Mexico Is Very Rich....But Why So Many Poor There??

Question

Read an excerpt from THE WASHINGTON TIMES:

"Mexico has grown richer. Its $600 billion economy is now the world's ninth-largest. Trade volume has nearly tripled since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), placing Mexico ahead of Britain, South Korea and Spain as a trading power.

Mexico's state-run oil monopoly, Pemex, is one of the world's largest oil companies. Beaches from Los Cabos to Cancun draw 20 million tourists a year, making the country one of the world's 10 premier vacation destinations.

The paradox haunts Mexico: With so many advantages, why are so many of its people still so poor?""

Great answer Charlie.

Answer 1

I am an American living in Mexico. What i have learned from my Mexican friends is this:
1. There are more millionaires per capita in Mexico than in the U. S. MANY of the very wealthy are descendents of the rich Spanish landowners of the past.
2. Poor education..poor schools, and inability of poor families to keep their kids in school.
3. GOV'T CORRUPTION!
4. There IS a growing middle class, but still 10% of the people have 90% of the wealth.
5. In the U. S. most of the Native American population was killed off by Europeans. In Mexico, this did not happen...so there is a large pop. of Indian peoples. They were not landowners in the Spanish feudal system that was in power until the Revolution her in the 1930s. At that time, the gov't broke up the huge Haciendas(lands owned by Spanish landowners_) and the poor were allowed to own land. Change takes a loooong time!
Rural school teachers in many places earn only the equivelent to $200 to $300 dollars a month...that is one of the reasons for the huge riots and strike of teachers in Oaxaca recently.

Answer 2

When the fair trade agreement was ennacted[then it was next called Nafta now cafta] with the thought in mind as our products were made in a country that could make them cheaper, it would be good for all Mexico for example could buy our products over there but what happened was the people making those products wages and living conditions were not improved. There was a interview I think on 60 minutes but a news documentary show where they talked to those people who made the products,but after working all day they could not afford to buy the products. Consequently Fair trade agreement, nafta, or cafta did not work and Americas jobs are being outsourced.

Answer 3

In Mexico, too, government policy is not geared to the well-being of the society as a whole. The objective is maintaining and enhancing the corporate capitalist system which caters to the interests of a very small wealthy minority. Hence, the DISTRIBUTION of wealth is completely out of whack and unfair. You reap what you sow...when social and economic justice is not an ingredient of policy, then what do you expect from the outcome?!

Answer 4

This is a no-brainer. The obvious and sickening answer is : blatant government corruption. This is not a "paradox". It is thievery without conscience, it is power-hungry money grabbers who are out of control, it is a complete atrocity by a government against its own people.

And we are expected to wipe their @sses after they take a dump on their citizens. Sorry - my give-a-dam is busted. This gravy train is about to be derailed.

Answer 5

They refuse to create infrastructure that enables even the poorest to create wealth for themselves. Without infrastructure a country's masses live in a 3rd world country.

Answer 6

They dont help their poor and force them over here to send money back into their economy. Illegals send billions of dollars a year to their homes and that gets put back into the economy there.

Answer 7

Mexico is like the Republicans want the US to be, with a lot of wealth contcentrated in the hands of a few powerful elite families, and teems of depressed uneducated middle to low class citizens.

Answer 8

It's the same problem we have here in America, and most nations with a capitalist economy.

Answer 9

i say its the government......its so corrupt.....not all of it but most of it.....it really needs to change

Answer 10

Government corruption is my guess.