The Arab countries: sorrows, tears and blood

The Arab Countries

The Arab civilization used to lead the world. Today they are in ruins. The truth is, only the Arabs themselves can rebuild their countries.

The great cities of Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus took turns to race ahead of the western world about a thousand years ago. Without putting it in so many words, Islam and innovation were twins. In the past, the Arab caliphates were dynamic super powers. They used to be the beacons of learning, tolerance and trade. What do we have today? There is no way to sugarcoat it: the Arabs of today are in a wretched state. Today, the Middle East is held back by despotism and is convulsed by war, while the other parts of the world (including Asia, Africa and Latin America) are moving ahead.¹

About five years ago there was high hopes that the Arab people were at last going to reform the system under the current leaders and replace the authoritarian regimes that have been in power for decades with stable democratic systems. A wave of unrest across the region at that time led to the overthrow of four dictators – in Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Egypt. Known as the ‘Arab Spring’² this uprising in the region also led to a clamor for change elsewhere, specifically in Syria. Unfortunately, the Arab Spring was both a failure and a disappointment, particularly to those people who hoped that it would lead to the removal of the corrupt leaders in the region as well as to instant improvement in living standards. Simply put, the Arab Springs’ fruit has rotted into renewed autocracy and war – a situation that had caused more chronic instability and additional strain on the already struggling Arab economies. It had also caused deep divisions to emerge between  the Moslems and secular Arabs. If the experience of the past few years teaches us anything, it is that the current situation in the Arab world has engendered  misery and fanaticism that today threaten the other regions of the world.

Two natural questions to ask at this point are these: why can’t Arab countries create democracy, happiness and wealth for their almost 400 million people? What made such a region of the earth with abundant natural resources to be so susceptible to authoritarian regimes and fanatics who seem to be bent on destroying them and their western friends? In a practical sense, it would be a complete fallacy to suggest that the Arabs lacks talent or that they are allergic to democracy. Far from that. But history and politics both shows that for the Arabs to wake up from their nightmare, and for the entire world to feel safe from the turmoil in Middle East, a great deal need to change in that part of the world.

The truth in black and grey

As far as the world knows, the Arab countries’ problems run so wide. Take Syria and Iraq, the two Arab countries that are always in the headlines of the popular media. These days both can barely be called countries in the real sense of the word. In 2014, a brutal brand of jihadists known as the ISIS(Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) declared the boundaries of these countries void. The ISIS jihadists made it clear to the world that they were devoted to establishing an Islamic state in that region. Even though ISIS is now realizing that developing and sustaining a caliphate is much harder than declaring one, their activities during that time  heralded  a new Islamic caliphate that would embrace Iraq, Syria, Israel-Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and, eventually, the rest of the world. In addition to killing non-Muslims not just in the Middle East but also in the streets of Paris, London and New York, its leaders inspires acts of terrorism around the world.³ Egypt went back to military rule after removing Hosni Mubarak, the countries military dictator for three decades, during 2011 revolution.⁴ Following the violent demise of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya is at the mercy of unruly militias. Yemen, one of the Arab world’s poorest countries, is beset  by insurrection, infighting, al-Qaeda, and by the war between forces loyal to the internationally-recognized government of President  Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied to the Houthi rebel movement.⁵  In Palestine, the hope for peace and true statehood seems to have faded away.⁶ Other Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Algeria are more fragile than they look, even though their regimes are awash with oil wealth and are propped up by an iron-fisted apparatus of state security. So far, the only Arab state that has a semblance of democracy is Tunisia.⁷

When we look at the Arab countries, we will not fail to observe that the main source of most of their current troubles is Islam, or at least the modern interpretations of Islam. Simply put, the development of independent political institutions in Arab countries has been stunted by the faith’s claim to combine spiritual and earthly authority, with no separation of mosque and state – a claim that is being promoted by many of its leading lights. Lets face it: modern day Islam is teeming  with a militant minority of Muslims. It is this militant minority within Islam that is the problem, simply because they had continued to seek and push for legitimacy through ever more fanatical interpretations of the Koran. Unfortunately, other Muslims have few choices than to seek refuge in their sect since doing otherwise means facing constant threats of militia violence and civil war.⁸ Today, plenty of Shias and Sunnis  in Iraq and Syria often resort to maiming each other. Surprisingly, these are two Muslim sects that used to marry each other. Sadly, this violent perversion of Islam that left these Arab countries in a sorry state has spread to places as distant as northern England and northern Nigeria.⁹

What is happening in the Arab countries today sits nicely with the notion that religious extremism is a conduit for misery, regardless of its fundamental cause. It is only fair to say that Islamic democracies in places like Indonesia and Malaysia are doing just fine. Not so in the Arab world due to the fact that the very fabric of the states in the region is weak. There is no way to sugarcoat this: only a few Arab countries have been nations for long. Fairness compels me to infer that the fall of the Turk’s Ottoman empire following the humiliation of British and French rule in World War I created a vast hole in that part of the world; and that hole  is only partly and inadequately filled by the successor states that came into being at the end of the empire. Thus, the colonial powers continued to control or influence events in much of the Arab world until the 1960s. The point to note here is that Arab nations has failed to build and nurture the institutional prerequisites of democracy – a free press, independent courts and universities, independent trade unions, the give-and-take of parliamentary discourse, protection for minorities and the emancipation of women.¹⁰

The absence of these prerequisites means the absence of a liberal state in the Arab world, and this has been matched by the absence of a liberal economy. Arab countries overwhelmingly embraced the central planning orthodoxy after independence. By adopting this political ideology, which was often inspired by the then Soviet Union, Arab governments  gradually and systematically strangled their economies through vigorous implementation of anti-market, anti-trade, pro-subsidy and pro-regulation policies. During that period till the present time, the Arab governments had pulled the levers of economic power, particularly in those Arab countries with oil wealth. Thus it is not surprising that  capitalism of the crony and rent seeking reigned in these Arab states as soon as the constraints of post-colonial socialism were lifted. In such a political environment, privatization worked only for the pals of the government. All these produced the ugly outcome that the Arab states are suffering today: they have virtually no free market and barely have any world class companies, which further implies that smart Arabs had had to move to America or Europe if they wanted to start or excel in business or scholarship.¹¹

With these ineffective and draconian policies precipitating economic stagnation in the region, the Arab people soon became dissatisfied with the falling living standards and the status quo in general. To protect themselves, the Arab monarchs and presidents-for-life used their secret police and goons. So the only source of public services and one of the few places where the Arab people could gather and hear speeches was the mosque. This did not only led to the radicalization of Islam but it also induced the angry Arab men who loathed their monarchs and the establishment in general to came to hate the Western countries that was backing them. Meanwhile the high unemployment rate in the region created even more insecurity and restlessness among a vast number of the Arab youths. The advent of the social media aggravated the situation since it revealed to these angry youths that the prospects of their cohorts outside the Middle East were by far more bright and hopeful. According to the available published evidence, the world was indeed not surprised that these youths took to the streets in the Arab spring. What surprised the world why they didn’t do so sooner than that.¹²

The danger of inaction

One thing is for certain: the ongoing bad situation in Arab countries cannot easily or rapidly be put right. Also, even though many outsiders have been drawn to the region as invaders or occupiers(including the American soldiers) they cannot simply stamp out the jihadist cause or impose prosperity and democracy in the region. The disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003¹³ and Afghanistan in 2001 indeed showed that this is impossible.¹⁴ Any form of military support, including the supply of drones and of a small number of special  forces, may help to keep the jihadists at bay in the region. Such military support may have to be on permanent call in order to work. It should be noted here that while  ISIS’s proposed caliphate  is very unlikely to become a recognizable state, that does not mean that it will not continue to produce jihadists that could export terrorism for many years to come.

