Illustration by Zehra Nawab/Dawn/Asia News Network
ELITE-BASHING is Pakistan’s newest sport. Fat cats are blamed for stealing public resources, conspicuous consumption, and dollar flight. But this super-simplified, sophomoric reasoning misses the real point.
Doesn’t every country have its ultrarich? Are they less greedy, avaricious, exploitative and degenerate? Wealth and privilege in America, Europe, China, Russia, and India are still more concentrated than in Pakistan. But their knowledge-based economies keep soaring and their spacecraft are circling the moon and Mars. Why the difference?
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