Why is every country south of Texas so screwed up? Latin America was colonized by Europeans, same as Canada and USA, yet it seems every nation in LATAM has struggles with corruption, political instability, crime, income disparity and economic crisis far worse than even in the USA, let alone Canada.
To be fair, the U.S. is becoming more like Latin America, not less.
Its certainly got a much broader and richer middle class; but that same group in the U.S. has been shrinking for almost 2 decades.
What the U.S. has is dominance, a head start, and in the past, enough enlightened self-interest in the elite {post-civil war anyway) to keep the country moving forward.
While I wouldn't describe the U.S.. situation in an overly alarmist way, they aren't at the precipice of disaster............yet.
Its also not so far off that it isn't foreseeable without a change in direction.
Latin America's elites have always been much slower to share the wealth and privilege broadly; to the detriment of their nations and likely their personal fortunes too.
One can't sit here in Canada and be smug. A growing housing crisis in Toronto and Vancouver in particular shows no real sign of abating.
Outside of the National Child Benefit there hasn't been a single major social program advance since the late 1960s.
Further, like the U.S. our private-economy is very debt-fueled. Due to low-interest rates the effects have been moderate to date.
While there is no near-term indication of a broad interest rate rise; its unreasonable to believe the current situation is sustainable.
There's no reason this also has to end up in the type of situation Chile is seeing.
But on the other hand; we need to get ahead of the curve rather that waiting for the acute effects of economic dislocation to affect us.
www.theguardian.com
