A Tale of Two Cairos

Cairo, Egypt and Cairo, Illinois have something in common, economist David P. Goldman observes.

Their economic misery is the outcome of political models that warehouse the poor rather than prepare them for productivity. Like most Third World dictators, the rulers of Egypt from Nasser to Mubarak kept most of their people poor, illiterate, and down on the farm, while employing the putative higher education system as a political pressure valve. Starting with the Johnson administration, America's incipient welfare state made the poor, and especially the African-American poor, dependent on a political regime that encouraged economic dependency.