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The Dubai Debt Trap

economist.com

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Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#291

Post by midjji »

retube wrote: post #5

All I ever hear is horror stories about this place: environmental destruction, structural racism, serious abuse of human rights, culturally hyper conservative, corrupt legal system, plus it's absurdly hot. I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.

So the why is pretty simple, effective wages after taxes(which are pretty much zero), are 3-7 times higher there.

It does not matter if you are a Pakistani prostitute, or a silicon valley programmer, an Indian construction worker, or a British engineer, they will pay you a salary three to seven times higher after taxes than what you make at home.

Further, if you dont have the merits for some well paid job, but they need someone to do it right now, they will pretend you do. So junior programmer with a half finished degree and half a year of experience as a web dev, but they need a senior engineer. Please welcome our senior engineer, and yeah the salary is 3-5x a senior engineer position. The downside is that when they call, you say yes today, dont ask about anything other than salary and start on monday, no matter where you happen to live at the moment or if you are still employed etc.

Oh and if you work there and are white, you write Christian on everything. That way, if you get thrown in prison, you can convert and ask to be released. Its not easy, but it is one of the few ways to get out if it really goes to shit. If you work there and are arab or look arab, you are muslim, and the right kind. If you are black... dont, just dont...

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#292

Post by [deleted] »

ghshephard wrote: post #269
Teracotage wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imprisoning debtors has been a request from British banks to operate in the country. Yes, banks wield vast powers but when you are playing with billions you gotta pay to play .I lost my life savings in that crisis, for no reason at all on my part. It was the greed of banks and many fraudsters . I was rightfully imprisoned in Dubai, which is very rare to admit, I was drunk on a public beach and kissing my girlfriend i…

" I was drunk on a public beach and kissing my girlfriend in Ramadan," Oh man, the trifecta - Alchohol, Ramadan+Beach + With a woman not a member of your family. In the three+ months I was in Dubai in 2015, I was nervous even shaking hands in a business meeting with a woman (and obviously would never do so with a local woman, couldn't even be in an elevator alone with one) - was instructed very strictly about appropr…

[deleted]

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#293

Post by 3pt14159 »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #47
JohnGB wrote: post #7

One of many reasons that I will never enter the UAE. There is no rule of law, and so no protection if anyone decides to charge you for anything. I've read of women being raped and then being charged for reporting it which essentially admits sex outside of marriage, or of foreigners who get driven into by a local and then charged as if they were the ones being reckless. That's not even going into their de facto slaver…

After some bad experiences I will never visit an Arab country again. They'll have to do something against the sexism, constant heckling and the bad state of law before I even think about going there. Or they can do whatever they want, they don't have to change just for me. I'm 6 ft 6 and I have a blonde wife who's just a bit smaller. Even though we behaved very polite and dressed like locals it was like we had a big…

How about having an international bribery conspiracy pinned on you?

Happened to my pops because he, a German-born Canadian of Turkish and German descent, refused to pay bribes. I was actually conceived while he was out there in Saudi Arabia with my mom and they came back to Canada to have me but not before a giant RCMP investigation kicked off that ended up in Canadian parliament because courts didn't have jurisdiction at that time.

The only reason he didn't go to jail was ONE GUY, a young Lebanese dude with a family and a nascent green card to America had the balls to go against everyone else in the conspiracy. He freely testified that he was the one that actually carried the cash between the parties involved—implicating himself and risking his family's future—and he knew just who was guilty and who wasn't and the one guy who wasn't in on it was my father.

Later, he met with some American officials and they said something along the lines of "don't worry about your green card, we want more Americans like you" to the Lebanese dude.

Later my parents made him and his wife my godparents and we talk on the phone even to this day.

But think about it. Dozens of well-off people conspired to pin prison time on some random person from Canada who wouldn't hurt a soul.

Fuck. That.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#294

Post by midjji »

titanomachy wrote: post #196
apohn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I like to travel so I like to feel like the rest of the world is welcoming. I'm not making any assumptions about you in this post, but just making a comment. I think the challenge here is that "welcoming" is relative to who you are, including your financial status and skin color. There are countries people talk about on HN and Reddit which are super welcoming, everybody is friendly, great for remote work, taking an…

Thanks for this comment. As a white-ish person who has mostly traveled with other white people, I was totally blind to this and made the same judgement: that these countries are just inherently welcoming to foreigners.

Try dressing like a slob and borderline bum next time you visit the city next to where you live, then do the same dressed in an expensive tailored suit and matching watch(just get some gaudy knockoff on amazon, its not like anyone can actually tell). The difference in how you are treated is just nuts. Its not that these countries are inherently welcoming to foreigners, its that the service sector of pretty much all countries are welcoming to people who are very wealthy. (or rather people who can plausibly fake it)

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#295

Post by [deleted] »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #276
dogman144 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qatar is not Dubai, but when was the last time you heard of 6,500 migrant workers dying building a group of soccer stadiums/olympic village/large public works in the USA? That is to say, that region's rep comes from a bit more than stereotypes or a filtering bubble.

