Who wants to be a dictator at 82?

Ok, I can understand if you have never been a dictator before, then it might be cool to be the King of a real country at any age.  But, not if you have been the dictator already for 30 years.  Who wants to put up with angry mobs and constant assassination attempts at 82, especially when you can simply step down and not get tried?  I think at 82, it’s about time to reap the fruits of the 30 year dictatorship.

But seriously, the riots in Egypt should be a concern for all of us, because the uprising is the result of a society that has been plagued with  poverty, unemployment, rising food prices and the huge disparity between rich and poor.  Demand for jobs and food is the root cause and demand for democracy is the Egyptians’ solution for those problems.  40% of Egypt’s 80 million residents live in poverty.  When people get desperate and have nothing to lose, riot and social unrest follows.  Social inequality is a tough problem for any dictatorship or democracy to solve.  China has been peaceful without democracy, because the economy and standard of living of the regular people have been improving.  But social inequality has been rising along with China’s economic output.  Income inequality is also rising in the western world and the greatest income gap between rich and poor among Western industrialized nations is found in the U.S.