Again, only the Arabs can reverse the decline of their civilization and fix the miserable conditions in their countries. The way things are moving in the region shows that there is little hope of that happening. The extremists in the region, with all their rhetoric and promises of establishing a caliphate, offer no solution to Arab problems either. They had only succeeded in making Arab citizens and politicians not to engage with one another reasonably or respectfully on substantive issues of public importance. Meanwhile, the mantra of the military strongmen and monarchs in the region is “stability.” Naturally, stability has strong appeal in a time of chaos. But the truth is that their model for pushing for that stability in the region, which involve the use of repression and stagnation, are not the solution. That model have been used before and the bottom line is that they don’t work. As a matter of fact, repression and stagnation were at the root of the current problems in the region. It is true: the Arab awakening is over, at least for the moment. Nevertheless, the powerful forces that gave rise to it are still present. Not only that, the social media which stirred up the Arab spring cannot be un-invented. One thing the Arab leaders and their Western backers must know is that stability requires reform – the two goes together.

So, does that mean that the Arab situation is hopeless then? Absolutely not. Today, the region is a bloody mess. But ultimately fanatics like the ISIS often devour themselves due to their paranoid style of achieving their agenda, which leaves no recourse to political compliance. Meanwhile, secular Sunnis comprise the majority of Arab Muslims. They may one day need to make their voices heard. They will need to cast their minds back to the values that once made the Arab world great when their moment comes. In the past, education made the Arabs to excel in medicine, astronomy, mathematics and architecture. Trade with other parts of the world generated the revenue they used to pay for their fabulous metropolises and their spices and silk. There was also a time when the Arab world was a cosmopolitan haven for Christians, Jews and Muslims of all sects. During that time, tolerance reigned in the region and this tolerance fostered creativity and invention.¹⁵

Education, pluralism and open markets were once Arab values. The bottom line is that the Arabs can adopt these values again if they want to. But these values could be only wishful thinking if the Sunnis and Shias continue to tear out each other’s throats, particularly in Iraq and Syria. And for a people whom so much has gone so wrong, bringing back  such values would be a small price to pay for restoring political and economic stability and prosperity in the region.

References

¹Leaders: The Tragedy of the Arabs. (2014, July 5). The Economist, pp. 9-10.

²Arab Spring: 10 Unpredicted Outcomes. (2013, December 13). British Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved May 10, 2017 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25212247

³Greene, R. A., Thompson N. (2016, August 11). ISIS: Everything You Need to Know. Cable News Network. Retrieved May 13, 2017 from http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/14/world/isis-everything-you-need-to-know/

⁴Aspden R. (2016). Generation Revolution: How Egypt’s Military State Betrayed Its Youth. The Guardian. Retrieved May 13, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/jun/02/generation-revolution-egypt-military-state-youth

⁵Yemen Crisis: Who is Fighting Whom? (2017, March 28). BBC News, pp. Retrieved May 13, 2017 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423

⁶Leaders: The Tragedy of the Arabs, op. cit., p.9

⁷Ibid

⁸Ibid

⁹Ibid

¹⁰Ibid

¹¹Rivlin P.(2001). Economic Policy and Performance in the Arab World. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc.

¹²Leaders: The Tragedy of the Arabs, op. cit., p.9

¹³Leaders: The Tragedy of the Arabs, op. cit., p.9

¹⁴Afghanistan Profile - Timeline. (2017, March 8). BBC. Retrieved May 19, 2017 from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12024253

¹⁵Williams, E. (2012, May). Trade and Commercial Activity in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Middle East. Retrieved from Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/coin/hd_coin.htm

Self-driving cars

Self-Driving Cars

Believe me, I think it is stupid (excuse my language) to drive a car you need to take control over only when it is about to crash. I mean, you may be reading a book, watching a YouTube video in your phone or may have even dozed off, lulled into a dangerous complacency by the fact that your semi-automated car will work just fine in most road situations. Then suddenly your car’s electric horn rings telling you to take over the steering wheel right now. If my vote counts for something, I would say that’s not a good way to avoid crashing your car.

In May 2016, the driver of a Tesla using Autopilot died in a car crashed in Florida. His car collided with a lorry turning across the road in front of him.¹ Generally speaking, Autopilot users are expected to keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. Nevertheless, Tesla’s Autopilot definitely failed this driver since for some reason its cameras and radar did not spot the lorry, or perhaps, they saw the lorry but thought it was something else, for instance, an overhead sign. In any case, the point I’m trying to make here is that self-driving cars are like moving computers, and like all computers, they can sometimes experience some type of unexpected glitch that can cause them to malfunction or stop altogether. So you can imagine what will happen if this malfunction happens when the car is traveling at high speed on a highway.  

Whiff of danger

Believe me, I think it is stupid (excuse my language) to drive a car you need to take control over only when it is about to crash. I mean, you may be reading a book, watching a YouTube video in your phone or may have even dozed off, lulled into a dangerous complacency by the fact that your semi-automated car will work just fine in most road situations. Then suddenly your car’s electric horn rings telling you to take over the steering wheel right now. Naturally, since you haven’t been paying attention it will take at least a few vital seconds for you to come to your senses and figure out why your car’s computer panicked and alerted you to take control of the wheel immediately. And by that time a lot of things would have happened. You will be one of the luckiest people if you didn’t hit anything or someone before you take full control.

Despite these dangers, it is amazing that the move toward full self-driving capability is the future which a lot of automakers are aiming for. Take Audi – the German automaker owned by Volkswagen Group. The company had continued to add features that allow for mostly hands-free driving on places limited to access highways.² According to Rupert Stadler, Audi AG CEO:

"We see the potential for highly automated driving also in the city, where traffic is highly complex; this is the ultimate test for us…In the next decade, we will also have robot taxis. They will close the gap in urban public transport. We will first experience cars without a steering wheel and pedals on predefined short journeys."³

How about Ford? Don’t ask. The company is teaming up with Argo (an artificial intelligence company) and Google to manufacture fully autonomous vehicles.⁴ The plan is to make vehicles that operate within specified areas, including ride-hailing services in cities. But their long-term goal is to eventually make vehicles that will safely roam free on America’s roads and streets.⁵ Other auto-makers, as well as many tech companies in Silicon Valley, are also rushing to get autonomous vehicles on the road.

What’s the point?

So, why am I writing this? Because I am convinced that self-driving cars will be a big safety problem. Just consider this: imagine you are driving to a party with your beautiful boyfriend or girlfriend. Or wife, whatever. As you are getting close to an intersection, the traffic light changed to red. Not a problem. But then a large truck carrying fuel suddenly ignites in front of you. If you don’t act fast before the truck explodes, which it can do any moment, you may suffer severe burns. You wanted to reverse your car but can’t do that either because there is a long line of traffic behind you. On the side of the road is an open field and naturally, you would want to quickly drive your car into the field hoping to get as far away as possible from the burning truck. You immediately turned your car towards the field and pushed your accelerator down to the floor. The car jumped into the field and you are safe at last. Now imagine a similar situation, except for one difference: this time you and your girlfriend or boyfriend are sitting in a driverless car. The way the car was built, it can only obey traffic rules. Not only that, it is programmed to drive only on the road. This means that it cannot go into the field even if you want it to do so. It also cannot go backward.⁶ It must follow the traffic rules even though in your situation following these rules crucify you. So, what will you do? Your guess is as good as mine. It is like having a ‘baptism by fire’.

