Mexican economy

Great Debates
21

I hope your not buying all this silly talk about culture. The SD board is supposed to stamp out ignorance, not encourage it. Mexicans come to the US because jobs here, even minimum wage jobs, pay more than jobs in mexico. Mexican wages are about 60-180 dollars a week. Many businesses do open factories in Mexico, but they are costs associated with the cheap labor. Some of these are bad roads, bad electricity, no or bad water, etc…

The US does have lots of natural resources, but we also import large amounts of natural resources from other countries. I believe the US consumes about 40% of the natural resources of the planet with only 1% of the population. This is no accident. For about the past 200 years the governments of the first world nations have extracted labor and resources from the 2nd and 3rd world nations. This used to be done through slavery and colonialism, but now it is done through trade “aggrements” like NAFTA and GATT. These aggrements are designed to funnel wealth toward the 1st world (the USA, Western Europe, and Japan) and out of the 2nd and 3rd world. Any 3rd world nation that tries to use its resources for internal development is immediatly destroyed by force, and a new corporative government is set up in its place. These countries are not in any way democracies, and if the people try to change things they are usually killed by either US military forces or by their own dictatorial governments. (Note- these dictatorial governments also buy their arms from the US or Europen military industrial complexes)

A few examples you can do web searches on are Ziare (the congo), Chile, Nicaragua, East Timor, and of course Mexico.
About government regulation and the economy. Governments can control an economy by providing necessary infrastructure like roads, education, energy, and money supply BUT governments can also choke and economy by not providing these. The Mexican government is corporating with the US by aggreeing to the NAFTA and GATT reforms. This ensures that Mexico will remain a source of cheap labor for American manufacturing businesses. Some Mexicans dont like being “cheap labor” and cross the border looking for a better life. Staying in their country and “changing things” isn’t really an option, because the US and Mexican governments are happy the with things the way they are and they are willing to do what ever it takes (kill people) to keep them that way.

A few good sources about thi topic.
Jared Diamonds book Guns, Germs, and Steel
? book King Leopolds Ghost
web sites–
http://www.dreamagic.com/stan/letters.html
http://www.dreamagic.com/stan/letters.html
http://www.dreamagic.com/stan/letters.html
http://www.dreamagic.com/stan/letters.html
http://www.dreamagic.com/stan/letters.html
http://www.dreamagic.com/stan/letters.html

22

This is indeed the case. I recommend James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, written in 1995. Especially Chapter 8 for this particular topic, but the chapters on pre-colonial Native culture are also relevant. Net dollar flow from 3rd world countries, including foreign aid, is towards the 1st world countries (one of the reasons 1st world countries are so rich relative to the 3rd world).

In addition, this quote from George Keenan, head of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department in 1948, is illustrative:

The italics are mine, not the author’s. U.S. foreign policy, and the policy of the various colonial powers (Spain, France, England, Russia, Italy, Germany, and Japan) is made to enrich themselves, not out of some sort of altruism towards the colonized peoples. Note the decline of the great Iroquois, Inca, Muslim, Chinese, Korean, Indian, and many more civilizations after “colonization.”

U.S. policy in this regard can be seen in our repeated interventions in the Caribbean and Central America, and Mexico (1840s, 1914, 1917), with the possible exception of our most recent intervention in Haiti, which was probably really for humanitarian reasons for once. In Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, Iran in 1953, Zaire in 1961, and of course our “colonization” of the Phillipines.

People can manage their own culture pretty well, and if you want to claim that causes poverty, I’d like to see some evidence to support that. There is extensive evidence to show that colonial powers and 1st world nations, for obvious reasons, stack the deck so that the economic game favors them more than the relatively powerless colonies/3rd world nations.

Back to the OP, for a moment:

Unemployment doesn’t encourage entrepeneurs, their goal is to open successful businesses, not just give people jobs. Unemployment can be encouraged and entrepeneurship can be discouraged by the same economic factors.

