Posted on 09/10/2007 11:17:19 AM PDT by kellynla
Mexico really needs to reform its asinine "nationalistic" corporatavist laws that would make Mussolini proud. Having a close economic relationship with the largest economy in the world means nothing if it is difficult to own property or enterprises outright and the laws encourage "locally owned" monopolies in the guise of "protecting the people."
Were it not for being next to the US, Mexico would be Bolivia (which also has oil, but is a real basketcase), though not quite Haiti.
Chavez at work.
Thanks for the most intelligent post on this thread. Unfortunately, every thread on Mexico devolves into “those evil il-lay-guls” with said people calling Mexico a terrorist state akin to Syria or Iran.
Natural gas, contrarily, traded up a bit more than 0.40/MMBTU as the news made its way into the mkt. This was not entirely due to the Mexican pipe story: there's a low in the Gulf that might become a TS or better, also.
I, too, grind my teeth sometimes at the assumptions people make about Mexico, which is no model state, but neither is it as horrible as often depicted. The elections of Fox and Calderon were a triumph for the Mexican people and for democracy.
“Calderon is a good man.
Of course, the only bad things people on this site can say about President Calderon is that he “supports the illegals” through rhetoric. In reality, he is focused on reforming the tax system and Mexico’s protectionist/cartelist economic system, more so than spending his days and nights obsessing about the “evil gabachos.”
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Using our country as a shit house for his human offal. Sorry, not my idea as a good man. Doing everything within his powers both legally and illegally to undermine the sovereignty of the US (Matricula cards etc, aiding illegals to cross our border). Again, forgive me if I don’t share in your assessment of him being a good friend. He is certainly no ally of the US. The riff-raff he helps across our borders has killed more US citizens since 1990 than the 911 attacks, the Gulf War and this latest dust-up in Iraq put together.
He actively supports the sponging off of the American taxpayer and our country...using it as a pressure relief valve for his own crapper.
He’s a brown trout in a corrupt outhouse.
He’s not a good man. Not by a long shot.
....oh, he’s also a hypocrite. Notice the difference between his brand of border security on his southern border.....as compared to what he does on his northern border.
Oh, remittances are drying up as the U.S. economy falls into a recession...he is going to have a lot on his plate in the near future.
Actually, there are plenty of non-Islamic terrorists in Mexico. Chiapas comes to mind.
I realize that as Americans, all we typically think of when it comes to Mexico are illegals, drugs, and tacos. However, Mexico is a country with alot of potential, and even countries with long histories of corruption and stagnation have pulled ahead once the reformers got their way (Italy, South Korea, and Greece come to mind, as well as India in more recent years).
I support a strong and prosperous Mexico, and support all of the reformers (such as Calderon) who are swimming against the tide in order to do so.
For all of their faults on the immigration issue (which is a religion to alot of folks on this forum), Fox and Calderon are godsends compared to Salinas, DelaMadrid, Trujillo, and Echevarria (the latter of which was an anti-semite and mass murderer if you consider Tlateloco, in addition to being a corrupt socialist).
The PRISTAs (in slow decline, but still there)/PRDs and the nationalists of all parties are retarding Mexico, just as they would if they ever got in charge of the US.
Fox was a little on the flaky side, personally, which I think weakened his effectiveness. Calderon seems very good on the whole, and as a result the Mexican left is out to get him.
Something that should be pointed out to people on this forum is that Chavez hates Mexico almost as much as he hates us, and would love to infiltrate it and take it over. I think the explosions were probably the work of FARC related bands of leftists, no doubt supported by Chavez.
In a nutshell, by any standard you choose to judge it, the “relationship” between Mexico and the US is parasitic, not symbiotic. The people who are getting screwed from both sides are the US taxpayers.
Let's raise the discussion value about these things with an historical perspective. Maybe we can do better this time around the block?
Mexico's Constitution does not have to be radically changed. The only amendment that truly prevents privitization of a national industry applys to the oil industry. Laws on land ownership, to say nothing of incorporation laws, do not require a repeal of any portion of the Mexican Constitution (some may say land/property is tricky, but the MC is deliberately vague on this issue, which creates as many problems as opportunities).
After traveling throughout Mexico, and talking with everyone from businessmen to farmers to politicians over the years, I really believe that the key issues holding Mexico back are laws that favor protected cartels over free enterprise, the "drag of the south" where industrialized, relatively prosperous states such as Nuevo Leon basically support such socioeconomic basketcases as Chiapas and Oaxaca, and the lack of technical training for the working classes. The latter issue has become especially important as basic, unskilled assembly work has moved over to Asia.
As for the "rule of law", I believe that the best that could be hoped for is a greater degree of transparancy. Good old fashioned corruption will never go away, but can be mitigated. I also think that the corruption factor is highly overrated in terms of retarding economic development, as the cases of Italy, India, Portugal, and Taiwan have proven.
All of the above are "doable", but where I do think the cultural aspect comes into play is when we take into account southern Mexico, which is largely rural, very indigenous (Indian languages are often more common than Spanish) and more culturally isolated from the developing world than the north. The North/South divide has become a very contentious issue in Mexican politics. If you look at a map of which states voted for Calderon, and which states voted for Obrador, it would geographically mirror the old Union/Confederacy divide in our own country. Let us not forget that all of the riots that broke out after Calderon's victory occurred in the south.
Bump...
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