Let’s consider another problem that driverless cars may have: hacking. The unhappy truth is that the problem of hacking also applies to modern cars as well. So you could be at risk of getting hacked if you drive around in a car that is fully loaded with as many gizmos as an intergalactic spaceship. I sometimes remember the good old days when cars were just an engine with a driver. Well, those days are gone. Sorry about that. The cars we have today are basically computers on wheels. Again, one problem of such modern cars is that they can be hacked. As Andy Greenberg, a journalist, puts it in his 2016 article in Wired magazine:

“Almost exactly a year ago, Chrysler announced a recall for 1.4 million vehicles after a pair of hackers demonstrated to WIRED that they could remotely hijack a Jeep’s digital systems over the Internet. For Chrysler, the fix was embarrassing and costly. But now those two researchers have returned with work that asks Chrysler and the automotive industry to imagine an alternate reality, one where instead of reporting their research to the automaker so it could be fixed, they had kept working on it in secret—the way malicious hackers would have. In doing so, they’ve developed a new hack that offers a sobering lesson: It could have been—and still could be—much worse.”⁷

The bad news about car hacking has continued to get worse. In 2015, a Jeep Cherokee in St. Louis (Missouri, United States) was wirelessly hacked from Pittsburgh. Because of similar vulnerabilities, Nissan shut down its Leaf App. In just one month in 2016, a pair of hackers in Houston, Texas, stole more than 30 Jeeps.⁸ The scary story is endless. So you can begin to imagine what a hacker or a cyber-terrorist could do to a driverless car. It is very scary! Now don’t listen to those ‘computer wizards’ who claim that modern computer systems are as secure as a bank.    Remember: they said that about the Ashley Madison website – a dating website for married people or people in a committed relationship. We all know what happened to the users of that website.⁹

Another important area to look at is employment: as more and more self-driving cars appear on the roads, many jobs could be lost. In other words, as self-driving cars or driverless cars becomes more popular, many people who make an honest living by driving things around will lose their jobs. Some of the jobs that will be affected in that regard include taxi, bus and truck drivers’ jobs, waste disposal and home delivery drivers.¹⁰  Thus while self-driving cars might make public transportation cheaper, it could also result to more people being pushed into the far corners of poverty. It should also be noted here that if people just bought self-driving cars instead of using the bus, there may not be a public transport system at all. We all know what the result will be: people will become less sociable in the future since they will be secluded in the miserable cars that ferry them around like kids.

Well, how about the loss of the enjoyment that one derives from driving a car? Forget about it. I don’t know about you guys but I do get a sense of freedom and liberation each time I drive my car. I am very sure that I will not get that with a self-driving car. People like me love cars a lot, for two main reasons. First, because they can take me to my destination quicker and conveniently. Second, they make me feel good about myself when driving them.  Of course, everyone may not be like me. One thing I do know is that a lot of people will agree with me if I say that there’s fun in driving along a scenic route as the sun sets in the sky. You see things as you get to and pass them, you drive to different places that you love, more importantly, you are doing it at will. On the contrary, you wouldn’t find that drive along the scenic route, or by the lake in your neighborhood to be that exciting if your car just did it on its own, taking routes you don’t like, making stops you have no interest in, and so on.

Stay scared

Well, what do you say?  I will help you here: when more and more things in our lives get automated, I mean things as simple as the automobiles, we will soon begin to use less of our brains. This will eventually degrade our ability to think and act for ourselves. It is worth bearing in mind that our brains is what distinguishes us from the rest of the living things on earth. So I think we should be concerned about what will happen when our brains become less active. In my opinion, if we allow our brains to go idle then we will quintessentially become more of an animal or regress back to the Stone Age.

Human beings have indeed come a long way since the invention of cars. We have explored previously unknown regions of the earth and we have landed on the moon. We have also had two world wars, and so on. All these times, the basics of the car has never changed one bit. Of course, cars are now safer, faster and more efficient, which is good. All this time, the key aspect of the car is still the same: a car and its driver. It is good to remember that we had horses and riders even before the cars and this natural order had been like this for years because there is nothing wrong with it. As dumb as I am, I find it really hard to trust an artificially created mix of wires and electricity called self-driving cars with my life.

References

¹Driverless Cars: Eyes on the Road. (2016, December 24). The Economist, pp. 111-112.

²Korosec, K. (2017, March 15). Why Audi Created a New Business Devoted to Self-Driving Tech. Fortune, Retrieved April 29, 2017 from http://fortune.com/2017/03/15/audi-self-driving-car-business/

³Ibid, para. 4

⁴Ford (2017). News. Retrieved April 30, 2017 from https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2017/02/10/ford-invests-in-argo-ai-new-artificial-intelligence-company.html

⁵Bailey, R. (2016, August 26). Self-Driving Cars: Half-Assed Automation Is Stupid and Dangerous. Reason Foundation. Retrieved April 29, 2017 from http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/26/self-driving-cars-half-assed-automation

⁶Car Throttle (n.d.). Why Driverless Cars Should Be Banned. Retrieved April 30, 2017 from https://www.carthrottle.com/post/we3yp99/

⁷Greenberg, A. (2016, August 1). The Jeep Hackers Are Back to Prove Car Hacking Can Get Much Worse. Wired, pp. Retrieved April 30, 2017 from https://www.wired.com/2016/08/jeep-hackers-return-high-speed-steering-acceleration-hacks/

⁸Auto Blog(2016). Hackers Arrested After Stealing More Than 30 Jeeps in Texas. Retrieved April 30, 2017 from http://www.autoblog.com/2016/08/04/hackers-steal-30-jeeps-houston-texas/

⁹Hosie, R. (2017, January 16). Ashley Madison Hacking: What Happened When Married Man Was Exposed. Independent. Retrieved April 30, 2017 from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/ashley-madison-hacking-accounts-married-man-exposes-cheating-website-infidelity-rick-thomas-a7529356.html

¹⁰Car Throttle, op. cit., para 

Where Ethiopian Airline is the king

An African airline as good as Ethiopian Airline would be hard to find. The way I see it, I will  fly on Ethiopian Airline again. In Africa, airline companies have bad reputation. So, it is a good thing that Ethiopian Airline is a visible success in a sector more notable for its failures in the continent. 

I usually avoid African airlines each time I want  to travel by air. My recent trip to Nigeria last Christmas, however, changed my mind. Before my trip, I promised myself that I must avoid going through Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. Anybody who have travelled through Lagos knows what a bitter experience it could be. I still haven’t forgotten the  day a cab drove me through Apapa-Oshodi Expressway,¹ one of the highways in Lagos. What I saw that day was indeed an apocalyptic scene. I saw six lanes of buses, sedans, fuel tankers, and motorized  tri-cycles popularly known as “keke”² in Nigeria, wedged bumper-to-bumper in both directions. While my can got stuck in the traffic, curses and horn blasts pierced the diesel and petrol exhaust-choked air. I constantly heard screeching brakes as vehicles inched forward. In the backseat where I was, I was so uncomfortable that I found it hard to relax. It wasn’t an experience I would like to repeat.

