If you know Egyptians, you understand that eating less is not an option. If we're going to be importing so much to fill our stomachs, we either need to have something to export or import less of everything else. Every Egyptian must understand one simple fact of life. We're living in the era of peak oil. The fact that we have a country that has energy self-sufficiency is a major draw for investments. Oil is an international currency that can be traded for anything – including food. If we're subsidizing the gas of a citizen driving a Mercedes, we are burning up dollars which can be used to import wheat. Leveraging our energy supplies to feed 82 million mouths should have a much higher priority than indulging the lifestyle of our richest citizens. Food security can be achieved by leveraging our energy supplies. In the foreseeable future, nations that have ample energy resources will always be able to trade those excess supplies for food imports. Reducing our imports of manufactured products is imperative. That will require a massive industrialization program – even at the cost of withdrawing from international trade treaties that make domestic manufacturing uncompetitive. Our biggest foreign exchange earnings are tourism, the Suez Canal, Gas exports and human capital. None of those sectors would be negatively impacted if we refused to allow Chinese or Korean products to flood our markets. With all due respect to our Asian brothers, we'll play hard-ball when we have to. If a trade treaty doesn't work to our advantage, we'll tear it up. At Egypt's current stage of development, free trade is a bad contract and we should only engage in regional and bilateral agreements that align with our development needs and create domestic employment opportunities. Protectionism is not a dirty word and ignoring the Chinese challenge amounts to economic suicide. All you have to do is survey the thousands of closed plants in the United States to get a sobering lesson in what happens to a country that turns a blind eye to low priced Asian imports. In this regard, the Mubarak administration has allowed our domestic markets to be swamped with products that can easily be manufactured domestically. Consider cars – there is no reason that we can't insist that they be partially or completely manufactured or assembled in Egypt. No fully assembled car should land in our ports. No harm will come to the Egyptian economy if there was a complete moratorium on the import of passenger vehicles for five years to allow the domestic car industry to catch up and thrive. The same rules will apply to almost every household appliances, electronics, cell phones, you name it. If we can't add value to a manufactured product before it reaches an Egyptian consumer's hands, we'll simply stop importing them because we can always use that money to import food. When it comes to small projects, setting one up should require no more than getting a business license, a certificate that the business does not violate zoning laws and will have no negative environmental impact. Beyond that, eliminate all taxation for single family owned and operated businesses. It shouldn't matter whether you're operating a taxi or have a retail operation or operate a carpentry workshop. If you're an owner operator and have no employees other than family members, you won't get taxed. Universal health care for every citizen and voluntary pension plans for the self-employed will give incentives to individuals to create their own jobs. To trim down the public payroll, special incentives like early pensions and subsidized loans should be given to government employees who volunteer to give up their jobs and venture into the private sector. How much gas gets burned up every day transporting government workers to jobs where they produce next to nothing? Paying them to stay at home would at least save the gas and reduce congestion. More importantly, it will give them the incentive to seek productive employment in the private sector. To minimize the risk, give them the option to return to public service in five years if they can't manage to make it on their own. Create special incentives like teacher training programs and offer small business loans to public sector employees who agree to leave government service. Overpopulation is another problem where the Mubarak regime has failed to come up with creative solutions. Here again, the only way to fix the problem is disincentives to having more than two children. I'll just give a few examples. Only two children from each family will be allowed to enter public universities – no exceptions. Workers will have to pay mandatory health insurance starting with the third child. If a family has two children – none of them will be obliged to serve in the military. On the other hand, if they have two girls and a boy – the boy will have to serve. Preference will be given to families with two children in every program the government subsidizes whether its access to public housing or prestigious employment opportunities in police academies or the foreign ministry. To fund these programs, government revenues must be enhanced by levying tariffs on luxury imported goods, real estate taxes on units over seventy meters, registration fees and higher gas taxes for private vehicles, progressive income taxes, restitution of ill-gotten gains, capital taxes on the sale of property, taxes on interest and dividends, mandatory progressive taxation for universal health care and contributions to pension plans from private sector employees and the self-employed. Add in the revenues from the Suez Canal, gas exports, foreign aid and tourist taxes and the government will have more than enough to finance these projects. As the economy grows, tax revenues will increase and the government will also have the ability to borrow at home and abroad. Most Egyptians, including the wealthy, would not resist higher taxation if they believed that government revenues were properly administered in an ambitious ten year national project to triple the standard of living and create a service economy second to none. That's why restoring the faith in clean government is job one and, to put it mildly, the NDP lacks the credentials to apply for that job. The ruling National Democratic Party has not only failed to deliver the goods – it is constitutionally incapable of improving its dismal records. The party has a resume that includes thirty years of experience in misadministration and squandering opportunities. And Egyptians will carry the burden of the government's failures for generations to come. It is in every Egyptian's interests, even those that have prospered under the current system, to have a peaceful transition to a democratic government free of the taint of corruption and liberated from the burden of emergency laws. We not only need free unions, minimum wages, anti-poverty programs and a quantum leap in the quality of government services; we need to embark on a national program to reignite the passion of the masses. To borrow a slogan from the Obama campaign, Egyptians need change they can believe in. There is no prospect that any meaningful change will come by way of the NDP because they've provided us with three decades of amble evidence that they're incompetent administrators and corrupt bureaucrats motivated by personal agendas. Every government official must understand that we didn't hire him to boss us around or lord over us – his job description comes under the title of ‘public servant.' That's an ethos that is alien to the NDP. No leader is indispensible, no party has a monopoly on solutions and no political program will satisfy all Egyptians all the time. That said, it's past time for Egyptians to hire a more competent team of bureaucrats to manage the nation's affairs. So, if Mubarak's challenge to the opposition is to come up with alternative solutions – let there be no doubt that we can rise to the challenge. We've got 82 million Egyptians and we need 82 million solutions. Egypt's problems can and will be solved – it's just a question of whether it will take another decade or another century. The worst thing that has happened under the Mubarak administration is that people have lost hope. You hear it on their lips – “malhash hal” – there is no solution. That's Mubarak's real legacy. Maybe that's why he challenged the opposition to offer solutions – because his party has also embraced the conventional Egyptian wisdom of “malehash hal.” The fact is there are plenty of solutions – the NDP just lacks the imagination, the competence and the will to deliver the goods. And even if the NDP was to suddenly evolve and adopt innovative programs, Egyptians have lost confidence in their leadership. The ruling party has lost its legitimacy and can no longer rally the nation. Mubarak and the NDP should step aside and give Egyptians a chance to recover and prosper. Ahmed Amr is an Arab-American economist, a political commentator and the former editor of NileMedia.com. He is the author of “Cilantro Dreams”, “The Sheep and the Guardians” and “My Name is Not Leila” BM
