- 08
- Feb.
- 2024
It is customary at the beginning of the year to take stock of fortunes and misfortunes in the international economic press. We won't drown you in numbers or provoke gloomy desolation so as not to add to your worries. But in essence, over the past few years, there have been many more billionaires who have become much richer than before. The Bezoses, Musks and Gates of the world are doing just fine, thank you.
At the same time, nearly 800 million people (or 10% of the global population) do not have enough to eat. This figure is on the rise due to wars, inflation, misgovernance, COVID and climate upheavals. A distressing deterioration, considering that real progress had been made since the first decade of development in the 1960s.
There are also rampant inequalities here in Lebanon, though, and in unprecedented proportions. There is no need to look for figures, as there are none. Some still rehash UN statistics from 2021 or 2022 with their 80% poverty rate that was never updated.
What we can do is a "qualitative" exercise peppered with some wishful thinking to alleviate the inequalities that have created new categories of "new rich" and "new poor." So much so that the middle classes that emerged from the 1990s to 2019 have been completely overturned.
We might even add the Lebanese University to this list, as it is already prey to increased militia influence and therefore risks sinking for the same reasons. If that happens, it is the next generation that will be even more disadvantaged than the current one.
So what does the pseudo-government propose to address these glaring inequalities? In reality, it does its best to perpetuate them whenever it has the opportunity. The 2024 budget is a recent example, with its taxation that resembles intentional, organized but selective extortion, according to regions and trends.
What can be done, then, to reduce these glaring inequalities that have divided society into two opposing strata? Dollarizing all incomes is one possibility. It's not about eliminating the Lebanese pound, as some economists suggest—authorities don't have the means, the competence or the audacity. But the state should at least reward deserving civil servants and let the others go. Is this a radical solution, one almost impossible to implement? Perhaps, but given the state of affairs after four years of crisis, all effective solutions will be radical.
Then, one day, the Central Bank should stop issuing standardized circulars in a one-size-fits-all format and distribute them according to specific needs and cases, while waiting for global financial solutions that have been dragging for four years.
And let's finally start this indispensable task of valorizing the state's assets that are dozing off or being pillaged left and right. Treasures whose true value no one has yet seriously attempted to calculate.
Finally, let's consider this image, purely symbolic: Najib Mikati, the richest man in the country according to Forbes ($2.8 billion in 2023, plus $400 million in one year), being driven around by the chauffeur of the Serail, a fifth-category civil servant who probably earns $200 per month. And the former, slouched in the back seat, thinking, calculator in hand, about how to tax his driver even more without providing him anything in return. It's no easy task, but the Iznogoud in service will succeed.
Perhaps an easy cliché, but the temptation was too great to let it pass.
At the same time, nearly 800 million people (or 10% of the global population) do not have enough to eat. This figure is on the rise due to wars, inflation, misgovernance, COVID and climate upheavals. A distressing deterioration, considering that real progress had been made since the first decade of development in the 1960s.
There are also rampant inequalities here in Lebanon, though, and in unprecedented proportions. There is no need to look for figures, as there are none. Some still rehash UN statistics from 2021 or 2022 with their 80% poverty rate that was never updated.
What we can do is a "qualitative" exercise peppered with some wishful thinking to alleviate the inequalities that have created new categories of "new rich" and "new poor." So much so that the middle classes that emerged from the 1990s to 2019 have been completely overturned.
- The first series of inequalities, the most obvious, is between the dollarized workers and the rest. These include civil servants and some classes of private employees, including those of several banks (it would be inappropriate to harass them!)—all categories for whom prices have increased 52 times since 2019 (in LBP).
- The corollary of this: an inequality between those who have benefited from Sayrafa, cheap bank loans, currency speculation and profits from subsidies on products, and their respective victims.
- The inequality between active workers and retirees who have just received their end-of-service indemnity, or those who hoped to live off their more or less well-supplied bank savings—and have to make do with a meager $150, $300, or $400 per month.
- Then the inequality between those who pay taxes and other state levies and the others. An inequality that will increase with the tax increases of the 2024 budget. The same old chorus that everyone repeats—"instead of raising taxes, it is better to improve the collection method of those already in place"—serves no purpose. Even less useful is the explicit statements of who will "foot the bill—everyone knows it will be the Achrafieh-Batroun region, again." There's nothing to be done; things will continue in this way so long as the State has handed over a large part of the territory.
- But perhaps the most dangerous inequality is that of education. We had managed to ensure during these last decades that the less privileged would have a semblance of social mobility, supposed to allow them to access higher levels than their parents. But with the protests, strikes, COVID, then more strikes, then financial bankruptcy, public schools have deteriorated, with students having only acquired a third of their school curriculum since 2019.
We might even add the Lebanese University to this list, as it is already prey to increased militia influence and therefore risks sinking for the same reasons. If that happens, it is the next generation that will be even more disadvantaged than the current one.
So what does the pseudo-government propose to address these glaring inequalities? In reality, it does its best to perpetuate them whenever it has the opportunity. The 2024 budget is a recent example, with its taxation that resembles intentional, organized but selective extortion, according to regions and trends.
What can be done, then, to reduce these glaring inequalities that have divided society into two opposing strata? Dollarizing all incomes is one possibility. It's not about eliminating the Lebanese pound, as some economists suggest—authorities don't have the means, the competence or the audacity. But the state should at least reward deserving civil servants and let the others go. Is this a radical solution, one almost impossible to implement? Perhaps, but given the state of affairs after four years of crisis, all effective solutions will be radical.
Then, one day, the Central Bank should stop issuing standardized circulars in a one-size-fits-all format and distribute them according to specific needs and cases, while waiting for global financial solutions that have been dragging for four years.
And let's finally start this indispensable task of valorizing the state's assets that are dozing off or being pillaged left and right. Treasures whose true value no one has yet seriously attempted to calculate.
Finally, let's consider this image, purely symbolic: Najib Mikati, the richest man in the country according to Forbes ($2.8 billion in 2023, plus $400 million in one year), being driven around by the chauffeur of the Serail, a fifth-category civil servant who probably earns $200 per month. And the former, slouched in the back seat, thinking, calculator in hand, about how to tax his driver even more without providing him anything in return. It's no easy task, but the Iznogoud in service will succeed.
Perhaps an easy cliché, but the temptation was too great to let it pass.
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