It was because of these issues that I decided to avoid going through Lagos at all cost. The best option for me, I thought, was to fly directly to Enugu,³ a ‘sleepy’  city located in Southeastern Nigeria. My plan was to stay briefly at Enugu before driving down to my village to celebrate the Christmas. But the problem became finding an airline that has a direct flight to Enugu International Airport. One of my students told me about Ethiopian Airline. She said she used it recently and that it was a good airline. For someone who likes sure things, I decided that a little research is worth it. What I found out, and my experience after using the airline, was very interesting.

Add and subtract

An African airline as good as Ethiopian Airline would be hard to find. As Africa’s most profitable and largest airline, Ethiopian Airline enjoys earnings that is more than its rivals combined. Its expansion was also rapid. It served 82 international destinations by 2015, with 13 more added in 2016. It nearly doubled its profits in the last financial year, and was able to do this despite the country’s national turmoil(see figure 1). Generally speaking, the airline enjoys one unique advantage: its regional rivals are competing only feebly on routes in Africa. According to the available published evidence, African airlines collectively  recorded a net loss of about $500 million in 2016.⁴  

Figure 1: Ethiopian Airline – Profit and Passenger Data

Year	Passenger (Millions)	Net Profit ($ Million)
2010	3	110
2011	3.5	77
2012	4.5	56
2013	5.1	145
2014	6.0	161
2015	6.3	208

Source: The Economist, 2016

One good example is Kenyan Airways. This airline had been in red for four years in a row. It is flogging some of its aircrafts and it announced last September that it was talking to foreign  institutional investors about raising more equity. South Africa’s national carrier has been unprofitable since 2011. This airline, which was overtaken by Ethiopian Airlines in terms of size, could obviously be insolvent without government guarantees.⁵ Arik Airline, Nigeria’s largest airline, almost collapsed last year due to heavy financial debt burden, inability to pay staff regularly, weak corporate governance, operational difficulties and overall poor management.⁶

It is worth bearing in mind that the airline’s success did not happen by chance. It resulted from good management: the airline took advantage of its strategic location in the Horn of Africa. While its rivals were fixated on the former colonial routes to and from Europe, the airline took a more giant stride. It captured Asian traffic and, in addition to European and US market, its routes also connects China with Brazil via India and the Gulf. Its management were smart enough to take an early punt on Chinese demand. It was the first African airline to fly to China by 1973. The Chinese market is a good source of revenue for the airline, as could be seen from its bustling Chinese counter at Addis Ababa’s Bole airport. The airline also manages its African routes well: it schedules more flights to places like the country’s booming oil port of Point Noire and less flights to small African capitals like Brazzaville, in the Republic of Congo, which offers little business.⁷

The cost of running Ethiopian Airlines is indeed low, probably because it is owned by the state. The airline, however, behaves like an international firm, and not like a national carrier. This means that it takes no subsidies from the national government.  Its management is also independent, even though only a few people will doubt that its senior executives has ties to the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front. There is a high possibility that the airline will soon become the continent’s first pan-African airline. Naturally, it is not surprising that it is opening more centers  in Malawi and Togo.⁸ It is also teaming up with smaller rival airlines in the region. But the airline management understands that maintaining their lead in the region will not be easy. This is because it has strong rivals in the Middle East, particularly the Qatar Airways. These Middle East rivals also has large footprints in Africa, and are expanding their operations in the continent. Ethiopian Airline also faces other problems, such as poor infrastructure. Last year, the country started a new four-runway airport outside Addis Ababa. While this new airport may improve matters for the airline, no one really know when it will be opened for business.⁹  Another problem has to do with the political instability in the neighboring country, which may affect the airline’s sales revenue. It should be noted here that Ethiopian Airlines was founded in the 1945. But it started full operation after 1991, a period that marked the end of the country’s civil war. If the experience of the past two decades teaches us anything about Africa, it is that Ethiopian Airline could  take a hit if the country become mired in political instability. I pray that it will not be in that situation.

Pass the salt, please

The first  problem I had with Ethiopian Airline had nothing to do with the airline per se. On the contrary, it had everything to do with the country’s international airport at Addis Ababa. The airport is antiquated. It doesn’t have good facilities for old people and for people with disabilities. I surprisingly watched when an elderly woman who, I believe had mobility problem,  was literally carried up the escalator by the airline attendants. The transfer at the airport was also not a good experience: my connecting flight to Nigeria was delayed with not information and we had to wait for almost two hours before it arrived. The waiting area was so crowded that I was lucky to find a seat. Another bad thing I observed during the flight had to do with the air hostesses. In my view, they need more ‘customer service’ training. During the flight, I  saw several passengers request assistance by pressing the button on their seats. Only a few of them were attended to. It appears that the air hostesses  prefer to assist the customers only  during those times scheduled to serve meals and drinks.

That aside, my overall assessment of the airline can be stated in three words: It was good! I mean, the food they served was good. They served salmon and rice!  They were also generous with their food: I lost count of how many times we ate during the flight. But I can tell you this: by the time we reached Enugu, I was so full I could hardly walk. They even served wine, on request, during the flight.  The airline is affordable too: even though I travelled during the Christmas season when other airlines were hiking their fares, I paid only $1,700 for a round trip to Nigeria. The way I see it, I will probably fly on Ethiopian Airline again. The bottom line: In Africa, airline companies have bad reputation. So, it is a good thing that Ethiopian Airline is a visible success in a sector more notable for its failures in the continent. 

References

¹Akoni, O. (2016, May 16). Deplorable Apapa-Oshodi Expressway: Lagos Agencies Footdrag, Despite Ambode’s Order. Vanguard. Retrieved March 1, 2017 from http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/05/deplorable-apapa-oshodi-expressway-lagos-agencies-footdrag-despite-ambodes-order/

²Ban on okada, keke will affect Nigeria’s economy – Amaechi. (2017, March 1). Nigerian Eye. Retrieved March 1, 2017 from http://www.nigerianeye.com/2017/02/ban-on-okada-keke-will-affect-nigerias.html

³(2017, March 1). Retrieved from Enugu State Government. Retrieved March 1, 2017 from http://enugustate.gov.ng/index.php/elements-devices/

⁴Industry Profitability Improves. (2017). International Air Transport Association , pp. Retrieved March 2, 2017 from http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-06-02-02.aspx

⁵African Airlines: Well-Connected. (2016, October 22). The Economist, p. 58.

⁶Udo, B. (2017, February 9). UPDATE: Nigerian Govt. Takes Over Distressed Arik Airlines, Appoints New Management. Premium Times, pp. Retrieved March 2, 2017 from http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/223041-update-nigerian-govt-takes-over-distressed-arik-airline-gives-lifeline.html

⁷African Airlines: Well-Connected, op. cit., p. 59

⁸Ethiopian: History. (2017). Retrieved from Ethiopian Airline: Retrieved March 3, 2017 from https://www.ethiopianairlines.com/corporate/company/about-us/history

⁹African Airlines: Well-Connected, op. cit., p. 59

Donald Trump: the ‘politician’ from hell

Donald Trump: the ‘politician’ from hell

Donald Trump thinks he has a shot at winning the upcoming election. He’s wrong. How about Hillary Clinton? Well, I’m not trying to give her a pass. To some voters, she and Trump are as bad as each other, just like Coke and Pepsi, both of which are not good for the body. But in any case, I don’t believe Americans want a leader like Mr. Trump yet. They would rather hold their noses and vote for the lesser evil.

