Those that control things are doing fine in the personal lives and live in bubbles. The masses will have to manage on the scraps the elite leave for them. Pakistan isn’t a modern country in the sense of providing adequate social services, it’s more of a 19th century Russian empire like state.
In the late Soviet period they had a joke regarding the two different kinds of currencies, one of trade with the world and one for internal use. “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work”.
So in Pakistan the equivalent must be that the government pretends to provide services (such as education) and people pretend to pay taxes.
This is a mess of the elites own making, and should the overall economy collapse, it is them to blame. No sense “casting perils at swine” that don’t want to hear reason; no sense serving an oligarchy that is insincere with the public, the world and themselves.
So we the common people aren’t the “you guys”. It would more apt to ask “the elites”. The elites expect the world or circumstance to allow them to kick the can down the road, and if times get tough most of them will flee.
Btw, before anyone says that I too am an overseas Pakistani, I must say my family were farmers, lower middle class, and we left 40 years ago, made in America because of American meritocracy and rule of law keeping everyone we dealt with in line.
The common people don’t seem to have much of a margin to pay higher taxes for no additional social services benefit. There is little sincerity from the elites to the masses.
This is also why a ground swell of political mobilization doesn’t seem to happen, because if it did it wouldn’t stop at small changes. The system is so imbalanced, that nearly a French Revolution of social changes would change the culture, and the elites can’t afford to allow that to happen. I’m not even talking about the violent aspects, but the purpose people feel in their lives, the way religion is exploited to distract the masses, the petty politics of slow rolling infrastructure development, etc.
But having said all this, it was the French Revolution and the more egalitarian society that came afterwards that made France the power it is today, still the most capable European nation. Pakistan too can take off if it reforms its social contract. The pent up potential is there as that Goldman Sachs analysis pointed out.
