There
are 9 other countries in North America. Outside of Canada, few Americans
would want to live in any one of them except as an American retiree.
The reasons are manifold but simple economics is a great predictor
not only of the standard of living but of individual opportunity.
For starters,
let's look at the standard of living measured by the annual per
capita GDP.
| Country |
Per
Year |
| |
|
| United
States |
$36,200 |
| Canada
|
$24,800 |
| Mexico
|
$9,100 |
| Costa Rica |
$6,700 |
| Panama |
$6,100 |
| El Salvador |
$4,000 |
| Guatemala |
$3,700 |
| Belize |
$3,200 |
| Honduras |
$2,700 |
| Nicaragua |
$2,100 |
| Cuba |
$1,700 |
(Source: CIA
World Fact Book; as of 2000. Per year is the total Gross Domestic
Product divided by the total population)
NOTE TO ALL
CASTRO LOVERS: EXPLAIN PLEASE $1,700 PER PERSON AFTER 45 YEARS OF
THE GENTLE LEADERSHIP OF EL SUPREMO. Do not say the U.S. sanctions.
Castro is not sanctioned by any other country in the world.
While numerous
correlations may be drawn from these numbers, what are the causes,
the root causes eagerly sought by the left in other matters? What
is common between the United States and the remaining North American
countries?
One obvious
correlation is that, economically, it is not good to live South
of the United States. Another is that Spanish speaking countries
do not do well economically. (Spain itself has a GDP of $18,000.)
In truth, there is not a single important coun-try in the world
which has Spanish as its native language. Aside from language, what
else?
Well, the economically
poor countries are overwhelmingly Catholic (Full disclosure: I am
Catholic.) Mostly, they are geographically small, their economies
are run by the central government, they follow the Napoleonic Code
of law rather than the English common law and have a history of
corruption, coups d'etat, men on horseback despots and have little
regard for individual rights of property.
Interestingly,
if you took French Quebec out of the Canadian num-bers, the rest
of the country comes closer to U.S. levels. Que-bec has characteristics
very similar to the "Other Nine" in terms of law, religion
and governmental instincts. All of Canada tends to be socialistic,
especially their lousy medical plan, the es-sence of which - government
control - was so beloved by Sen. Clinton.
What about European
and other countries? Here you go:
| Country |
Per
Year |
| |
|
| Japan |
$24,900
|
| France |
$24,400 |
| Germany |
$23,400 |
| England |
$22,800 |
| Taiwan |
$17,400 |
| Argentina |
$12,900 |
| Chile |
$10,100 |
| Brazil |
$6,500 |
| China |
$3,600 |
When choosing
a place to live or retire, consider the above. But then, most of
you knew this at least qualitatively.
And when we
allow, indeed encourage, illegals from the poor North America countries
to cross our borders, thereby becoming federal criminals, we are
importing poverty and millions of illiterate, uneducated people
with absolutely no history or understanding of the modern, Western
world. Remember that too.