…counting the seconds 'til this finds its way to GD…

23

Yeah, we are not going to agree on this one.

I cannot for the life of me see how poverty in Mexico can be caused by the US. Two hundred years ago both countries were pretty much in the same situation with the only difference of their culture. In the following couple of centuries the USA has created much more wealth than Mexico and I cannot see any other reason than culture.

Why didn’t Mexico do better and the USA fall behind? You seem to say the US is the bad guy exploiting the poor maexicans who are the good guys. I don’t buy that. Mexico is a sovereign nation just like the US and regulate what foreigners can do there. To blame America just does not make any sense. Mexico’s problems are caused by mexico.

Take Switzerland and some subsaharan African Country and switch their populations. All the Swiss resettled to Africa with only the clothes they are wearing and all the Africans from country X go to Switzerland and get to keep all the wealth there. I can guarantee you that in less than a generation Switzerland would be one of the poorest countries on Earth and there would be a rich country X in the middle of Africa. Or do you really think Switzerland full of Africans would continue to be rich?

Fidel Castro also believed Cuba was being exploited by the US and he expropriated all American assets in Cuba. Just look how far it has got Cuba. He expropriated the buildings and the machines and lost the people who could do something with them. The wealth of nations is in their culture and in their people.

The entire world started out poor. Some countries have built wealth and others have failed to do so. Those that have failed to do it cannot blame it on those that did. I cannot see how if I build a better house on my property through my own work that diminishes the guy living on a sheck on the next lot who is lazy and prefers not to improve his property.

This has been shown again and again. People who say black people in the USA are poor because they don’t have the means. Continually there are government programs giving some of them the means and yet most of them continue to be poor. It is their culture keeping them down, not their lack of anything. Asians arrive in the US with nothing and in one generation have it made while blacks have been here for multiple generations and still cannot make it. But blacks who change their attitude do succeed. That tells me something.

24

more good links here…
http://www.lbbs.org/chomsky/articles/9303-nation-nafta.html

and here…
http://www.lbbs.org/chomsky/articles/z9401-clinton-update.html
Wevets,

a few links about Haiti…

http://www.lbbs.org/chomsky/articles/z9411-dem-restored.html

http://www.lbbs.org/chomsky/articles/z9407-dem-enhance-2.html

25

lets say while your at work today I go to your house and steal your stuff. Now lets say I continue to do it for 200 years. Now I have lots of stuff, and I can make sumg remarks about why you are so poor. It must be your fault. It’s that damn sailor culture. You sailor people spend to much time drinking and whoreing.

Of course a buch of Africans couldn’t run Switzerland today. It took the Swiss 200 years to get where they are today. But lets say we reverse the drain. We could start sending 10% od switzerlands wealth and knowledge and labor to the African nation and continue this for 200 years. Then what do you get?

Hello? Anybody home? Cuba has gotten far. Cuba has been a success. Compare Cuba to a “free” island like haiti, jamacia, or the dominican rebublic. Cuba is a rock in the ocean with no oil. They can only do so much with what they have to work with.

If you use all the available 2x4s you can’t blame the other guy for not having a nice house.

26

Cuba has been a success??!! HUH? Have you been there? I have. Those people will risk their lives to flee that place. Some success! I know what I am talking about. Two guys I know just recently managed to escape Cuba and the wife of one of those is next. You go and tell them Cuba is a success.

Also, can you explain how the USA has stolen everything from Mexico? I just don’t get it. And why didn’t Mexico just “steal” from the US in the same manner?

I would add this: Countries and cultures and people who believe wealth is created by human labor (like the USA) are rich. Countries and cultures and people who believe, like you do and like Arab and other cultures do, that wealth is pre-existing and needs to be redistributed, are poor countries.

The US has created its own wealth, it has not stolen it from anybody. If Africa did not exist the US would be just as rich today. If the USA did not exist, africa would be just as poor (or, probably, poorer).

