By JOSE DE LA ISLA
Hispanic Link
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
A controversy broke out earlier this month after the Mexican online business publication Sentido Comun announced that Carlos Slim Helu was the richest man in the world.
Carlos Slim, 67, is the son of Lebanese immigrants to Mexico who just last year added $6 billion to his fortune. He sold off holdings in MCI and Altria to apply the proceeds to holdings in Saks Inc. He increased his share of Mexico's monopoly telephone company Telmex and in America Movil, a wireless telecom outfit. His manifold holdings extend to about 200 other businesses.
Slim has an estimated net worth of upward of $67.8 billion, roughly 8 percent of Mexico's gross national product. Bill Gates' holdings are estimated at $59.2 billion.
Much of Slim's rapid rise in the super-rich rankings is attributed to a 27 percent surge in his mobile-phone company compared to a 5.7 percent increase in Gates' Microsoft.
Ordinarily, these rankings are not enough kindling for a hot controversy, with maybe one exception. The United States cannot boast being No. 1. Gates is not the richest person in the world. For some people, the Forbes rankings are like the Olympics of wealth.
Some disconcerted commentators weighed in, objecting to what appears to be resplendent, even obscene, personal wealth in the face of poverty in Mexico. I heard others vainly argue that regions of Mexico are very progressive, where incremental change and economic innovation are evident.
The underlying dispute, I think, centers on confusion about personal wealth and social prosperity. Personal wealth is a function of initiative, opportunity and luck. Social prosperity comes from initiative, opportunity and good public policy.
The ascent of Carlos Slim Helu to No. 1 is misread and little understood.
Earlier this month, commentator Luis Gonzalez de Alba, writing in Mexico City's Milenio, said he was upset by the debut of the opera "Frida." (It coincided with an extraordinary collection of Frida Kahlo's artwork at Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts.)
To Gonzalez, the entire Diego-Frida epoch represents a folkloric past. It influences public thinking to this day by idealizing paternalistic government (bad public policy) as opposed to a futuristic one that creates opportunities for the masses. The image and ideology of the Frida cult only instills notions of an exploited Mexico and outsiders who rob the country blind of natural resources and keep labor wages down.
In the presidential elections of a year ago, that scenario was played out. The opposition leader, Manuel Lopez Obrador, was the populist, promising 1930s-style measures that originally got Mexico in the economic predicament it is still in.
The ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN), after a failed presidency under Vicente Fox, proposed measured, controlled growth and some further privatization. Felipe Calderon, of that party, won but just barely, with a .06 percent margin.
The results suggest Mexico is right in the middle. Looked at another way, neither alternative is really acceptable to a firm majority of the population.
There is a lot of room for concern about the course that Mexico is taking. It seems to be not enough, nor are reforms and results coming fast.
The role models to look at are South Korea, Singapore and Ireland. There are others, but these countries in particular would have been laughable examples 30 years ago as rapidly developed countries, Gonzalez de Alba points out.
Those who have felt especially vehement about Mexico's lone billionaire should set their compass toward permissive and dysfunctional public policy, not personal wealth accumulation.
After all, the United States alone has 371 billionaires. Is this nation's wealth disparity caused by them?
Why Mexico doesn't develop faster and better deserves attention. But looking at Carlos Slim Helu, just like pointing to Frida Kahlo for a solution, makes no sense.
(Jose de la Isla, author of "The Rise of Hispanic Political Power," writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3(at)yahoo.com. For more stories or to comment, visit scrippsnews.com.)
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