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Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
@Noahpinion
Aug 26, 2019 • 15 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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Today's @bopinion post is about Mexico.

Mexico is doing a lot better economically than Americans might realize.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
2/Economists usually think of growth as exponential. In Mexico, it looks more like a straight line.

That's not great...but it's not terrible either.
3/Mexico is what the World Bank calls an "upper middle class" country.
worldpopulationreview.com/countries/midd…

It's per capita GDP (PPP) is over $20,000, putting it ahead of Argentina, and over 4 times as rich as, say, Bangladesh.
4/And Mexico's inequality is pretty bad, but it's been getting less bad.
5/But here's why Mexico's recent performance is actually pretty impressive - it comes IN SPITE of the country's once-mighty oil industry being in a death spiral.

Mexico's oil production peaked and went into steep decline since 2006, thanks to its biggest oil field running out.
6/When oil runs out, you have to switch to manufacturing and services.

That's much easier said than done.

But Mexico has been doing it!!
7/Mexico has more than doubled the percent of its GDP that it spends on education since the 1990s. And its literacy rate has climbed to essentially universal literacy.
8/Thanks to productivity improvements in Mexico and cost increases elsewhere, Mexican manufacturing is now one of the world's most competitive.

bcg.com/publications/2…
9/And foreign direct investment is pouring in.
10/Meanwhile, even as oil production has fallen by half, Mexico's exports - 90% of which are now manufactured goods - have continued to soar.
11/And we're not talking about toys and clothing. We're talking about electronics and cars. High-tech, high-value stuff!
12/No wonder Mexicans are, on net, leaving the U.S. for Mexico.
13/Of course, I don't want to be unrealistic here. Mexico still has huge challenges, including:
1. the Drug War
2. building global brands
3. still-high inequality
14/But in general, Mexico is doing much better than Americans may realize. It's not a basket case - it's an up-and-coming industrial powerhouse.

(end)

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
(sorry, should be "upper middle income")

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More from @Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
May 7
I'm incredibly bored of talking about the Palestine protests, but here are some results from the recent Generation Lab survey.

Key fact #1: College students just don't care about the Palestine issue that much.

axios.com/2024/05/07/pol…
Image
About 8% of students have participated in the protests on one side or the other. That's a substantial number, but less than the 21% who joined BLM protests in May/June 2020 (and the latter were pretty much all on one side of the issue).

collegepulse.com/blog/8-in-10-c…
Image
Only about 1/8 of students blame Biden for the conflict. 34% blame Hamas, and 31% blame either Israel in general or Netanyahu specifically. Image
Read 6 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
May 2
The Palestine protesters have created a dream Palestine that is almost entirely disconnected from the real place, in which all of their fantasies of a perfect society are realized.

This is a bit like what weebs do with Japan.
FromTheRiverToTheSeaboos
Most weebs don't actually want to live in Japan. They want to live in a local subculture of their own creation, whose values are based on gentleness and romance -- the ideals that attracted them to Japanese fantasies and made those fantasies resonate.

noahpinion.blog/p/weebs
Read 9 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Mar 24
Comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the Woke Era get laughed at. The Woke Era didn't use violence, of course. But the *motivation* of people wanting to overturn social hierarchies, especially students wanting to overturn academic hierarchies, is recognizably similar.
In 2010s America, there was a widespread desire to overturn local social hierarchies -- the classroom authority of teachers and professors, the cultural power of entertainment stars, the authority of nonprofit execs and heads of civic organizations.
In 1960s China, overturning local hierarchies happened via physical mob violence. In 2010, it happened through online mobs destroying people's reputations on social media. Obviously, the second is far preferable to the first. This is why economic development is good!
Read 10 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jan 19
Here are some countries that did catch up to other countries.

Poland caught up to Portugal: Image
South Korea caught up to Japan: Image
Ireland caught up to the UK

(graph ends before major Irish tax shenanigans begin) Image
Read 13 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jan 10
This thread asks how we should deal with inborn inequality, and concludes that the best solution is noblesse oblige.

I think the best solution is public goods.
Public goods have two advantages:

1. They engender material equality more efficiently than any other economic intervention, and

2. They create an equality of respect, through the habit of mutual use.
Although rich people may pay more for a train or a park, when they ride the train or walk in the park, they are equal in social status to everyone else on the train or in the park.

This creates a feeling of equality throughout society.
Read 6 tweets
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 Profile picture
Dec 7, 2023
1/Here's a thread in which the Economist's Mike Bird tries to rebut my recent post about decoupling. I think this thread is useful for understanding why the doubters are making the mistakes that they're making.

Let's go through it!
2/Here was my original post. I've updated it with a response at the bottom.

noahpinion.blog/p/stop-saying-…
3/Here's @Birdyword's first mistake. To say there's a "case for doubt" means that there's a possibility that decoupling isn't happening.

But just look at FDI into China. It just went negative for the first time in recorded history. That's definitely real. That is decoupling!
Image
Image
Read 14 tweets

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