 

“I’m really rich,” said Donald Trump, when he made the announcement that he will run for the White House at the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, New York.¹ It is very understandable why the billionaire real estate mogul chose the Trump Tower as the venue for the announcement: the skyscraper has been central to his business life.  Mr. Trump built the Tower between 1979 and 1984. At the time, it was one of a remarkable achievements to the young Trump whose father rented out mere apartments in Brooklyn. Standing close to the Tower is the Plaza Hotel, which was also owned by Mr. Trump. He, however, sold it in 1995 after his casino business folded. Today, half of his fortune is still tied up in real estate holdings, majority of which are located within a four-mile radius of the Tower and the Plaza Hotel. The Tower indeed has great significance in Trump’s business life: its bar exemplifies his late-life pivot to the business of celebrity in which he starred in the NBC reality series The Apprentice, which was also filmed at the Tower. The Apprentice quickly became a hit, with things like cocktails and aftershaves named after the show.²

As the headquarter of Mr. Trump’s organization, the Tower is among a few clear and consistent features of Mr. Trump’s grand vision as well as his empire. Much else, including some of his claims regarding his business interests and investments is opaque, volatile and contested. Obviously, for someone who wants to be the next president of America, Mr. Trump is an ambitious man. To him, self-made billionaires like himself would make a better president since they can sponsor their own campaign and hence will not be easily influenced by donors and lobbyists. His critics say he is not really a self-made billionaire as he claim. They are convinced that he inherited his money – that all of his successes is due to his father, who was a real estate tycoon.

 So, is Mr. Trump as rich as he claims? Let us start by reviewing his career, third party estimates of his wealth, and his filings with the regulators. Four conclusions stands out. First, Donald Trump is indeed very wealthy, and his fortune is in billions of dollars. Second, many years ago, he made many attempts to move away from debt-heavy property business and to build a global brand. However, his efforts in that regard produced limited success. Most of his investments (as much as 93 percent) are in America. When we take a look at his investments, we will discover that almost 80 percent of them, including his gulf courses, are in real estate. Third, when compared to the stock market and the property market in New York, Trump’s performance as an investor has been mediocre. Lastly, Trump is known to be ‘clannish’ when it comes to management and leadership. This suggests that he might not do so well if he is to manage a larger organization.

Like anyone who have been doing business for decades, Trump had has his share of the ups and downs of the business cycles. Generally speaking, his entire business career went through three stages. The first stage ran through 1975 to 1990. For Trump’s empire, this is the era of debt-fuelled expansion. Trump had his big break during this time after renovating a site at the Grand Central Station – a site that is now occupied by the Hyatt Hotel. He completed this complex job by raising cash, finding a tenant and securing the necessary permits. His success in this project seemed to boost his confidence and he went on a long investment spree. He bought buildings in a depressed Manhattan (including the site of Trump Tower), picked up a small airline, and expanded into casino business in Atlantic City. During this time, the value of his investment is about $5 billion in today’s money. And as much as four-fifth of this investment was financed with debt.

In the 1990s, which is the second stage of his business career, the casinos business started having problems and two of Trump’s gambling entities defaulted. Thus the 1990s was an era of humiliation for him. Two of his casino enterprises also defaulted in 2004 and in 2009. During these period, his empire had about $6 billion of debt in today’s dollar. Hence, these wave of defaults basically destabilized almost all his business operations. In spite of this, he clung on and did not choose to go the way of personal bankruptcy. Some of his assets was sold off by his creditors. Some of the creditors even offered him a form of forbearance. He recovered his poise when property prices in Manhattan rose and started doing small deals again. For instance, in 2001, he bought the Hotel Delmonico for $115 million.⁶

The last stage was the era of celebrity. This started with his starring role in The Apprentice in 2004. The Apprentice was a very successful TV show: at its peak it had 28 million viewers. So it is not surprising that it ran until 2015. It also made Donald Trump to become even more popular and, as an astute businessman, he took advantage of his new fame to create a flurry of ventures. Today, he is involved with 487 companies, which includes hotel licensing in Azerbaijan and energy drink in Israel. This represents a significant increase: in 2004, he was only involved with 136 companies.⁷ Thus his name became a global brand that attracts lots of cash.

By the numbers

There’s very little information about Mr. Trump’s business because he doesn’t run a publicly listed firm. Not only that, he does not really have a holding company into which his assets are grouped. After declaring his intention to run for president, Mr. Trump did release a one-page, unaudited, estimates of his wealth to the public. He also filed the required documents that showed his finances with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Such filings, however, do not specify the value of assets worth over $50 million. And in most cases, they do not even include all categories of income. Thus the estimates of his wealth made here are based on the information from The Economist and Forbes magazines, and from Bloomberg, a financial data provider.

According to the available published evidence from The Economist, Forbes, Bloomberg,⁸ and from Mr. Trump himself, he is worth, on average, about $4.93 billion (see table 1). Whether

 

Table 1: Estimates of Donald Trump’s Wealth, 2015, $Billions

Trump	8.3
Forbes	4.4
The Economist	4.1
Bloomberg	2.9

Source: FEC, The Economist, Bloomberg, Forbes

 

Mr. Trump has excelled in the property business is debatable. But some of his other business interests have definitely became global brands. For instance, his appeal is strong in Gulf. This is an area Trump-flagged resorts are well-regarded. But his name carries less weight in hotels or consumer goods, and does not travel well beyond America.

Of his wealth, about 66 percent is made in New York, and only an estimated 7 percent is outside America. The assets Mr. Trump actively created in 2004, the time he became a reality TV star, generated about 22 percent of his current wealth. Of this, some 64 percent comes from his investments in conventional property and another 17 percent came from his investments in resorts and gulf clubs. Of his recent deals, his biggest one has been in real estate: in 2012, he bought Doral hotel out of bankruptcy. The licensing and branding companies he created since 2004 does not make much money for him: only about 11 of them make more than $1 million of income.⁹ Even though Mr. Trump claimed that he has 38 more deals in the pipeline, it is not easy to find out how much they are really worth.

It is really tricky to gauge Mr. Trump’s business performance. One reason for this is that early estimates of his wealth may have been overstated. Going by Forbes’ data it can be inferred that, by the standards of America’s oligarchy, he is a small potato: his ranking among America’s billionaires fell from a peak of 26 to 113. Also, in terms of size, his property empire is about a seventh of  that of the biggest real estate firm in America(as reported in The Economist)¹⁰.

Mr. Trump made a smart move when he dumped his investments in casinos in Atlantic City. But he wasn’t smart enough to be a stakeholder in the casino industry boom in Macau. Some of his rivals like Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas Sands benefitted tremendously from the boom – a boom that propelled them into a different league. According to Forbes, Mr. Adelson is currently worth $26 billion.¹¹

It is worth bearing in mind that when considering Mr. Trump’s performance, it is only fair to say that lots of outside investors in his projects had made money too. However, many has lost money as well. His forays into professional football, airlines, casinos and other industries did not end well. Simply put, Trump’s investments that went bust contain roughly $5 billion of equity and debt belonging to outside investors.¹²

The next thing to look at is Mr. Trump’s management style. Broadly speaking, Mr. Trump do have charisma. His other attributes include spontaneity, quick decision-making and frequent communication. He is also a well-skilled negotiator: he is certainly not a pushover when negotiating deals. People who knew him well say he is assertive and is not afraid to ask for what he wants, an attribute that often put him in the good position to get deals done in his terms.¹³