27

Well, at least we agree on that.

There are many causes of poverty in Mexico. U.S. actions are one of them. For example, you might remember that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, parts of Colorado, and California once belonged to Mexico. Which nation do you think started with more natural resources? A more recent example could be that of a hypothetical factory worker in Mexico: let’s say this person makes $5 a day, producing goods that are sold in the U.S. for $30. The portion of that $25 difference that doesn’t go to pay for raw materials, transport, and upkeep of the factory goes to the American investors that own the factory. That’s one way Americans get richer while Mexicans stay poorer. I’m not saying the investors don’t deserve to make a profit, I’m just pointing out that merely working won’t make the Mexican factory worker rich.

Are you sure? What about geography, industrial technology, urbanization, government (OK, I suppose government could fit into “culture” very broadly), the attitudes of other nations, etc.

The U.S. is not always the good guy. I find it hard to believe that the U.S. was the good guy in the Mexican-American War and the interventions of 1914 and 1917.

I’d venture to guess that most of them are. However, U.S. meddling in Mexican affairs has also caused some problems.

How can you possibly guarantee that?

The U.S. and Castro both made similar mistakes in Cuba: installing a totalitarian government. The U.S. has aided in installing dictators from Batista in Cuba, the Shah in Iran, Pinochet in Chile… and we’re surprised that these countries aren’t successful economically?

Often they can. In 1826 the Cherokee in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee owned over 40 mills, over 60 smithies, 8 cotton machines, 18 schools, almost 3,000 plows, and over 70,000 cattle, pigs, and horses. Later gold was found on their land. Their land and capital was taken at the bayonet points of federal troops, Georgia militia, and angry mobs; no compensation was given for property left behind. (see Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, p. 135-142.). It seems that sometimes the wealth of nations is built on thievery. Odd that most of the 1st world countries also had colonies at one point? I wonder how many of them paid the colonies back for resources and wealth removed?

It is readily apparent to me that the Cherokee did improve their property. Would the people of Zaire have improved their property if the CIA had not helped assassinate Lumumba in 1961 and helped install the despot Mobutu? I believe so; I am baffled by your accusation of them as “lazy” and unwilling to act in their own best interest.

28

Poverty in Africa is caused by the CIA? I don’t think so!

I was wondering if I would believe such a thing if I was dead drunk but I am not willing to do the experiment today. Maybe some other time. In the meantime we’ll just disagree amicably.

29

So you can have culture without wealth? What caused the decline in the Roman Empire? A change in culture? What caused that change in culture?
The industrial revolution? Culture? Again, what caused that change in culture. Why are Koreans in Japan so poor (about the same level as blacks in the US) and Koreans in the US are generally middle class? Did the culture change so rapidly when going between two countries?

It’s not good enough to just be rich in Natural rescources. You have to have the means to exploit them. For millions of years no one exploited the rescources of germany. A country like Congo produces a massive ammount of wealth. Unfortunately it all went to paying off debts and into the pockets of Mugabe. South Africa produced a termendous ammount of wealth. but, it all went into the hands of a wealthy few. On and on.

As for your argument on Cuba. That should be evidence enough that culture doesn’t create wealth. Two peoples. One in Cuba, one in America, identical cultures, yet one does well, and one does not. Could it be because of the sanctions? Because Cuba is a poor country with limited resocurces? Because of the material conditions? Or is it because of the “culture” which is identical.

30

Damn! I could have sworn I sent this thread to GD about two days ago. Sorry about that, everyone, I’ll do it now.

31

Identical culture? That would certainly explain the approximately equal adoration for Castro among both groups.

Obviously wealth influences culture. However, the reverse is a much stronger correlation. Where the British colonized, they also instilled an appreciation for a free market economy. While this does not excuse the myriad evils of colonization, it did leave the British colonies better off than most. India had the misfortune of the British also instilling their ideals of a welfare state before they left.

