparent.
“We want to show that we are not hiding our (sex) knowledge,” she said.
And the dozen or so journalists became proud owners of the controversial pocket-sized Malay-language sex guide sold exclusively to OWC members for RM50.
Instantly, When I – @philipgolingai – “live” tweeted that I had a copy, I received several requests for a copy.
In my office, almost everybody I met was excited over my owning THE book except for this one guy who got aroused for the wrong reason. He thought I had a copy of the Auditor-General’s Report.
It seems everyone I knew lusted for the knowledge on how to graduate from kindergarten-level sex to PhD-level sex.
Who wouldn’t want to read a book advocating “spiritual sex” (a man could “come” spiritually to all his wives simultaneously even though they’re in Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Johor)?
And, by the day, the book is getting more notorious. Last week, the Sarawak government banned the distribution of Seks Islam in the state.
As my friends flipped through the book, their initial remarks were: “No picture ah?” or “No graphics ah? All words?”.
Sorry to disappoint, but the book isn’t the Comfort’s titillatingly illustrated Joy of Sex.
In fact, the 115-page booklet was a mother’s labour of love for her son who was getting married.
The preamble to Seks Islam – from its research – OWC found that what a woman sexually provided her husband was 10% of what his real sexual needs were.
“The wife thinks her 10% is 100%. She’s also dumb not to want to be taught about sex. She has a prejudiced perception that sex is obscene,” wrote Hatijah.
Chapter one explains why OWC was formed, chapter two talks about Hatijah’s husband, the late Al-Arqam founder Ashaari Muhammad, chapter three about giving 100% loyalty to your husband, chapter four is a guide for the future groom and chapter five is a letter to the bride.
Yawn. Yawn. Nothing that really makes me blush.
Hatijah also explained the difference between a man and a woman.
A man is held hostage by his desire. In order words, just like peeing, when a man has to go, he has to go. A woman, however, can turn off and turn on her sexual desire as if it were a switch.
“If a wife loves her husband, she must instantly fulfil his sexual needs,” she advocated.
The climax of the book is in its conclusion.
Hatijah writes about her two-month training with Ashaari to become a heroic and angelic wife.
And she revealed her late husband could perform sex simultaneously with his wives, spiritually.
“Intimacy is much more pleasurable and ‘lighter’ through spiritual sex compared with physical sex,” she wrote.
Hatijah writes about seks seren-tak (simultaneous sex) but she does not reveal how to do it spiritually.
Perhaps, as she said in the press conference, what was taught in Seks Islam was just the tip of the iceberg (20%) of her sex knowledge.
So what has the book – as its title suggests – got to do with Jews?
From what I gather Jews have been propagating “extremely pornographic” illicit sex.
Am I missing something in life?
I’m not sure what I was expecting from the book. Techniques on how to please a Uranus chick with eight breasts?
For all its hype, reading the hyped book was an anti-climax.
Movements against bailouts, cutbacks and inequality picking up stream
SINCE its obscure beginnings, the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) movement has spread its wings, joining the “Indignant” of Spain (a movement born on May 15 when a Madrid rally sparked a worldwide campaign focussed on outrage over high unemployment and opposition to the financial elite).
The OWS group which has camped out in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park (nearby Wall Street) now in its 5th week, has a valid complaint: its young social-media connected generation is losing faith in traditional structures of government and business, arguing it has been betrayed and denied opportunity. “We got sold out; banks got bailed out” was their chant as thousands marched from Wall Street to Times Square.
