I can recall a time when Southern Europe–Spain, southern Italy and Sicily, and Greece had the reputation of being markedly poorer than the northern countries. I don’t know how much that perception was based in reality, but one generally thought of those areas as being largely agrarian or engaged in fishing. Of course there was the tourist business also, but one didn’t think of those places in the same breath with Rome, Paris, or London.
Am I correct in supposing that standards of living in southern Europe have improved greatly? And if so, would the success enjoyed there have any bearing on Latin America, which still seems largely mired in poverty and disfunction?
You paint with a broad brush, but yes, it’s fairly accurate.
Past politics.
Up to the 70’s, Spain, Portugal and Greece suffered from dictatorships in various forms. I’m up to speed on Spain’s history, but not the others, so bear with me.
Spain was not officially part of the axis powers during WWII. IRC, it was officially neutral, although the fascist government of course sided with Germany and Italy. Franco wanted to be part of the war, but since the country was torn after the civil war ('36-'39) and there really wasn’t a need, Hitler kept Franco out. This was, in the long run, bad for Spain. Come 1945, Franco remained in power, and nothing of the Marshall Aid went into the country. Up to Franco’s death in '75, Spain was remarkably poor, on an international level. There was no starvation, and every man (not woman) had Potemkin type jobs
Italy, on the other hand, got more of the Marshall money than Germany and pulled ahead during the cold war to be one of the major players in world economcs and is now one of the G8 countries.
EU
One of the main deas (apart from the stupid agricultural subsidies) is to pour money into poorer areas, to help them catch up. I’m going with Spain again.
Since the country became a member (along with Portugal) in 1986, things have been moving fast. The infrastructure of the whole country has been rebuilt, or - in some case - built in the first place. When I moved to Spain in 1991, it was not unusual to have to wait three months to get a telephone lined installed in your house. Roads were terrible, unionized jobs laft over from the Franco era made it very difficult to do business. A lot of monopolies from the totalitarian era were still in place.
Spain got a lot of aid from the EU, but had to open up the country for competition. There’s been a lot of complaint - people with cushy fake jobs were suddenly unemployed and when I lived there (91-94) the official unemployment rate was a whopping 15 %. In the region were I lived, it was close to 40 %. Transition was tough, but they came through and I think that Spain is now catching up. They’re not there yet, but very close.
It’s often said on SDMB that the U.S. saved Europe’s ass in WWII. To an extent, that’s true. However, I think the Marshall Aid was a lot more intrumental. Without it, a lot of European countries might have turned to the east for help and would now be in the same state Romania is.
This has been beneficial to the U.S. as western Europe is one of its biggest trading partners, dispite all the gripes about France, the French and their cheeses. Even if the EU is only a third of the strenght the U.S. is, my specualtion is that the cold war would have played out in a totally different way, had the U.S. not had semi powerful allies in Europe.
I think NAFTA is a step in the right direction, but it needs to be extended to the rest of the Americas.
I agree with you about the prescription to a certain extent, but I unsure that simply extending it at the moment will help much. Many of the primary products of Latin American countries tend to be the ones that America is most loathe to let compete with American producers, i.e., manufacturing and agriculture. Getting Congress to pass CAFTA was already almost derailed by those interests, and the countries involved were tiny. Can you imagine getting the farm lobby to agree to an actual free trade agreement with, say, Brazil? Even if we did have such an agreement, the marketplace would remain distorted by our own government assistance, and it seems difficult for Latin American countries to make headway. Without such liberalization, I think it will be difficult to convince Latin America to open up and make transparent their own economies in the same way the EU convinced Spain to. (An equivalent to the EU may work, but I don’t have much optimism. There doesn’t seem to be much impetus to any actual union beyond a talking shop, and politics seem to differ rather radically. Moreover, there still seems to be some rather poisonous regional rivalries).
Do you know anything about the political situation of Latin America now versus Southern Europe during that era? Specifically, how well do the institutions compare, and how different are the levels of corruption/rent-seeking? You mention phantom jobs, but not many more details. I am quite curious about this topic, and will be far more optimistic if the situations politics-wise are similar.
Another issue is the drug trade, and how that distorts some Latin American countries and their governments, especially in Mexico, Columbia, and Peru. I rather suspect that dealing with that issue will be a huge stumbling block indeed! (For what it’s worth, my prefered solution is legalization).
I’m not up to date on the situation in S.A. and I know that NAFTA is not like the EU.
I’m just saying that Ithink that one aspect of the EU that works really well is the rcher countries helping the poorer countries catch up. The benefit is a new market for our products and services. Volvo is Ford owned but quite a lot of the production is still done in Sweden, thuse creating jobs and wealth. 20 years ago, Spain was a zero market for Volvo. As it was for Ericsson, Electrolox, IKEA, SAAB (GM owned) - all Swedish companies.
There’s been a lot of bitching about how our taxes goes to paying for roads in Portugal and a big contigent on the left is very much opposed to Sweden being a member of EU. Without being able to grasp the macroeconomics, I think it’s been beneficial for us and will continue to be so.
