Onions, Potato, EBay, Uber: The Paradox of Iranian Economy
Economy and Society Blog, Kodoom.com Editorial:
Here is an economic paradox facing Iranians: While Iranian authorities inside Iran have a hard time controlling the price of basic food staples such as potato and onions (news link in Kodoom Farsi news aggregator), Iranians outside Iran are now successfully running some of the world's largest corporations or research programs - CEO of Uber (news link), former CEO of Youtube (news link), former COO of Twitter (news link), CEO of Capella Space (news link), former Vice-Chairman at Citigroup (Hamid Biglari), former VP of Google (Omid Kordestani), former VP of Apple (Sina Tamaddon), Director at Facebook (news link), Founder of Ebay (Pierre Omidyar), State Representatives (news link), and venture capitalists (news link).
Some Iranian officials blame the super inflation on recent historic floods and foreign currency shortage resulting from new sanctions imposed by Donald Trump. Reformists, however, blame the economic crisis in Iran on the theocratic government system causing the massive exodus (drain) of some of the world's best scientific and business brains like those now running Fortune 500 companies listed above. Unlike some of its secular allies such as Syria, Lebanon, Russia and Venezuela, Iranian government promotes religious Sharia laws mandating head cover for women and banning alcohol, certain pop music and dance parties. Even Iraq and Afghanistan do not mandate Hijab (head scarf) for women as strictly as in Iran.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Iranians are among the highest educated, highest income minorities in the Unites States. Official data shows about 60% of Iranian Americans have college degrees and the mean household income of Iranian Americans in 2010 was $65000 a year.
In October, Iranian and Iranian American social media were outraged by insulting comments made by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of S. Carolina (a supporter of Donald Trump) about Iranian genes. Speaking on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning, in response to his Democratic colleague Elizabeth Warren, Graham joked that if he took a DNA test, it would probably show that he was "Iranian" and "that'd be, like, terrible!" (News link).
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