The other side of Mr. Trump’s personality is not very exciting. He is very volatile and has a nuclear temper. And at most times, his behavior can be very unpredictable. In his lifetime, he have pursued energy-sapping feuds.¹⁴

Just like his campaign machine, which has surprisingly improved with time, Trump runs his business empire in a nonconventional way. His organization is composed of his three eldest children (Eric, Ivanka and Donald) and a dozen other key executives. Based on the FEC documents, the best word that would appropriately describe Mr. Trump’s organization is ‘crude’.  Rather than being grouped together, most of the organization’s legal vehicles are owned directly by Mr. Trump.¹⁵

Mr. Trump hates bureaucracy, which is good. But then, he really have no experience of how to run a big, complex, organization. Thus he is an expert when it comes to publicity but inept in running large, complex organization where bureaucracy is inevitable. For instance, in 1995 – 2004 he was in charge of a publicly listed company, and the company defaulted.¹⁶

According to Mr. Trump, if he becomes president, he will move his attention from his business to governance. Specifically, he will put his business interests in a trust and focus all his energy in running America. Past presidential candidates, including Ross Perot (who ran in 1992 and 1996) and Mitt Romney (who ran in 2012) did the same thing.¹⁷ Mr. Trump can also let his children run the show in terms of managing his businesses when he moved into the White House. The business community are convinced his children can do so effectively, even though they might struggle to make a leap forward.

If Trump did not win the election, he can simply go back to his business. But for Trump, that is not a good option. Thus, it is not a surprise to hear Mr. Trump saying that doing so will be less exciting than politics. His political campaigns has indeed made him more popular. Perhaps he can leverage this popularity to build the ultimate marketing campaign to launch another flurry of branding efforts (like he did after 2004) if he fails to become the president.

Yet even though Mr. Trump is claiming that his candidacy is boosting his brand, the truth is that he had recently lost some businesses. For instance, Univision, a media firm, cancelled the deal they had with Trump – a deal whose goal was to broadcast the Miss USA pageant, which Mr. Trump owned.¹⁸  Also, as was reported in The Economist, Trump’s hotels charges room rates that are on average 10 percent below other luxury hotels.¹⁹

Without putting it in so many words, Donald Trump is definitely wealthy. But he made most of his money from the buildings and other properties he has in New York. As far as I know (and I had provided some data here to prove it), he has not really built a great company or raised permanent capital on public markets. He has not even diversified very successfully. These are some of the things Americans need to think about when voting in the coming election, especially given Mr. Trump’s frequent claims about his business prowess.

Trump, thou art crude

One thing is certain: Donald Trump is popular among his supporters because of his fame as a successful businessman. Broadly speaking, his supporters sees him as a great chief executive and as someone who will get things done. Mr. Trump himself is convinced that his prowess in the commercial world has prepared him to be the most qualified president America needs at this period of her history. Fine, except that his business skills are irrelevant because commerce is different from government.

Three past U.S. presidents – Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan – had virtually no commercial background. Yet they achieved a lot for America. In contrast, George W. Bush and Herbert Hoover fared worse in the White House, even though they have business experience.²⁰ Thus, Mr. Trump and his supporters need to understand that, from a practical standpoint,  a big difference exist between the public and the private sectors. For instance, every business has a single goal, which is to make profit. Government, on the other hand, have a large number of legitimate and often competing goals. Thus for the government, the goal of achieving energy sufficiency may conflict with that of environmental protection; or the goal of implementing a stringent but good safety regulations may impact on productivity, and so on. This complexity of goals means that governance requires an approach that goes beyond commercial experience.

One other big difference between business and government can be summarized in one single word: authority. Broadly speaking, no political leader, including the president, has the kind of authority every corporate boss does. In the business realm, CEOs can hire and fire based on their employees’ performance. In order to motivate their subordinates, they can pay bonuses or promote them aggressively. By contrast, the boss of a government agency does not have such unlimited powers or authority when it comes to hiring, firing, and pay bonuses. Most of the time, what the boss of a government agency does is to persuade and warn, rather than command.

This difference between the two realms actually showed how American democracy works. In America, political power is checked, balanced and counter-balanced for one important reason: to help individual liberty flourish and to ensure that no one branch of government is too powerful. So one can now see why Donald Trump admires Vladimir Putin. President Putin don’t have to deal with the complications of balancing powers among the different organs of his government, and can simply get things done.

In various interviews with media houses, Mr. Trump made it clear that he is going to compel government departments and even nations do his bidding if he becomes the president. He has also stated that he is prepared to work with people who care about winning. For his view on the role of UN, he noted that the agency is doing less to end the big conflicts in the world. So its ineffectiveness in that regard can be resolved by appointing a strong ambassador who would win by really shaking things up at the UN.

Mr. Trump’s model described above shows that he indeed lacks an understanding of how our modern world works. First, the UN has no power and hence cannot end conflicts. The solutions for ending conflicts around the world rests with sovereign governments. So Mr. Trump’s argument that all it takes to have a better America or to make America great again is a strong U.S. ambassador to shake up the UN, end conflicts and win shows that he is utterly removed from reality. I mean, the strategy might work for business, where one can use uncompromising and hardline negotiation to make great deals. It just can’t be apply to politics and governance.

One cannot dispute the fact that business success is both important and deeply admirable. But the skills for succeeding in business is a far cry from the set of skills that produce success in government.

Hilary is a lesser evil

If you ask me, I would say that the best way to allow someone like Donald Trump into the White House should be as a guest or if he is on a tour. I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton. Now don’t get me wrong. I know her name and her status: she is from a political dynasty. But sometimes I find it hard to understand where she stands on various issues. She seems to change her position at every election: if America is sick of war, she is sick of war. If America is pro-vaccine, she is pro-vaccine. If America questions the efficacy and safety of vaccine, she questions their safety. If America is angry at Wall Street, she is angry at Wall Street. The list is very long. Perhaps this explain why a lot of voters call her ‘phony’. Also, her use of private email server when she was the Secretary of State indicates bad judgment.

Nevertheless, I do know one thing: the nomination of Donald Trump is the single most irresponsible act by the Republican Party, at least in the last 150 years. And as someone who believes in individual liberty and small government, I consider Hillary to be a lesser evil than Trump, for many reasons.

First, unlike Trump, Hillary is more lenient with the immigrants. Trump’s policy is to deport millions of immigrants, including the hundreds of thousands of children who have never known any other home. He is also hatching the plan of building a wall on the Mexican border – a wall which, when completed, can threaten the freedom of migrants and the property rights of large number of Americans. Hillary is not interested in any of that. Instead, she said she with hatch out a plan to make life easier for both documented and undocumented immigrants in America.

Second, unlike Trump, she has political experience. When she was the Secretary of State, she visited 112 countries.²¹ So, as the president, she will know how to deal with a foreign crisis because there’s a good chance she will have already been there, had tea with the local power brokers and read the briefing book. As far as I’m concerned, Donald Trump cannot boast as much.

Third, unlike Trump, Clinton understands Washington DC very well. When Bill Clinton (her husband) was the president, she was his closest adviser for eight years. It is important to note here that during his presidency, Bill Clinton not only balanced the budget but also secured bipartisan agreements to reform welfare and open up trade in north America.²² Also as a senator, Hillary Clinton was known to co-operate and interact well with the senators on both sides of the aisle. The implication of these is clear: if Hillary Clinton becomes the president of America, she could be better at hammering out deals with the lawmakers of both parties than Donald Trump will be.