Inspired by these movements, rallies rippled across the globe last weekend targeting 951 cities in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America to take part in the demonstration. It's unclear how long protestors plan to stay. Some fear this could only be the beginning, as the world faces a systemic rise in anger, protest and political volatility that could last for years. With Middle-east unrest stirring again, a winter of discontent looks likely. It's not easy to pinpoint the underlying cause of their woes. Checkout their websites: they seem to demonstrate against corporate greed (bank bailouts and bonuses) and income inequality (government cutbacks). Worldwide they demand for a more fair and equal society.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, US bank profits were up 136%, but bank lending, down 9%. Indeed, bank lending has fallen in 10 of the past 12 quarters. To the OWS demonstrators, banks haven't fulfilled their part of the social bargain: bailouts for Wall Street in exchange for lending on Main Street. While banks now have more capital, they still aren't lending. Lending will continue to shrink. Banks say the demand isn't there. But 73% of small businesses say they are still being affected by the credit crunch. As I see it, banks remain very much risk adverse. Unlike in medicine, banks don't have the ability to quarantine financial contagion. There is a dangerous world out there.
What also irks protestors are Wall Street bonuses which have returned while ordinary workers suffered retrenchment and job insecurity with little help from Washington. A recent New York State report predicted that the financial industry will likely lose another 10,000 jobs by end 2012. That's on top of the 4,100 jobs lost since April and 22,000 since early 2008. Overall, New York area employment in finance and insurance had declined by 8.9% since late 2006.
The OWS movement has gained widespread support and encouragement, including from economics Nobel Laureates Stiglitz: “We have too many regulations stopping democracy and not enough regulations stopping Wall Street from misbehaving. We are bearing the cost of their misdeeds. There's a system where we have socialised losses and privatised gains”; and Kurgman: “Wall Street pay has rebounded even as ordinary workers continue to suffer from high unemployment and falling real wagesAnd their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans. No wonder Wall Street is whining.”
Harvard's historian Niall Ferguson regarded the movement “still worth taking seriously” even though he concluded: “So occupying Wall Street is not the answer to this generation's problems. The answer is to occupy the Tea Party Call it the Iced Tea Party. Way cool.” Even the in-coming president of the European Central Bank has expressed support. However, the Times of London labelled the protests “Passionate but Pointless.”
US inequality
By far, the cause of OWS's frustration and outrage is best articulated in my friend Jeffrey Sachs' (Columbia University) latest book: “The Price of Civilisation.” In the US, the top 1% of households accounted for almost 25% of all households' income. The last time this happened was in 1929. In the first 3 decades of the 20th century, rapid industrial development raised income and wealth at the top, while mass immigration set the low bar. Then came the 1929 Great Depression and the New Deal four years later which railed against “a small group (who) had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labour and other people's lives.”
But, prosperity wasn't always accompanied by large-scale inequality. The 1950s and 1960s brought about rapid economic growth and a narrowing of inequality as a result of a more robust social safety net, fresh New Deal measures, World War II (WWII), and the vigorous post-war recovery which reversed the 1920s inequalities.
Since the 1970s, the United States tasted the fury of globalised competition but failed to grapple effectively with it. The deterioration in Main Street's earning prospects was papered over for the next 20 years by debt mortgage debt and consumer credit. Bear in mind median earnings of male workers peaked way back in 1973. The United States collects less tax as a percentage of national income (25% in 2009) than most advanced European nations (40-50%).
This reflected partly the Republican's one-idea approach: cut taxes permanently and impose fiscal austerity, often at the expense of lost competitiveness (reflecting insufficient public investment in education, infrastructure and human capital). OWS young demonstrators have a valid argument to make: they are frustrated trying to find a place in an economy where there is one job for every five jobseekers, and where youth unemployment is 18%. So much for the clich of Wall Street vs Main Street; “the greedy 1% uses the hard-done-by 99%.” The wider middle-class fears its prosperity has evaporated, demanding for a way to deliver growth once more. It's about time Americans get wise to the source of their economic woes it's a few hundred miles south of Wall Street.
US poverty
According to the US Census Bureau, there are now more poor persons in America than at any other time in the 52 years records were kept. More than 15% of US families live below the poverty line in 2010. The line is set at US$22,000 a year for a family of four. This reflected the high unemployment of 9.1% 6.5 million jobs were lost in the recent recession. An additional 3 million Americans would fall below the poverty line if not for “doubling-up”, that is, adult children who can't afford life on their own return to live with their parents.