The single entity with the greatest power to harm the economy is government. Generally, the government of a nation is a reflection of its society. Yes, there have been examples of foreign powers meddling with the affairs of a country in such a way as to override the influence of that country’s culture. Those cases are the exception, however, not the rule.

Given the failure of every supposedly communist government ever attempted on this planet, I doubt that Lumumba’s regime would have fared any better than Castro’s, Lenin’s, or Mao’s. I don’t recall Nyerere’s (sp?) government in Tanzania faring much better, despite the relative absence of CIA involvement.

32

OK. We’re arguing at cross purposes here. The wealth of nations is founded on natural resources to some degree, but what the “culture” proponents are trying to argue, albeit with limited success, is that human resources are much more important than natural resources.

We can think of several countries with no natural resources that are neverless wealthy…Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong. We can think of wealthy countries with lots of natural resources, like the US. Or we can think of poor countries with lots of natural resources, like…well, we could start with “A” and work our way down the list.

Natural resources do not make a country rich, human resources do. The oil under the middle east was worthless for thousands of years because no one knew what to do with it. It’s not the oil that makes you wealthy, it’s knowing what to do with the oil.

And blaming the wealthy countries for the poverty of the poor countries makes no sense either. Were there factories, industry, engineers, etc. all through the third world before the colonialists came? No, and that’s why the Europeans were able to colonize…they had a social structure that gave them a power that other societies didn’t have.

But using the word “culture” to explain the difference really doesn’t help, it confuses things. Do North Koreans and South Koreans have different cultures? Not really, yet North Korea is a desperately poor totalitarian country…perhaps the closest the world has ever come to George Orwell’s vision of slavery. South Korea is wealthy, semi-democratic, free. What’s the difference here? We have two nearly identical starting places…both poor countries just becoming independent of Japan. One ends up rich, the other starving. “Culture” isn’t the right word to describe what’s wrong with North Korea.

33

Do you realize that the native populations of the US, Canada, and Australia are all but non-existant. Do you really want to say is the answer to economic sucess is to kill off the native populations? Perhaps thats why foreign aid isnt working…we are trying to HELP people rather than kill or move people and appropriate their land and resources for ourselves and calling it an economic miracle. I guess “untouched” means “alive”.

I think the main problem is that for one reason or another contries have been industrializeing at different speeds. That in and of itself is okay. People can live fulfilling lives in both industrialized and agrarian countries. But the industrialized nations have forced the countries that are not industrialized to live in an industrial world economy, even though the nations have not changed into fully industrialized countries themselves. In a sence we have nations trying to live in a world economy that doesnt work for them at this point. Why do you think we were so worried about communism? It is because it is very important to the health of a nation to be in a world econmomy that works well with their economy. Communists countries worked on a system that didnt trade well with the US and we knew we would lose out if that became the world economy.

The world is too far gone for countries to stay isolated, traditional and non-industrial. The best we can do is help them make that change with grace, not exploitation.

34

Gross oversimplification does not an arguement make. As if it weren’t bad enough that european “colonists” ran the country for their own profit, the totalitarian governments and wars that followed have not encouraged wealth creation. Mobutu is an excellent example, as his kleptocracy was one of the most notorious, making him personally one of the wealthiest people on the planet while his country stayed one of the poorest. The CIA’s role in aiding Mobutu was a factor, and the CIA does deserve some credit. Don’t forget that Mobutu couldn’t have reached power with only the support of the CIA. Also, as Lemur has pointed out, kleptocrats also rose to power in other nations without CIA support. The form of government found through most of Africa is not conducive to peaceful wealth creation.

