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How a country suddenly went 'crazy rich'
Indonesia, the nation with the world's largest Muslim population, is home to a rapidly growing middle class. As Rebecca Henschke reports from Jakarta, this has given rise to a striking phenomenon - the so-called "Crazy Rich" Indonesians.
[...] The hashtag #crazyrichsurabayans started trending on social media after a local teacher at an elite school shared anecdotes about the family of one of her students - tales of them travelling to get their vaccinations done in Japan and of holidays in Europe. She is now writing a book about it and there is talk of a movie.
Recently, the luxurious lavish wedding of a couple from Surabaya was dubbed the ultimate Crazy Rich Surabayans event by local media. Hundreds of guests from Indonesia and abroad attended, it was reported, and all were said to have been entered into a prize draw for a Jaguar sports car. The groom, it's understood, had proposed with the assistance of a flash mob in front of hundreds of total strangers at the Venetian Macao resort. Many members of Indonesia's growing upper-middle class, concentrated solely in the west of the country, have money their parents would never have dreamed of - and most think it's normal, and perhaps even essential, to show it off.
Following a massive reduction in the country's poverty rate in the last two decades, one in every five Indonesians now belongs to the middle class. They're riding a commodities boom - the burning and churning-up of this vast archipelago's rich natural resources, including logging, palm oil, coal, gold and copper. This, combined with aggressive domestic spending, low taxes and little enforcement of labour laws, means that those who know how to play the system are raking it in.
"Surabaya is the capital of East Java province in Indonesia. Surabaya is the second-largest city in Indonesia with a population of over 3 million within the city proper and over 10 million in the Greater Surabaya metropolitan area, known as Gerbangkertosusila."
Indonesia is the world's 4th most populous country with over 261 million people as of 2016.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @01:16PM (2 children)
There was an government-owned oil boom in the 1970s, and the government now invests their profits in stock markets around the world, so as to hand out basic services to citizens. The result is that people live simple lives, and have lost all manner of productive skill.
If not for tourism and a stock market boom over the last 10 years, Norway would be well on its way back to poverty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:05PM (1 child)
i wish Scandinavian countries didn't have such a love for government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:34PM
It's not at all surprising that they do: Scandinavians have a long history of raping and pillaging wealthier people to buy off loyalty from the masses of the tribe.
A government is just the sophisticated organization of this behavior.