I traveled throughout Sicily in 2000 and found it to be as modern as, say, Pennsylvania, if you allow for European things like lousy bathtubs. The cities and larger towns were completely up-to-date, while the countryside was a little backwards. That’s the only time I’ve been there, so I can’t make a firsthand comparison between different historical periods. I just remember being pretty impressed with it compared to what I had been led to expect based on travelogues, books and that sort of thing.
Oh, it’s gone past the “talking shop” stage. The nations of South America – all of them, with the sole exception of French Guiana (which is a department of France and therefore part of the EU) – are in the process of forming a South American Community of Nations, merging Mercosur and the Andean Community: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_Community_of_Nations They’re modeling the Community on the European Union, and they’re hoping for a full EU-type system by 2019, including a common parliament, currency and passport. (All of which features are distinctly absent from NAFTA and DR-CAFTA.) This might be wildly optimistic, of course. No country was admitted into the EU until it had achieved a certain level of internal political stability, with no serious prospect of regime change on the horizon – and many South American nations clearly have not reached that point; viz. recent events in Bolivia. But there’s no doubt they’re planning to try to put together a real international economic-political union in S.A.
So, despite the hopes of U.S. neoliberals and neoconservatives alike that the entire Western Hemisphere might join in a NAFTA-style Free Trade Area of the Americas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTAA), it appears what we’re seeing now is the emergence of two separate trading blocs in the Western Hemisphere:
The northern sphere: NAFTA nations (Canada, U.S., Mexico) and the DR-CAFTA nations (the U.S., the Dominican Republic, and most of Central America – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-CAFTA). All dominated by the United States economically and, to some extent, politically.
The southern sphere, the SACN – which is distinctly independent of and, potentially, at loggerheads with the U.S.
There’s also:
CARICOM – the Caribbean Community and Economic Market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caricom) – another EU-inspired federation, of most of the island nations of the Caribbean, with the notable exceptions of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. It remains to be seen whether CARICOM would fall within the U.S. or SACN orbit in any trade competition or political conflict.
Oh, it’s gone past the “talking shop” stage. The nations of South America – all of them, with the sole exception of French Guiana (which is a department of France and therefore part of the EU) – are in the process of forming a South American Community of Nations, merging Mercosur and the Andean Community: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_Community_of_Nations They’re modeling the Community on the European Union, and they’re hoping for a full EU-type system by 2019, including a common parliament, currency and passport. (All of which features are distinctly absent from NAFTA and DR-CAFTA.) This might be wildly optimistic, of course. No country was admitted into the EU until it had achieved a certain level of internal political stability, with no serious prospect of regime change on the horizon – and many South American nations clearly have not reached that point; viz. recent events in Bolivia. But there’s no doubt they’re planning to try to put together a real international economic-political union in S.A.
So, despite the hopes of U.S. neoliberals and neoconservatives alike that the entire Western Hemisphere might join in a NAFTA-style Free Trade Area of the Americas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTAA), it appears what we’re seeing now is the emergence of two separate trading blocs in the Western Hemisphere:
The northern sphere: NAFTA nations (Canada, U.S., Mexico) and the DR-CAFTA nations (the U.S., the Dominican Republic, and most of Central America – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-CAFTA). All dominated by the United States economically and, to some extent, politically.
The southern sphere, the SACN – which is distinctly independent of and, potentially, at loggerheads with the U.S.
There’s also:
CARICOM – the Caribbean Community and Economic Market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caricom) – another EU-inspired federation, of most of the island nations of the Caribbean, with the notable exceptions of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. It remains to be seen whether CARICOM would fall within the U.S. or SACN orbit in any trade competition or political conflict.
IMO, the best solution would be, not the FTAA, but an EU-style federation for the whole Western Hemisphere. But the U.S. would never allow that or participate in it, because in a Western Hemispheric Union Parliament, with representation based mainly on population, U.S. members would be in a minority relative to Latin American and Caribbean members. Can’t have that!
Sweden’s a small market (only 9 million) and our industries are totally dependent on export. The right decided that being pro EU is good for business (thinking it would be a one way street) and made a firm stand pro EU. The left kneejerked and decided that there was a potential group of people opposed to the EU, that would give them support (which actually happened), giving us a strange situation that the red and greens from Sweden in the EU parliament are on the same bench as people from other countries who’re pro EU.
Interesting . . . I understand in the UK, some left-wing Labour MP’s are against the EU because it institutionalizes international capitalism. But that doesn’t appear to be the thinking underlying the Swedish left’s position, which is purely opportunistic – or have I missed something?
And how, I wonder, would the left-right divide in Latin American politics fall out on the issue of supporting or opposing the Community of South American Nations?
Nope. But I’m sure that anyone on the left side of the fence would not agree with me.
Considering the U.S. messing about with internal S.A. politics for over 100 years, and especially what was done during the cold war, I wouldn’t be surprised if the left in S.A. would be very wary of a union of all the Americas, i.e. including U.S. and Canada, whereas a strictly Latin American union would probably meet their approval. Just speculation though.
