I've always been attracted to the pictures I've seen of Yemeni cities, like this one from foreignpolicy.com. The underpants bomber got his training here and it is one of the poorest and least literate countries in the Arab world. A 2007 figure for unemployment in Yemen was 40%!
The largest Yemeni population in the US is around Detroit. Strange that that was the underpants bomber's target.
I wonder what the unemployment rate was in Yemen in, say, 300 BC.
ReplyDeleteDid they track those things back then? ;-)
ReplyDeleteOne assumes it was zero in 300 BC because everyone was a farmer and therefor super-busy all the time. But maybe not. Hmm, interesting question, Wade.
I wondered if I could find anything on the web on unemployment in 300 BC Yemen. The closest I could find was a discussion of the reasons Romans left Rome between 300 BC and 300 AD:
ReplyDeleteThey were practically untouched by revolution and tyranny, and the growth of luxury cannot have affected them to the same extent as it did the nobility. Yet even here the native stock declined. The decay of agriculture. . . drove numbers of farmers into the towns, where, unwilling to engage in trade, they sank into unemployment and poverty, and where, in their endeavours to maintain a high standard of living, they were not able to support the cost of rearing children. Many of these free-born Latins were so poor that they often complained that the foreign slaves were much better off than they — and so they were. At the same time many were tempted to emigrate to the colonies across the sea which Julius Caesar and Augustus founded. Many went away to Romanize the provinces, while society was becoming Orientalized at home. Because slave labour had taken over almost all jobs, the free born could not compete with them. They had to sell their small farms or businesses and move to the cities. Here they were placed on the doles because of unemployment. They were, at first, encouraged to emigrate to the more prosperous areas of the empire — to Gaul, North Africa and Spain. Hundreds of thousands left Italy and settled in the newly-acquired lands. Such a vast number left Italy — leaving it to the Orientals — that finally restrictions had to be passed to prevent the complete depopulation of the Latin stock, but as we have seen, the laws were never effectively put into force. The migrations increased and Italy was being left to another race. The free-born Italian, anxious for land to till and live upon, displayed the keenist colonization activity (Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire, pp. 200, 201).
http://www.cephas-library.com/catholic_race_change_pt_1.html