And while I’m on it, here is another idiot who keeps popping up in my blogroll:
According to a new World Bank report [ht: sm], on inequality in South Asia, among the United States, Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam, the probability of moving out of poverty within a generation (from 2005 to 2010) was highest in Vietnam.
Just to put a point on it: upward mobility from poverty was the same in the United States and Bangladesh.
The freak forgets to mention, however, that the US poverty is a tad different from poverty in Bangladesh.
There is nothing that annoys me more than the way some pseudo-progressives brandish about the word “Bangladesh” whenever they need to feel sorry for themselves. I have no idea why, but it’s always Bangladesh they evoke when they want to make some excruciatingly stupid point about how hugely miserable they are. Not Myanmar, not Laos, not Vietnam, but always Bangladesh. Since the folks who keep prattling about Bangladesh know nothing about any of these countries, I’m guessing they choose the one whose name has the greatest number of syllables. A longer word makes them feel smarter and gives some weight to their idiotic statements. “See? Ban-gla-desh! It’s a long word I have mastered, so I must definitely know what I’m talking about!”
Obviously, the people who keep using Bangladesh to stand for “the most horrible place on Earth where everything is horrible and now let’s all feel sorry for me because of how horrible Bangladesh is” have never been to Bangladesh and will not be able to find it on a map on the first try. They haven’t read a single book by a Bangladeshi author and have no Bangladeshi friends. Yet they love to make use of the word “Bangladesh” to make points and win arguments. Curiously, the same people love to denounce colonialism with a passion and quote Edward Said like he’s their Jesus. They all agree that Orientalism is bad, yet see no problem with using “Bangladesh” as a rhetorical device.
Clarissa's Blog 
The reason for Bangladesh as an example is generational. After Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan in a war in which large numbers of civilians were slaughtered by the Pakistani military the country had a severe famine due to the destruction of the war. George Harrison organized the first huge international charity rock festival for Bangladesh. So the Concert for Bangladesh in the early 1970s forever seared the image of starvation and suffering in that country into the minds of people of a certain age. Whereas after WWI parents had told their children to finish eating their food because there were starving children in Armenia in the early 1970s it was Bangladesh. For people a little older like myself it was Cambodia due to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge bringing about large numbers of deaths by hunger that was the example. By the time I was in High School, it was Africa, specifically Ethiopia then undergoing an artificial famine modeled after the one in Ukraine in 32-33. I am not sure what country parents point to now when they tell their children to finish their food.
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Oops I meant for people a little bit younger not older. I was a baby during the Concert for Bangladesh. I was a grade schooler during the Cambodian genocide.
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“I am not sure what country parents point to now when they tell their children to finish their food.”
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They hadn’t yet stopped in Romania in the ’90s, definitely. (Somalia and Biafra, if you’re curious). I was a very logical kid so I’d quietly wonder howme finishing or not finishing my pilaf would have any effect on the availability of food for the poor African children.
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Here is the information on the concert which publicized the plight of Bangladesh in 1971 and made it synonomous with poverty and misery for everybody in their 50s today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concert_for_Bangladesh
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If this is all about holding on to some memory of some stupid concert back in 1971 and passing that on generationally, then it’s even worse than I thought.
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What did you think it was about? The image of Bangla Desh (1971) spelling as the epitome of human suffering and misery was greatly propagated at the time for months throughout at least the North East US (I was in Boston) to sell concert tickets, albums, and movie tickets to raise money for humanitarian relief. It was the model for all subsequent international charity rock concerts such as Live Aid for Africa in the 1980s.
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I’m still convinced that for today’s 20-year-olds who don’t know who the Beatles were it’s about the number of syllables in the word Bangladesh.
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It’s less about the concert per se but rather the association of Bangladesh and horrible grinding poverty and hunger and people passed that on in any number of ways with no conscious association with the concert.
I think it was Henry Kissinger who famously referred to the country as a “basket case”.
It’s made some progress but not nearly enough and if there was ever a country in desperate need of all kinds of birth control it’s Bangladesh – it’sa little smaller than the state of Illinois with about 12 times as many people.
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For people who weren’t alive in the 1970s, probably they looked inside their cotton garments realized they were made in Bangladesh and this: Bangladesh factory collapse
The day before the collapse, the managers threatened to withhold a month’s pay from workers if they didn’t come to the building with a large crack in it. The banks and the shops in the building were evacuated. Over a thousand people were killed, over 2500 were rescued alive from the building during the course of three weeks. Survivors marched in the streets for their back wages and the deceased relatives had to provide DNA proof of their relatives’ death.
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Bangladesh has major problems for two reasons: It used to be part of Pakistan (sorry) and it’s on a major flood plain. Every time there’s a major flood, people migrate over the border into India. India stopped giving jus solis citizenship in large part because of the illegal immigration from Bangladesh. The rich Bangladeshis I’ve known were arrogant bully braggarts who used to brag about how they put schoolmates in the hospital and got away with it because their parents were filthy rich.
Also Bangladesh ranks pretty high on corruption. “Getting out of poverty” doesn’t mesh well with “low official literacy rates” and “high levels of corruption.”
This is why I laugh when I see charts like this: Maternity Leave Around the World So many people work in agriculture or as servants and are unlikely to have some benefit like “maternity leave” because that involves paperwork and bureaucracy. You think that every middle class family in Pakistan fills out papers for government mandated maternity benefits for their maid or cook? Government employees and people working knowledge jobs for multinationals might have this benefit but the number is so small as to be infinitesimal. It’s even funnier when you consider that all of these multinational manufacturers relocate in large part because labor is cheap enough to make sweatshop work a good proposition and they don’t have the labor law protections that US has/had. It’s myopic and intellectually dishonest.
They just stick those countries in for shock value, “Look this primitive nation vs. the U.S. Why aren’t we doing better than this primitive Muslim nation?” On Vietnam, “The supplier of boat people and this country we had a war in are doing better than us.” Mexico:”The nation which supplies our most of our illegal immigrants has government maternity leave.” Of course nobody says this out loud, good progressives that they are.
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“They just stick those countries in for shock value, “Look this primitive nation vs. the U.S. Why aren’t we doing better than this primitive Muslim nation?” ”
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One should always be free to bang one’s dish. This detracts attention from Boko Haram and IS.
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