UAE 25 Years Ago

A guest post by Mark Vaughan

Mark Vaughan, a working economist who has been auditing my Economics of Education class, sent me this email about his experiences in UAE a quarter century ago. Reprinted with his permission. Enjoy!

UAE, 1971

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I enjoyed your posts on the U.A.E.  When I worked for the Fed, I served on a team that shared best practices in capital-market risk measurement/management with examiners/supervisors around the world.  I typically got to spend two full weeks in a country, and the hosts made sure the team got to sample fully the food, culture, and entertainment during off hours.  In January 1999, I spent two weeks in the U.A.E. working with representatives from the Arab Monetary Fund.  Even though 25 years has passed, it sounds as if not much has changed.  I agree it is a country that works. 

Two incidents stand out from my visit.  I got my haircut in the hotel barbershop.  The barber was from Turkey (which was considerably more open then than today).  He and his family were in the U.A.E. on a guest worker visa.  We had a nice long solitary chat (i.e., the door to the shop was closed, and no one else came in while I was there).  He went on and on about how much he and his family loved the U.A.E. (offering many detailed reasons, so it did not sound canned).  I asked him if he missed Turkey’s relative openness.  [Just that morning, I had purchased the latest edition of THE ECONOMIST in the hotel gift shop.  Stories had been physically cut out of all the copies.  When I got back to the U.S., I looked at those issues to find out what had been cut – a story about the U.A.E. and a couple of stories about other Arab countries.]  He looked at me as if I had two heads.  He said words to the effect of “only an affluent American would ask a question like that.”  To him, all that really mattered was the economic opportunity U.A.E. afforded.

Second, (and I wonder if this is still true), I had to go through T.S.A.-style security to get INTO the country.  My driver explained that the government takes a very hard line on drugs and pornography, and the searches were designed to keep that stuff out of the country.  The next day I went to an internet café to email my family.  The place was full of young Arab men looking at porn on the internet.  From that experience, I came to understand why many devout Muslims loathe the West.  It’s almost impossible to insulate your country/society from “the decadent West.”

Again, I very much enjoyed your class, and I hope to see you in another down the road.

Sincerely,

Mark