Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Future glass half empty or full

Mauricio Cárdenas at the Brookings Institution has a short opinion piece on how Latin America has a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to achieve prosperity.  When it comes to Latin America, someone always seems to be saying there is a once in a lifetime opportunity, which reminds me of the joke about Brazil always being the country of the future.

What he is really arguing, however, is that Latin America is on the brink of a very difficult period.  Within about a decade, there will be a larger old population with a smaller working-age population to support it, the commodity boom will end, and foreign investment will fall from current high levels.

Ultimately, the argument is nothing new.  When commodity prices are high, then tackle tax reform, judicial reform, and education.  If you don't, then we will just a new iteration of the same old boom and bust cycles.

1 comments:

Defensores de Democracia 10:59 AM  

I agree with you Mr Weeks.

Only thing that I correct in your writing is this. I would change :

"tax reform, judicial reform, and education" for "education, judicial reform and tax reform".

And I would stress "Judicial Reform" because the Greatest Problem of Latin America is CORRUPTION AND BUREAUCRATIC LAZINESS AND USELESSNESS.

District Attorneys, Police Officers, Judges and higher up ( Fiscalias, Procuradurias, Higher Courts, etc ) are very extremely super corrupt and coward. They are also very lazy, useless bums, very Kafkian, Bureaucratic and Red Tape in dealing with the poor common man.

Big Economic Take off is impossible in such settings.

This is not only my personal opinion, but the opinion of many friends, many personal conversations and bad events, bad experiences.

It is also supported by reading newspapers, magazines, books, watching TV Station Programs, this is the opinion of many Journalists ( many of them already buried ).

It is useless and idiotic to blame the "Imperialists" ...

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