Toting Up Carlos Slim

Toting Up Carlos Slim

Posted By Brenda Walker On 28 August 2007 @ 12:36 am In General | http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2007/08/ ... rlos-slim/

The New York Times ran an opinion piece Monday with some interesting observations on Mexican wealth and inequality, a subject that should concern Americans more than it does. (For example, Bush is planning to send a robust aid package of American taxpayer dollars to help Presidente Calderon fight Mexican narco-traffickers despite the fact that Mexico has plenty of money and can well afford to pay for its own anti-drug efforts.)

Billionaire Carlos Slim recently surpassed Bill Gates as the richest man on earth, and Mexico’s monopoly-based economic system figures strongly in how Slim accumulated that wealth ($59B). But a simple dollar comparison leaves out the true scope of Slim’s vast fortune…


To put it in perspective, Mr. Slim’s treasure is equivalent to slightly less than 7 percent of Mexico’s total production of goods and services - one out of every 14 dollars’ worth of stuff made by all the people in the country.

The income distribution in the United States may be fast approaching Mexican levels of inequality, but in relative terms, Mr. Gates isn’t even in Mr. Slim’s league. His $58 billion fortune is less than 0.5 percent of the nation’s G.D.P.

Indeed, by this measure, Mr. Slim is richer even than the robber barons of the gilded age. John D. Rockefeller, America’s richest man, was worth the equivalent of about 1.5 percent of the nation’s G.D.P.
[Mexico’s Plutocracy Thrives on Robber-Baron Concessions, New York Times 8/27/07]

Mexico scholar George Grayson criticized the corrupt economic system that allowed Slim’s ascent to Numero Uno:

[Slimlandia is] not a reverential term. Many Mexicans hoped privatization, which began in the early 1990s, would create competition and drive prices down drastically. That hasn’t happened. “Slim is one of a dozen fat cats in Mexico who impede that country’s growth because they run monopolies or oligopolies,â€

I've always wondered if this guy has any connection to S. American or Mexican drug cartels. He seems to have made way too much money, far too fast. Not even MS made Gates a bizillionaire overnight like this guy.

It would be nice if we could give the illegals going home to Mexico rifles that only shoot when south of the US border!