America is Not the Problem

Paul Driessen hits the usual points in talking about how screwed up Mexico is, and in doing so, he posts a factoid that should be shouted from the heavens:

Low-skill wages today are less than 15 percent of what Mexican workers can earn in the US, and half of its 106 million people still live in poverty.

Fifteen Percent. Fifteen Percent. The same lousy, ten-hour, fruit-pickin' job that pays 4 dollars an hour in California pays 60 cents in Baja. And we are lost as to how this may be. We look at the poverty to our border and don't even wonder about it, because it's always been there. Since the Conquistadors showed up, Mexico has been a land of horrifying, endemic, turn-J.P.-Morgan-into-a-Communist poverty.

But the Communistas can't seem to improve the place. And neither can the capitalists, it seems. Mexico is trying both at the same time, and neither is working. The oil industry is owned by the Mexican Government, who sells it to the developed world, and especially the United States, and uses the profits to...pay more government workers? Improve oil production? Meanwhile, whole areas of Mexico are without electricity.

And if all that were privatised overnight? If the government oil industry became Mexicoil, Inc? The same would occur. Cash-crops cannot save economies that don't empower people to make use of it. When there is nothing that will allow people to transferr the assets they have into liquid, they may not advance except by the benefice of the government, which depends upon either political connections or revolt.

Property Rights. Rule of Law. Universal Suffrage and Education. It's all we've ever needed.