The world’s richest man is now…
Bob Morris @ Jul 4th 2007 00:12 - Category: Unfiled
2 Responses to “The world’s richest man is now…”
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Joe Hartley on 05 Jul 2007 at 12:59 am #
The fascinating thing about Mexican wealth is that the multi-zillionaires have all accumulated it in the past 100 years, to the shame of the formerly important families, such as the Terrazas clan in Chihuahua, which made their money investing in land and cattle instead of telephone companies and broadcasting networks.
My conclusion may be quite different from this blogs: namely, that Carlos Slim has done so well because he has a government-sponsored monopoly which he bought for peanuts because of his political connections. Capitalism? Only the crony-capitalism sense of the Phillipines and post-USSR Russia, where the titans made their “riches” in the same way as Slim. Under an appropriately-capitalistic model, Slim would have had to pay full value for his monopoly, which would have funded the Mexican government for many years to come. Unhappily, since the corruption south of our border even rivals the corruption of the Texans brought to DC with Dubya, it never happened.
DJ on 05 Jul 2007 at 11:45 am #
Meanwhile, more than half the population of Mexico lives at or below the poverty level. Is that something we should care about? Well, that’s why they’ll risk their lives to cross the border– because they can’t survive at home.