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Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
To your Singapore, South Korea, etc. I put Iran under the Shah, China, and Iraq (before its isolation in the 90s).
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Iran under the Shah was growing a little but not much. His regime was corrupt and there was massive state intervention. The lack of growth, the actions of the secret police, and the corruption turned the middle class against the Shah. That revolution would not have happened without the support of the middle class. We put up with the Shahs bad economic policies because he was anti-communist and pro-isreal - kind of like Marcos in the Phillipines.
Iraq was a Kleptocracy in the seventies and eighties. The Baathist regime was a socialist and arab nationalist party. Under the Baathists the standard of living did not improve much if at all.
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Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy The approach of putting economic pressure to develop and open up simultaneously can work (see South Africa) or can have very different effects (see Iraq under Hussein, see Iran). Those economic pressures used against Egypt and Algeria could cause either or both of them to go the way of Iran.
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Flat. Wrong. Pressure for them to adopt good economic policies will not cause them to go the way of Iran and Iraq. Iran and Iraq did not go "bad" because of influence from the US to adopt prudent economic policies. And we did not put pressure on South Africa to adopt prudent economic policies, we put pressure on South Africa to adopt prudent political policies. South Africa was by far the most successful economy in Africa. At the time the apartheid regime stepped down the per capita income of the black population in South Africa was higher than the rest of Africa. However, there are some things more important than prosperity, and no amount of economic growth justified apartheid. Apartheid, like Genocide, is such an abhorrent political reality that anything justified its removal.
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Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy Would $100 billion have been more effective spent in Mexico?
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Subsidies won't help Mexico. That would just be throwing good money after bad. Prudent economic policies are the only thing that will help. Like Ireland, if Mexico would just open its economy and do some other things that Ireland did, its location next to the US would let its economy explode (like Irelands did).
