While news about headless torsos, drug barons and illegal immigration dominates the headlines, and much of the Obama administration agenda south of the border has focused on law enforcement, economists say another story is one of roaring trade.
September 10, 2012
"The growing middle class that is fast becoming Mexico’s majority is buying more U.S. goods than ever..."
"... while turning Mexico into a more democratic, dynamic and prosperous American ally."
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37 comments:
Lets hope.
Michael Barone talked about this about 4 years ago and said this would begin to stanch the flow of illegals.
PS Anyone who knows anything about Mexican history will applaud this. Too bad it's coming about 200 years late.
Excellent!
So now all the unemployed blue-collar workers in Obama's "Summer of Recovery, Summer III" can illegally immigrate to Mexico, hang out at "Casa Depot," and send their wages home?
Good news is coming from the Southern Department of the North Amurican Province of the World.
The planners see no National boundaries. Instead they see the vectors of the winds of dollar units exchanged for goods as they circle the globe.
I blame Wall Mart.
Well, good for Mexico.
We can provide any additional Mexicans if they run short.
Hooray!!!
As much as everyone wants to blame the US, the immigration issue was always primarily one of bad government to the south.
Just like with the Irish, when the nation prospers, the people prosper with it and no longer want to leave just to find work.
And the people shouldn't have to leave the home they love, so it's a good thing when they can make good money, stay with their families, and live the life they want to. Without being told they have to do jobs no one else wants to do for pay no one else will accept.
Or should I say, just as it was with the Irish.
This is good news no matter how you slice it. I would chalk up at least part of this phenomenon to Mexican nationals returning from sojourns in El Norte. The lousy economy has sent a lot of them home, and they take with them an admiration for the wonders of American consumerism. I can picture Mexicans demanding a Costco in their neighborhood.
If this is really happening it signifies a sea change in the Mexican social order. Traditionally a 5% minority controlled 90% of the wealth, and enforced ethnic and economic strata prevented social mobility. I think a yen for egalitarianism may be another US import. This would be a great thesis for an international relations paper.
Are Mexicans better off now than they were four years ago. Probably so, but it's just possible that the post has an agenda in promoting and exaggerating their progress.
From two months ago in the same paper:
"The middle class in Mexico does not look like its counterpart in Europe or the United States. Its members make far less money. At the lower rungs, they are more vulnerable. They are less educated. Many lack formal employment, leaving them with no insurance, health care or pensions.
Persistent inequality in Mexico means that its emerging middle class remains closer to the country’s poor than to its affluent."
Well I hops Mexico gets better, we sure don't need another Afghanistan or Zimbabwe here!
I hope all of South American also straitens up (but I hear Argentine, who went Socialist like what Obama wants, is going down the tubes.
Already lost all their pension funds when the Argentine government nationalize them and spent all the money. They are now broke and have a huge deficit.
Sound familiar?
There is a Europeanized middle class in Mexico and has been for years. There is also an underclass that is heavily Indian. They have been exporting that underclass to the US since the 1980s. Maybe they have learned some skills here and are returning.
Drug money is still money. It has a positive effect on the economy since it is not taken primarily from productive local citizens, but still gets spent on good and services provided by them. It's a cash transfer from other countries with minimal waste on bureaucracy. Drug lords and their soldiers buy lots of stuff. Maybe we should tax drugs.
Mexico buys stuff from us, the Chinese don't.
Tariffs on ChinaJunk..
No tariffs on Mexico.
(Reagan of course straightened out the Japs when they were cleaning our clock but sending our exports back or holding them in port until they spoiled by throwing quotas on a range of Japanese products. Reagan was no great believer in Free Trade for Freedom Lovers!! when it was America taking it up the ass.)
Pretty much everyone here agrees: This is unconditionally good news. And I'm in with that. Having a prosperous border neighbor is definitely something to cheer on.
much of the Obama administration agenda south of the border has focused on law enforcement...
...by providing Fast & Furious weapons to drug cartels to ensure MexLEO job security (the increased risk to their lives is a regrettable and unintended consequence, I'm sure)
That's a good thing. I would like to see them have the same standard of living as the US. But with better food and better markets.
It's been going on for some time. I have met many Mexicans on vacation skiing, and they have lives much like ours.
It's actually kind of offensive for Hickenlooper to be surprised by this.
Maybe this has something to do with
the growing Mexico middle class buying more U.S. goods.
North American Free Trade Agreement - Wikipedia, the free ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement
NAFTA is working... a Clinton achievement with republican cooperation.
