There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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Why are some countries richer than others?

Singapore is a very small country and exceedingly rich thank you very much. They have no resources and even have to import water from neighboring Malaysia which, although not as rich as Singapore, is still a lot richer than Indonesia. 

As for Indonesia, it used to be very poor but is now getting steadily richer. Like Indonesia, China and Vietnam used to be very poor. But they are now getting richer and very quickly too. 

North Korea used to be richer than South Korea but now it’s so damn poor its people sometimes eat grass. African countries remain depressingly poor and noone expects them to get rich - ever. 

So what the hell is going on? What could possibly explain such divergences in wealth accumulation? Well think about it stupid! And if that clue doesn’t help click here for one possible reason!

Comments

  1. bagas6 March 2010 at 17:39

    Government is Important thing to make country rich,, All about nature resource potention and human resource potention its depend on the Indonesia Government. How they manage the country and all the potention that can make countries rich. Indonesia Java International Destination

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