Free trade is another area where Hillary will do better than Trump. But my only concern is that her record in this area is very inconsistent. While on the campaign trail, she usually support protectionism.  But when she was in power as the First Lady and Secretary of State, she tilted toward free trade. So my assumption here would be that the latter is probably a better guide to her intentions and agenda than the former. It is worth remembering that Barack Obama did the same thing: he supported protectionism during the 2008 campaign but advocated free trade when he became the president. Hillary may end up doing the same thing if she becomes the president.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a firm believer in protectionism and has made it a central theme of his campaign. As a result, I do not believe he can change direction or his mind in that regard overnight. Given the proposed policies of these two politicians on trade, there’s no doubt that Trump is more likely than Hillary to seriously damage the economy by starting a huge trade war with America’s trading partners. As a matter of fact, Trump had made it very clear in his campaign rhetoric that he will do just that.

On issues of freedom of speech, Hillary is also preferable to Trump. For instance, Trump is known for using bogus libel suits and FCC harassment to suppress his critics. In fact, the only person that have not been sued by Mr. Trump is his hairdresser!²³ Hillary Clinton, by contrast, do not believe so much in harassing or suing people, places or things just for criticizing her, unless it is the last resort. And unlike Trump, she discourages her supporters from beating up protestors. This, however, does not mean that she is a paragon of free speech virtue. After all, she wants to overrule the Citizen’s United decision within her first 30 days in office if she becomes the president.²⁴ She also has a plan that would impose harsh new campaign finance regulations - a regulation that threaten political speech by people who use the corporate form.²⁵ This is an area where Trump and Hillary shares a similar ideology: Trump had made it clear that he loves the idea of reforming the campaign finance.  

A lot of people, both the libertarians and conservatives, believe that Trump would appoint judges who would enforce the original meaning of the Constitution and hence protect important constitutional rights. Others hold out hope that he will repeal Obamacare. Unfortunately, these are merely wishful thinking because Trump has a longstanding hostility to freedom of speech and constitutional property rights. Also, if he has a healthcare policy at all, it will end up becoming Obamacare by another name.²⁶

Broadly speaking, Mr. Trump is not averse to reckless military interventions and this simple fact will makes him more dangerous as a president. For example, he had noted in one of his speeches that he will seize the oil fields of Iraq and Libya if he becomes the president.²⁷ This also presents the key difference between Mr. Trump and Hillary: unlike Hillary, Trump is more willing to use force to achieve his goals and policies, and it does not border him if his actions in the process violates the basic codes of morality or humanitarian values. What concerns me most about Mr. Trump, which I believe should concern every American, is his impulsiveness, authoritarian instincts, and his manifest ignorance. This means that as a president he might try to demonstrate the macho strength he is constantly boasting about and, in the process, stumble into a dangerous conflict or take America to another war. I don’t believe Americans are ready to trust such a man, a con artist, with the control of their military, including their nuclear weapons, regardless of what the media is saying. 

So, can Trump win the presidency?

The best way to know if Trump can win, or if this is Hillary’s call, is to take a close look at the available data. So, what I will do here is to present as well as explain the implications of the available data as they relate to the coming election and then allow my readers to make the predictions or conclusions themselves.

To be fair, let me start by giving Donald Trump some credit for what he has achieved so far in the presidential race. The billionaire has avoided all political norms, as per the Republican Party; and, so far in his campaign, he has not spent as much money as the experts say is needed. He had campaigned in states that are not traditional battlegrounds. His position in trade run counter to the standard Republican line. He had continued to say inflammatory and controversial statements – statements that can be a total turnoff to record numbers of nonwhite voters. He had done all these and yet he won the Republican nomination. That is indeed astonishing!

Well, it is true that Donald Trump is very popular in the media, in his rallies and among avowed bigots who see him as a fellow traveler. However there’s one factor that hasn’t grabbed much headlines but has the potential to topple him in this coming election: demography.  America’s demography has changed significantly. Simply put, the U.S. is now less white and more diverse (see tables 1 and 2). And demography says a lot about a country’s voting pattern, simply because how we identify ourselves is among the best predictors of how we will vote.

According to the available data from the Pew Research Center and others, the U.S. electorate this year will be very diverse. Nearly 31 percent of the eligible voters will be Hispanic, Asian, black or another racial minority. The value for the same groups was 29 percent in 2012. This increment was caused by the strong growth among Hispanic eligible voters, especially the

Table 1: Eligible Voters in United Sates, 2008, 2012 & 2016

Percent (%) Among Eligible Voters

Race/Ethnic Group	2008	2012	2016 (Projected)
Asian	3	4	4
Hispanic	9	11	12
Black	12	12	12
White	73	71	69

Source: Pew Research Center²⁸

 

increase in U.S.-born youth. Researchers at the Pew Research Center, a think tank, analyzed numerous data showing the changes in the U.S.’s eligible voting population. The results of their analysis offers a preview of profound U.S.  demographic shift – a shift that is projected to continue in the coming decades. In 2016, according to their analysis, the nation’s 156 million non-Hispanic white eligible voters far outnumber the 70 million eligible voters that are ethnic or racial minorities. Nevertheless, the growth rate of non-Hispanic white eligible voters lags that of minority groups. This caused the non-Hispanic share of the electorate to fall from 71 percent to 69 percent (see table 1).

Pew Research Center’s data also showed that America has 10.7 million more voters today than had in 2012. Also, from 2012 to 2016, more than 75 percent of the net growth in America’s electorate has come from racial and ethnic minorities, which includes blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other minorities. In quantitative terms, during this time frame the minorities had a net increase of 7.5 million eligible voters while the non-Hispanic whites experienced only a 3.2 million net increase in eligible voters.³⁰

The reason for the non-Hispanic whites’ slower growth in eligible voters when compared to that of the racial or ethnic minorities are many. One of them is that the non-Hispanic whites are overrepresented in the death statistics due to an aging population. Simply put, even though the non-Hispanic whites make up 69 percent of America’s eligible voters, they accounted for as much as 76 percent of all eligible voters who died between 2012 and 2016. And, going by

Table 2: Projected Change of the Voting-Eligible Population by Race/Hispanic Origin

All figures in thousands

	Nov. 2012 Eligible Voters	Nov. 2016 Eligible Voters	Change in Eligible Voters 2012-2016(%)
Total	215,081	225,778	5
White	152,862	156,084	2
Black	25,753	27,402	6
Hispanic	23,329	27,302	17
Asian	8,032	9,286	16

Source: Culled from Pew Research Center²⁹

 

the data from the Pew Research Center, they accounted for 6.6 million of 8.7 million of all eligible voters who died during the period.³¹

Another reason for the slow growth of eligible voters among non-Hispanic whites’ has to do with their low birth rate. According to the available published evidence, the non-Hispanic whites are underrepresented among young people born in America who turn 18 – an age group that is very important because they are most responsible for the nation’s growth in eligible voters. Broadly speaking, about 57 percent of the 16 million new eligible voters who turned 18 between 2012 and 2016 are non-Hispanic whites. By comparison, 43 percent of new eligible voters born in America are the racial ethnic minorities. When we consider the fact that the ethnic minorities constitute only about 31 percent of the electorate, that value will begin to make some sense. ³²

Unlike the other groups, the Asian electorate in America grows through the process of naturalization whereby their immigrants become America’s citizens. About 60 percent of new Asians became eligible voters by this means in 2012. By comparison, during the same time frame, about 26 percent of new Hispanic eligible voters came from naturalization.³³

These results speaks for themselves: To win this election, Donald Trump must  figure out a way to corner at least 70 percent votes of the working class non-Hispanic whites  with his dystopian vision, racially-loaded language and the promise to reverse globalization. He is already doing this. But alas! Only about half of the eligible voters in this category will vote for Trump in this election. This is because all of them will not vote for the Republicans. As a matter of fact, there are many non-Hispanic white  Republicans  who do not like Trump’s ugly rhetoric about minorities, or his policy proposal which sounds more like making America great again by preserving white dominance. Add this number to the non-Hispanic white Democrats who definitely will not vote for him and the idea of Trump winning may prove to be wishful thinking. How about the minorities votes? Don’t even ask: convincing them to vote for Trump will be like selling pork pies at a vegetarians’ convention.