Biden says "show me your budget and I'll show you your priorities"...
Trade is not a priority in this administration...
Obama is more interested in... how did rh put it?... figuring out who to hit over the head and take his stuff.
I'm a Canadian living in Mexico and this article is largely correct. There is a minimum wage in Mexico, but it is pretty low. There is also a problem of low levels of education. But yes, the middle class is growing fast. Mexico is mercifully free of the kinds of problems the US is having now: no mortgage credit market to speak of, so no bubble. No huge pension liabilities and a GDP growth rate that the US would envy: in the 4% range.
It could be that we attracted most of their poor but energetic people, many of whom then returned home with their savings after the 2008 panic and collapse of home building.
I used to spend quite a bit of time in Ensenada, about 60 miles south of San Diego. There was a fair middle class then, 30 years ago. The prosperous Mexicans sent their kids to the US for school. There was a girls school in San Gabriel whose students were mostly Mexican girls.
Ensenada also had a dreary underclass. A number of us got involved in the medical scene there. We helped equip the city hospital which was woefully underequipped and staffed with new graduates of Mexican medical schools that have no clinical experience. In spite of this an orthopedic surgeon I knew reattached an amputated arm in the 1970s.
In Mazatlan, a larger city, there were three levels of medical care. Private hospitals that were purely private and not too well equipped. Social Security, paid out of payroll deductions and the city hospitals which got the dregs.
A lot of well off Mexicans came to the US for care that was at all complicated. A lot of them had US second homes in San Diego or Texas. Many Mexicans from the border region shopped in the US.
The drug wars are inconveniencing those people a lot. Too bad Obama is doing nothing to help.
This Mexico news also provides hope for those of us who might want to or need to escape our Obama transformed USA home some day but wouldn't want to go Singapore or china.
Canada is going in a different direction than our country too.
Yeah, don't believe it. Every few years people start writing these articles about the burgeoning middle class in Mexico.
It's entirely b*llsh*t. All of it.
Been there, many, many times. The place is corrupt to its core. Hopelessly, terminally corrupt.
Why do you think the Nortenos threw in with the Texans and became Tejanos?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see Mexican culture for what it is and for the threat it is to American culture.
Well, good for them. :)
Not hearing much about NAFTA this election, are we?
Cedarford said...
Mexico buys stuff from us, the Chinese don't.
Tariffs on ChinaJunk..
No tariffs on Mexico.
(Reagan of course straightened out the Japs when they were cleaning our clock but sending our exports back or holding them in port until they spoiled by throwing quotas on a range of Japanese products. Reagan was no great believer in Free Trade for Freedom Lovers!! when it was America taking it up the ass.)
Didn't have anything to do with japans industrial protectionism , did it?
When they run out of our money, they'll be back.
They build a lot of GM cars down there, that's for sure. Big hunking Suburbans by the thousands.
This doesn't explain why over a million people from Mexico and other nations in Central and South America travel to escape the conditions in their homelands. Not only do they emigrate, but they are willing to enter another nation illegally, displace a native population, and thereby contribute to the corruption of another culture. The circumstances in their homelands must be quite negative in order to motivate such an extraordinary exodus.
".n said...
This doesn't explain why over a million people from Mexico and other nations in Central and South America travel to escape the conditions in their homelands."
The illegal immigrants are from the underclass who are illiterate peasants. There used to be more educated immigrants when Mexico was less prosperous but that group now stays home. The ones we get now "claim" to read at second grade level. They are strongly Indian in heritage.
Michael K, that's exactly right. Been living down here for five years, and the middle class is growing, and they're not leaving. But the underclass is growing faster.
Just take a look at the parking lots of the malls in Brownsville, McAllen, and San Antonio just before Christmas and play spot the license plates. Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon sometimes outnumber Texas. And then there are the arrogant, wealthy Mexican ladies pushing their way around the Galleria in Houston.
Where is today's Rasmussen update?
Muchos mexicanos own homes in Vail. The bilingual signs on the slopes are not for norteamericano-mexicanos they're for Mexicans who fly up there. In airplanes. All the time. Back and forth. Completely geared out, as if snow were a perfectly normal thing.
More don't mean much. The only absolute number was 53rd in corruption -- but the trend line is up!
The Palms Villas offers the best choice for Mexican Buyers, with four, two story buildings divided by a club house and a pool as well as Departamentos en McAllen, Casas en mcallen, Condominios en McAllen.http://www.thepalmsvillas.com/
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