Today marks the first time in 20 years when US employment (as a percentage of population) has fallen below the rate in advanced European nations like UK, Germany and the Netherlands. The average weekly earnings (adjusted for inflation) of a typical US blue-collar worker is lower today than in 1964. Indeed, median inflation adjusted family income rose only about a fifth as much between 1980 and 2007 as it did in the generation following WWII. The US poverty profile is unlikely to change soon. That is why people are protesting. Many believe the current anger against autocrat politicians, bankers and elites is symptomatic of fundamental shifts in the structure of US (and indeed, global) population. Already, there are strains caused by aging populations driving up budget costs, reducing growth and blocking jobs from younger people.
Coincidentally, both the Boomerang generation and the Babyboomers generation are demonstrating together in OWS as they could very well end up in a political battle for dwindling government benefits. That is, the elderly fights to keep their entitlements (social security and medicare) to ward off poverty, and the younger population pushes for spending on education and training to avoid falling into it. Demographic issues are driving much of what we see today. A win-win is to continue pressuring the richest Americans to carry a larger share of the load. Despite congressional resistance, many of the wealthy in the United States do see it's in their interest to foster a less divisive society.
Smart government
While the benefits of globalisation are clear and I think, well appreciated (especially the rapid spread of technology embodied in the Internet and mobile telephony, and reduced poverty in emerging nations), the real problems associated with it are less well understood but nevertheless need to be urgently addressed.
Globalisation has (i) raised the scope for tax evasion; (ii) led to a loss of competitiveness among the less educated in advanced nations, particularly in the United States; and (iii) fuelled contagion, especially in finance.
In his latest book, Jeff Sachs pushed hard for a highly effective government to deal with these problems. Smart public policies are needed to (a) promote high quality education; (b) raise productivity by building modern infrastructure and inculcate science and technology; and (c) co-operate globally to regulate cross-border issues (e.g. finance and environment). His proposal is controversial at this time since it calls for more government not less, especially in the United States where economic inequality has reached a high not seen since the Great Depression.
Sachs also points to growing signs world-wide that people are fed-up with governments that cater for the rich and the powerful, and ignore everyone else. They call for greater social justice (not confined to the Arab Spring; also serious protests from Tel Aviv to London to Santiago to Sydney, and all over Europe, and now, in New York); and also more inclusive politics, rather than corrupt politics.
There are even calls for higher taxes on the very rich across nations (the United States has proposed the rich to pay more taxes; several European governments have talked of a new wealth tax; the European Commission has suggested a new financial transactions tax to raise US$75bil a year). Sachs refers to the most successful well-balanced economies today being in Scandinavia using high taxes to support smart public services, balancing economic prosperity with social justice and environmental sustainability. Sachs bemoaned that for 30 years, the United States has been going “in the wrong direction, cutting the role of government in the domestic economy rather than promoting the investments needed to modernise the economy and workforce.” It all started when President Reagan declared in 1980 that “government is not the solution to our problems it is the problem.”
Today, the solution lies in how the United States is going to fund its future competitiveness through building skills and raising productivity to fight for markets in the 21st century. This is also the way to go for the euro-zone.
Historically, Americans haven't been inclined to be aggressive enough to riot, as the Europeans, over inequality (contrast the protests in Rome, Athens, Madrid and London with those in New York). But the United States is in a new situation now where protestors are getting desperate in the face of intransigency, especially the uncompromising Tea Party. It is hard to rule that out when the American Dream is very much at stake.
At worst, I think the present situation can result in an economic malaise that lasts for decades. It makes politics most unpredictable. There is already political paralysis. But dramatic shifts in policy are possible. The rise of ideologues in a modern guise is also probable as we saw in the 1930s. I am afraid this is the new reality. We have to deal with it.
> Former banker, Dr Lin is a Harvard educated economist and a British Chartered Scientist who now spends time writing, teaching & promoting the public interest. Feedback is most welcome; email: starbizweek@thestar.com.my
Genius or rebel?: A photo of Zhang grabbed from the Insight programme broadcast on China Central Television recently.
