It’s hard for Americans to sneak across the border to Europe. Most people can’t hold their breaths for so long.
Darnit! Google Maps lied to me!
There are numbers of baby boomers retiring in Mexico. I’ve visited Yucatan four times in the last year and a half looking at property and there are people from many countries retiring in that area. You can live in some areas in reasonable safety and inexpensively.
With an hour’s drive you can go from where people live in marble halls to communities with dirt floors. The contrast is jarring.
Corrupt politicians have sold much of the most appealing property in the south of Yucatan to foreigners for very low sums. The mismanagement is truly disturbing. But then we have plenty of that in the states.
I never thought living in the Midwest that I’d live long enough to hear gun shots outside on a Sunday evening or have to stay indoors because of air pollution. Or be advised to only eat the smaller of the local fish and then only once a week because of contamination.
Recently in a neighboring house in my once middle-class and quiet community a woman stabbed one of her children’s fathers, threw him in the street and set him on fire. Gee. We just aren’t used to that around here.
My husband and I have a number of community building/preserving skills between us and wouldn’t mind taking our help where it would be appreciated.
Are there inconveniences? Of course. We have them here. But I wouldn’t mind only two radio stations or using communal transportation among the scarcities of technological services. I’m thinking if I have to live in the increasingly negative conditions here I’d like to have a nice beach available and no snow!
What’s with the quotes around “owned”? The land was part of Mexico. That’s why we had to fight a war of aggression to take it away from them.
It was also barely settled. If anyone owned it, it was the Amerindians who populated most of it: the Mexicans had no better claim than we. It was part of Mexico because, as I said, Spain calimed it (again, without having any real backing to their claim). Most of it was unsettled - which is exactly why the Mexicans allowed in Americans. As it turned out, they then freaked and tried to stab the settlers in the back (having realized they weren’t very loyal). Those in Texas in particular decided they’d had enough.
Now, if you want to argue the mexican-American War was morally unjust, I might agree. But the land Mexico claimed was mostly theirs on paper, not in fact, just as the Louisiana Purchase didn’t really belong to France, nor to America until long after the “legal” transfer.
Revisionist history at its finest. Obviously, all the villages, towns, and cities in that land that have Spanish names were named by their American founders–I should have known that.
Texas, briefly: American settlers were allowed into Texas on the condition that they become loyal Mexican citizens, convert to Catholicism, and hold no slaves. The bulk of the American settlers agreed to those conditions, yet had no intention of following any of those conditions, as you admit. Yet it was Mexico that stabbed them in the back? That’s a bewildering view.
Do you actually need someone to explain in detail how difficult it is to move country? Even with completely ignoring emotional attachments (like say, friends and family) it isn’t just a case of getting up and going.
Just renewed my passport. Spot me the airfare and I’ll write when I get work.
Thanks for the link. If my maths is right, they’re predicting a mean nominal GDP growth of 5.7% for Mexico over 40 years compared with 1.75% for the UK and France - and that includes ten years at the end when Mexico’s GDP per head is projected to be higher than the UK or France’s is now.
In other words, they’re predicting that once Mexico becomes a rich country (in today’s terms), it will still sustain a long-term growth rate about double what any of today’s rich countries have ever managed in practice. The same methodology applied to other countries results in the prediction that in 2050 South Korea will have a higher GDP per head than any European country (and only a hair behind the US), that Russia will be richer per head than France or Germany and that Mexico will slot into the list just behind Japan and just ahead of Italy.
Methinks that Goldman Sachs have been a little optimistic in predicting rosy trends into the future. As you say, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Not really. 5.7% nominal growth is only slightly above what the rich countries have achieved in the past couple of decades. And don’t forget that Mexico will probably a faster growing population over that period compared to France and the UK.
Coming back to the OP, if Afghanistan could achieve the economic level of Mexico in 30 years it would count as one of the biggest success stories in economic development. Most people don’t have a good sense of relative degrees of poverty in the world and as mentioned above Mexico is a lot richer than truly poor countries like Afghanistan.
Its not just wealthy countries. Middle income countries are becoming more and more appealing. I’d rather be gainfully employed with a decent future in India, China or Costa Rica than chronically unemployed in the US. The lack of decent jobs in the US is making middle income foreign nations seem appealing, assuming you could find work there.
A war that was started by a cowardly ambush of 70 US troops by 2000 Mexican cavalrymen. A war that was ended with a treaty in which MEXICO WAS HANDSOMELY PAID FOR THE LAND THEY LOST. Start a war, take the consequences! But you just go on believing that Atzlan crap. See where it gets you. Would anyone seriously argue that the southwestern United States would be better off now under Mexican rule? Contrast San Diego with Tijuana for your answer. :rolleyes:
It wasn’t an ambush, and to be fair, the US troops were on land that Mexico had claimed, and Polk had send those troops to the disputed land in the hope that something like that would happen.
To quote Charles Portis, they stole all of mine!
The actual Spanish population was minimal at best. In fact, I can’t actually find any significant records, an indication of how sparse settlement was in most areas. remember too, that it’s easy to put Spanish names on a map, but those “cities” were then little more than missions or forts. For example, in the entirety of Texas, there were fewer than 8, 000 Mexican citizens before American settlement.
The Texans (Anglo and Mexican) effectively established their own government. While they were supposedly required to convert, those laws were also simply not enforced. nevertheless, Texas remained loyal until the Mexican government, undergoing its periodic breakdown into anarchy, got more aggressive with its demands for control.
You’d be surprised. Countless American go to East Asia or the Middle East, where any college graduate (and non-graduates with fake diplomas) can get well-compensated teaching jobs in places with a low cost of living. I have a number of friends who are making between $1,000 and $3,000 a month and basically saving all of that. You can go there, work a few years learning a different culture and occasionally living like a rock star, and easily save enough to pay off your student loans.
Anyway, many of the economic migrants coming in to the US are basically doing the same thing. They come work in the US for a few years, live cheap, and save up enough money that they can upgrade the house, pay the kids’ school fees, etc. I was surprised at how many people I met in Guatemala had been to California and returned. At first I was surprised that any would voluntarily leave the US with our streets of gold and all, but then I realized that was an awfully US-centric way of looking at things. They just wanted to make some money and go back to their old lives but a bit more comfortably.
Like reminding the Anglos that slavery* really was* illegal in Mexico. (Of course, the empresarios brought more than Anglos to Texas. There were German & Irish settlements, where the right to own slaves was not so ardently desired.)
Of course, after the Texas Revolution, the Anglos began ensuring that Tejanos were forced out of power. (But they didn’t manage to get rid of them entirely.)
I’m probably as surprised as you are that a Google image search of “Mexico City” and “slum” will bring up pictures of Mexico City slums.
I’ll help you find some nicer places in Mexico City, while you look for images of economically depressed places in the US:
San Angel
Interlomas
Tlalpuente
Polanco
It’s almost as if some people are wealthy and some people aren’t…
Mexico has been around a lot longer than the US. It’s obviously the culture there that needs changing. The best thing that could have happened to Mexico economically is that the US had annexed it when they grabbed the land in the West (granted, Spanish claims were weak, as has been pointed out). But it didnt, so we’ve got this basically retarded country on our southern border flooding us with unwanted workers. I am sure Mexico will get around to fixing its problems … manana.