The implications of this is clear: in this election, demography appears to give Hillary Clinton a clear advantage over Trump. The bottom line is also that the white working class voters alone, whom Trump is appealing to, cannot make him win this election. The reason for this is simple: Trump’s rhetoric is partly racial and tends to turn off at least as many lower-income, less educated, white voters as it attracts. This will make his route to the White House difficult in this election.

 When we look at the voters who support Trump (mainly the poor white working class whites who felt that they were battered by free trade and globalization), we will observe that they are the anxious voters – the voters with more fears than facts. These voters found Trump’s words awfully reassuring, without realizing that he is merely promoting a false but satisfying optimism about the future with his words. They are the type of voters who refuse to understand that America’s economy has been transformed by the forces of globalization over which the president (including Donald Trump, assuming that he wins) has little control; that many of the lost jobs they are being promised will never come back. These voters do not want to hear that America will not solve its terror problems with more bombs and fighter jets; that Trump is exploiting their petty hatreds for his political gain; and that the Mexicans they hate so much came to America because business owners need their skills and want them to be here.

Instead, Trump’s voters wants to hear something different; and they don’t care if it is bullshit or not.  For instance, they want to hear that America is the best country in the world. They are delighted to hear him say that America stopped winning in trade because its leaders are weak and its borders are porous. They love to hear the message that the type of country they dream of is only one president away; that without paying taxes or funding governments they can still have their social security, healthcare, and their roads and public education. They love these soothing words coming from Trump, and they are excited about the way he has reduced all their desires and dreams into four words: “Make America great again.”³⁴

How about Hillary Clinton? Well, I’m not trying to give her a pass. To some voters, she and Trump are as bad as each other, just like Coke and Pepsi, both of which are not good for the body. Nobody asked me but I think her struggle in this election was made worse by her wretched trust ratings, and she should be blamed for that. As the secretary of state, her irregular email arrangements was outrageous. Also, the manner in which she handled the outcry the situation caused has trashed her standing with millions of voters. According to The Economist, only about 30 percent of the voters consider her honest. For Donald Trump, whose speeches are packed with untruths, the value is 43 percent.³⁵

In the meantime, if Trump wins this election, a lot of bad things can happen in America. The consensus that trade makes the world richer and better; the tolerance that lets millions of people to move to other countries in search of opportunities; and the ideal that people of different colors and religions can get along – all will be under threat if he wins. He might even take America to an unnecessary war. I don’t believe Americans want a leader like that yet. They would rather hold their noses and vote for the lesser evil.

 

 

References

¹Rushe, D. (2015, June 16). 'I'm really rich': Donald Trump Claims $9bn Fortune During Campaign Launch. The Guardian. Retrieved May 17, 2016 from http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-reveals-net-worth-presidential-campaign-launch

²Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House. (2016, February 20). The Economist.  Retrieved May 18, 2016 from http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21693230-enigma-presidential-candidates-business-affairs-tower-white

 

⁶Bagli, C. (2001, November 30). Trump Buys Hotel Delmonico for $115 Million. New York Times. Retrieved June 16, 2016 from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/30/nyregion/trump-buys-hotel-delmonico-for-115-million.html

⁷Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House, op. cit, para. 6-13

 

⁸Melby C. & Rubin. R. (2015, July 28). Here's Our Tally of Donald Trump's Wealth. Bloomberg. Retrieved May 18, 2016 from http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-07-28/here-s-our-tally-of-donald-trump-s-wealth

 

⁹Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House, op. cit, para. 6-13

¹⁰Ibid

¹¹Sheldon Adelson. (2016, July 12). Forbes. Retrieved July 12, 2016 from http://www.forbes.com/profile/sheldon-adelson/

¹²Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House, op. cit, para. 12-13

¹³Ibid

¹⁴Ibid

¹⁵Ibid

¹⁶Ibid

¹⁷Ibid

¹⁸Stelter, B. (2015, June 25). Univision dumps Trump, cancels Miss USA over his comments about Mexicans. CNN Money. Retrieved July 14, 2016 from http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/25/media/univision-donald-trump-mexicans/

¹⁹Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House, op. cit, para. 12-13

²⁰Zakaria, F. (2016, May 5). The Problem With Trump as CEO of America: Government Is Not a Business. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 15, 2016 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-problem-with-trump-as-ceo-of-america-government-is-not-a-business/2016/05/05/146cc1a0-12f5-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html

²¹Garber, M. (2013, January 29). Hillary Clinton Traveled 956,733 Miles During Her Time as Secretary of State. The Atlantic. Retrieved July 22, 2016 from http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/hillary-clinton-traveled-956-733-miles-during-her-time-as-secretary-of-state/272656/

²²Center for American Progress(2011). Power of Progressive Economics: The Clinton Years.

Retrieved July 22, 2016 from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2011/10/28/10405/power-of-progressive-economics-the-clinton-years/

 

²³Nuzzi, O. (2015, July 6). Donald Trump Sued Everyone but His Hairdresser. The Daily Beast. Retrieved July 26, 2016 from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/06/trump-sued-everyone-but-his-hairdresser.html

²⁴Oreskes, B. (2016, July 16). Clinton Pledges Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United Ruling. Politico. Retrieved July 26, 2016 from http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/hillary-clinton-citizens-united-225658

²⁵Somin, I. (2016, May 5). Why Hillary Clinton Is A Lesser Evil Than Donald Trump. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 26, 2016 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/05/why-hillary-clinton-is-a-lesser-evil-than-donald-trump/

²⁶Ibid

²⁷Geraghty, J. (2015, July 30). Donald Trump’s Odd Fixation on Seizing Middle Eastern Oil Fields. National Review. Retrieved July 29, 2016 from http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421825/donald-trumps-odd-fixation-seizing-middle-eastern-oil-fields-jim-geraghty

²⁸2016 Electorate Will Be The Most Diverse in U.S. History. (2016a, February 2). Retrieved from Pew Research Center: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/2016-electorate-will-be-the-most-diverse-in-u-s-history/ft_16-01-26_eligiblevoterchange_diverse/

²⁹2016 Electorate Will Be The Most Diverse in U.S. History. (2016b, February 2). Retrieved from Pew Research Center: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/2016-electorate-will-be-the-most-diverse-in-u-s-history/

³⁰Ibid

³¹Ibid

³²Ibid

³³Ibid

³⁴Illing, S. (2016, March 15). Here Lies the Secret to Trump’s Rise: Political Science Can Explain the Appeal of Donald Trump’s Bullshit. Salon, pp. Retrieved August 8, 2016 from http://www.salon.com/2016/03/15/here_lies_the_secret_to_trumps_rise_political_science_can_explain_the_appeal_of_donald_trumps_bullshit/