What people here actually complain about

I mentioned in another blog post about how people complain about things here and not really understand some of the big reasons there are problems. Keep in mind that what they are complaining about is how they are suffering in comparison to other people. I am very skeptical of the idea that things were ever much better here than they are now. Certainly, from an economic point of view, I can’t see this current government being much worse than the caliphate that was here before. Granted, in many ways they are no better, but I think that they are not any worse. In the meantime, other countries (like the US) have surged ahead in productivity, and therefore their standard of living has gotten much better. What Yemenis want is to keep up with the prosperity of the west. Like I said before, deep changes have to happen in the culture for that to happen. They still have essentially the same culture as they had under the caliphate. It is an either/or situation, you can’t live the same way you did 50 years ago and expect to have big changes in the overall economy.

I think this is pretty obvious with examples like Yemen, but the same thing can be applied to the US as well. There are certain states like Michigan, New York, Ohio, and West Virginia to name a few that have not, and are not, adapting to new economic realities. If they want to change their unemployment figures, population loss, or any other big economic thing, they are going to have to make some changes. For right now, they are doing the same old same old and SURPRISE! they aren’t getting the results that they want. Times are different now, if you want to do better, you have to change.