OK, just let me know when you do. I want to tell my aunt and uncle to get out of Switzerland before you do.
:wink:

35
      • British colonization has much to do with a former colony’s success, but the timing is important: Hong Kong and India were both once British clonies, both kept the system of government in place that the British left them with at the time they left. In Hong Kong’s case, at the time the British belief was mostly unimpeded capitalism with some political control (which is what Hong Kong had until China came in). With India, the British belief (at home and abroad) at the time was political and economic control. As a result Hong Kong has been successful with little resources except people while doing business in India is [still] a bureaucratic nightmare and industry has generally failed to do well in spite of significant natural resources. - North and South Korea are another easy pair of examples. Two years ago South’s GDP per capita was about fourteen times the North’s, even though the South has almost twice the North’s population. The South does have economic freedom, that the North doesn’t. Culture has nothing to do with it: what culture wants their children to starve and die of measles? North and South Korea had the same people, the same natural recources, and started at the same time span and point in history.
  • In many cases massive government employment has become both the cause and the effect of excessive economic control. - MC
36

The British left Hong Kong in 1997. They just never cared enough to introduce Hong Kong to the wonders of the famed British welfare state. Somehow, without ever having had good intentions, the British ended up doing the people of Hong Kong an enormous favor.

Aside from the fact that Hong Kong seems to be the only aberration in the trend of the British leaving their colonies with contemporary British ideals about government, you are pretty much echoing the sentiments of Milton and Rose Friedman in Free to Chose. And Milton Friedman won a Nobel Prize in economics, so I’d say that’s pretty good company.

37

MC, I meant that the resources of a country are their people. By culture I did not mean eating spaghetti or noodles but the basic beliefs which shape the political system. (Sometimes like in the Koreas) they are imposed from outside.

Mainland China went back to the middle ages during the “Cultural Revolution” which Was their own doing and very contrary to what western countries were preaching.

Taiwan enjoys a standard of living way above that of China just because they have a better system. HongKong is another good example. A barren rock when the Brits took it over. Mainland China has realized that messing with HK would mean the end of it and they pretty much leave it alone. There is still total freedom of expression etc.

38

Ulysses S. Grant on the Mexican-American War:

"Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war which resulted as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory…

The occupation, separation and annexation were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union."

39

OK, now suppose that Mexican_American war had never taken place and today Texas New mexico and Arizona were part of Mexico. Do you really think that would make much difference? Mexico would be a superpower and the poor Americans would be crossing the border south looking for jobs?

I do not believe the annexation of those states had any effect except to raise their standard of living by becoming part of a richer country. If Texas were Mexican you can be sure it would be poorer while the rest of the USA would be pretty much the same.

40

**

Oh I see. So evryone who likes Castro is doomed to poverty, and those who hate him will be successful. We can take a look at everyone in the United States. Those who think he’s an ok guy will be poor, those who hate him will be wealthy. Or do you actually want to go and point out the cultural differences between these two people?

**

Ok, not a bad first step here. In fact, it is the deciding factor in culture. A good book is Guns germs, and Steel. Jared Diamond talks about the expansion of the polynesian people. What you see in that is a singular culture expanding over a vast array of natural environs. Depending on where they ended up, the culture changed. When they ended up in small areas with no natural rescources, they reverted to primitave states. When they were in areas with numerous rescources, they built wealthy empires and mutli-layered cultures.

**

OK. Now here is where we get into the fine splitting of hairs. I’m going to try to be as clear as possible. However, we are coming at the terms from different perspectives. Some confusion, and bad spelling, will be unavoidable. If you could define culture, that would be great.

On to the point. The british didn’t instill an appreciation for the free market economy. Many of the Indians hated it. They simply made India capitlaist. Once it was so, it couldn’t regress without serious complications. This was indeed, as you state, a positive development. But, it was based on material conditions. They built roads, increased production, created factories, so on. If they had simply come and preached about the wonders of British civilization, nothing would have changed.

**

True, more or less. However, I don’t see the government as part of “culture”. Also, the government can not stand in opposition to the economy for long. If it tries it will be destroyed. The state must come into line with the dominate productive methods. A good example of this is Russia and Germany in the 1900’s.

**

Also true.