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.
Recently:
Palm Oil was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead it Unleashed a Catastrophe
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Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe.
The fields outside Kotawaringin village in Central Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, looked as if they had just been cleared by armies. None of the old growth remained — only charred stumps poking up from murky, dark pools of water. In places, smoke still curled from land that days ago had been covered with lush jungle. Villagers had burned it all down, clearing the way for a lucrative crop whose cultivation now dominates the entire island: the oil-palm tree.
The dirt road was ruler straight, but deep holes and errant boulders tossed our tiny Toyota back and forth. Trucks coughed out black smoke, their beds brimming over with seven-ton loads of palm fruit rocking back and forth on tires as tall as people. Clear-cut expanses soon gave way to a uniform crop of oil-palm groves: orderly trees, a sign that we had crossed into an industrial palm plantation. Oil-palm trees look like the coconut-palm trees you see on postcards from Florida — they grow to more than 60 feet tall and flourish on the peaty wetland soil common in lowland tropics. But they are significantly more valuable. Every two weeks or so, each tree produces a 50-pound bunch of walnut-size fruit, bursting with a red, viscous oil that is more versatile than almost any other plant-based oil of its kind. Indonesia is rich in timber and coal, but palm oil is its biggest export. Around the world, the oil from its meat and seeds has long been an indispensable ingredient in everything from soap to ice cream. But it has now become a key ingredient of something else: biodiesel, fuel for diesel engines that has been wholly or partly made from vegetable oil.
Finally we emerged, and as we crested a hill, the plantations fell into an endless repetition of tidy bunches stretching for miles, looking almost like the rag of a Berber carpet. Occasionally, a shard of an old ironwood tree shot into the air, a remnant of the primordial canopy of dense rain forest that dominated the land until very recently.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Palm oil is often associated with tropical deforestation above all else. However, this is only one side of the story, as agricultural scientists from the University of Göttingen and the IPB University Bogor (Indonesia) show in a new study.
[...] For the study, the researchers evaluated results from over 30 years of research on the environmental, economic and social consequences of oil palm cultivation in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They combined the results from the international literature with their own data from Indonesia, which they have been collecting since 2012 as part of an interdisciplinary German-Indonesian Collaborative Research Centre (CRC 990). Indonesia is the largest palm oil producer and exporter in the world. A large proportion of the palm oil produced in Indonesia is exported to Europe and the U.S., where it is used by the food, fuel and cosmetics industries.
The research data show that the expansion of oil palm in some regions of the world—especially Indonesia and Malaysia—contributes significantly to tropical deforestation and the loss of biodiversity. Clearing forestland also leads to substantial carbon emissions and other environmental problems. "However, banning palm oil production and trade would not be a sustainable solution," says Professor Matin Qaim, agricultural economist at the University of Göttingen and first author of the study. "The reason is that oil palm produces three times more oil per hectare than soybean, rapeseed, or sunflower. This means that if palm oil was replaced with alternative vegetable oils, much more land would be needed for cultivation, with additional loss of forests and other natural habitats."
Banning palm oil would also have negative economic and social consequences in the producing countries. "It is often assumed that oil palm is only grown on large industrial plantations," says Qaim. "In reality, however, around half of the world's palm oil is produced by smallholder farmers. Our data show that oil palm cultivation increases profits and incomes in the small farm sector, in addition to raising wages and creating additional employment for rural laborers. Although there are incidences of conflicts over land, overall the oil palm boom has significantly reduced rural poverty in Indonesia and other producing countries."
Journal Reference:
Matin Qaim, et al. Environmental, Economic, and Social Consequences of the Oil Palm Boom [open], (DOI: 10.1146/annurev-resource-110119-024922)
Previously:
(2018-12-18) Indonesia: A Country That Became "Crazy Rich"
(2018-12-01) Palm Oil was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead it Unleashed a Catastrophe.
(2017-03-15) A Makeover for the World's Most Hated Crop
(Score: 4, Interesting) by corey on Wednesday December 19 2018, @01:36AM (4 children)
Every time I see an article about Indonesia, it starts with "Indonesia, the nation with the world's largest Muslim population". I'm not sure why this needs pointed out. Should they not be rich? Is the author trying to direct the thoughts of the reader to some built in conclusion about the country? What's religion got to do with it? Why not, Indonesia, the world's biggest archipelago dotted with rich rainforest and volcanoes?
There's a lot wrong with this article. I've been to Jakarta a few times. It's a lot like any other big Asian City. Yeah, there's indications of the rich people here and there but everywhere else you have poor people living in squalor. I had a guy with a monkey in the middle of an intersection try to make the monkey dance or something to get me to give him a few coins. Then during Ramadan there were beggars everywhere and the taxi driver said don't give anything because they prey on the fact that it'sa time to share with others and give to those in need. And that there are cops everywhere to catch you because donating to beggars is apparently illegal.
The article is a bit of an exaggeration, the country is not rich. Go to India and you'll see polarised rich and poor even worse.
The article should focus on the fact that Indonesia harbours most of the world's orangutans and they are destroying the habitat to plant lucrative palm. Not to mention Javan Rhino and Sumatran tigers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:19AM
Are these crazy rich Indonesians all Chinese, the Jews of Asia?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @01:13PM
Islam destroys culture, creativity, and productivity; for instance, the local Chinese in Indonesia were legally forced to adopt non-Asiany names so that Muslims would stop killing them.
As the other poster points out, the wealth being generated is probably due to the Chinese population there.
This is why it's worth pointing out that Indonesia is a Muslim country: Their sudden rise in middle-class wealth is exceptional; the exception proves the rule.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:06PM (1 child)
And so finding out the largest group of Muslims on the planet isn't a bunch of Arabs is probably surprising to many people in the West?
If you compared countries around the world, I think you would find the majority with an ultra-wealthy upper class, and a above average wealth middle class are in fact all Muslim countries. Whether that is due to the religion or in spite of it could be debated, but it is true that many developing nations with large amounts of natural resources are Muslim Majority now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:32PM
Those people in the Muslim world became wealthy almost exclusively because of the West's insatiable appetite for petroleum.
Add to this the fact that the West has developed innumerable technologies for improving the quality of life for the average individual (including petroleum-based products), and you have your explanation: The West made the Muslim world great, and the West will just as easily leave them behind if the Muslims choose to let go of the West's coattails.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:46AM
Money will flow from backward countries to those who encourage its use:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/reports-crypto-now-considered-a-commodity-on-indonesia-s-stock-exchange [cointelegraph.com]
I said this last year when the "big china ban" happened, they are only screwing over their country. Here was the post:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=21606&page=1&cid=569469#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:46AM
The seventy maxims [wikia.com]of maximally effective mercenaries.
#1 Pillage, then burn
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:54AM (3 children)
There are some rich people there, but it is generally a poor country..
Places like Norway, Singapore, Dubai, Qatar are crazy rich.. :-)
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @05:02AM
Google Ambahni wedding. Also google wealth disparity in India for context.
BTW, India may actually have more muslims than Indonesia.