Quoted post unavailable.

[deleted]

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#296

Post by morelisp »

netsharc wrote: post #272
lm28469 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called whataboutism and is a logical fallacy. If you feel good directly interacting with literal slaves I'm sure you would resort to this kind of mental gymnastic though

I would feel bad seeing the construction workers in the Middle Eastern countries (I have only been outside the airport in one of those countries once, for a few hours), but I'll be honest, I know my electronics and clothes are probably made by someone underpaid and overworked, but I don't feel very guilty about it. And I would hazard a guess that you have similar electronics and clothes, and you're not worried about…

> welcome to the class!

Members of all classes in the west benefit (in some ways) from from this arrangement, but only members of the capitalist classes are capable of changing it without revolutionary action. So, I know what I can do, but the first step involves rekindling class consciousness in the west which is rather a large order.

In the meantime while I do that, I can also not hit up a party in Dubai, and I think that's good too.

Or will you make the argument that confiscating laborers' passports is "quite good" for that geopolitical neighborhood?

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#297

Post by dogman144 »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #276
dogman144 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qatar is not Dubai, but when was the last time you heard of 6,500 migrant workers dying building a group of soccer stadiums/olympic village/large public works in the USA? That is to say, that region's rep comes from a bit more than stereotypes or a filtering bubble.

Quoted post unavailable.

Good way to grossly simplify the Iraqi civil war and ROE!

I'd agree with "IIRC the USA invaded Iraq, which set of a decades-long civil war fueled by sectarian violence and incompetent application of various nation building and counter-insurgency strategies." But that's a less clean catchphrase.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#298

Post by sg47 »

tim333 wrote: post #186
mbg721 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it compare to Singapore in that aspect? I get the same impression there when people talk about how it all works really well until it doesn't.

Singapore is much more laid back. Usually the worst that will happen with foreigners is they deport them. Apart from drug dealing which carries a death penalty but they only do that when the person is guilty so don't deal drugs there! I thought they were quite long suffering with "Briton arrested for not wearing a facemask in Singapore' because he said he didn't believe in them and wouldn't do it. I think he was jail…

US gives you 60 days to leave which is also an upheaval. People on visas are here for 15+ years and can have their entire lives uprooted in 60 days.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#299

Post by hutzlibu »

oh_sigh wrote: post #278
pradn wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to Egypt a few months ago and was met with incredibly warm people, with perhaps even an excess of hospitality. Yes, you do get charged extra for being a tourist at the tourist spots. But that's only a small part of the country. That said, I am Indian and was met as an Egyptian most of the time (people would start speaking to me in Arabic 70% of the time), so I had the benefit of fitting in well. The delicious…

I'm guessing you're also a male, since I've literally never heard a good story about a female traveler without a male companion in Egypt or the Maghreb in general.

Well, to my surprise I have indeed met some western women who enjoyed hitchhiking through morocco alone (or together with a female friend). But they knew what to expect and were very strong women, who did not flinch by sexism and aggressive avances and could put them down.

They might have been lucky, though. A moroccan women who also hitchhiked a lot just stated, the closer to mauretania, the more rape attempts.

Re: The Dubai Debt Trap

#300

Post by pierrebai »

apohn wrote: post #60
retube wrote: post #5

All I ever hear is horror stories about this place: environmental destruction, structural racism, serious abuse of human rights, culturally hyper conservative, corrupt legal system, plus it's absurdly hot. I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.

I say this as somebody who lived in one of those Middle Eastern countries for a good period of my life. I'm not a white person and at that time I didn't have a US/European passport, so I didn't lead an extra privalaged life there. Here's what you can hear about the USA. 1)Endless suburban sprawl, resulting in massive environmental destruction. Illegal immigrants heavily involved in the construction industry, leading…

Does the USA:

1) Arrest you without telling you why? 2) Give you no access to a lawyer? 3) Give you no access to translation? 4) Have a debt system in prison, forcing to pay with money you don't have? 5) Retroactively apply laws? 6) Extend imprisonment indefinitely on made-up charges? 7) Ruled by a monarchy?

All the things you list boil down to pointing out the US system is imperfect, not that the system is bad by its very nature and design. UAE cannot be fixed without changing its ruling and legal system. The US can be fixed by improving its existing systems to make them more fair.

Also, the reason you point the failing of the US systems is because media is reporting on those failures. Not foreign media, local ones.

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