Once again, Clarey sides with the racists against the capitalists!

So, "Captain Capitalism" Aaron Clarey has given us this great post on Mexican reaction to the proposed American "border wall," which helps remind us that being poor should make you ashamed (I'm not sure if you're supposed to call out, "Unclean," or what.) And of course, as always the racial double standard is really striking: one wonders how such a fervent booster of Ireland can criticize a country because less than a mere tenth of its population are expats.

But the thing is, as seems often to occur, Aaron is taking a line here that, as far as I can tell, not a single major economist follows: so, what gives? After all, economists at Goldman Sachs - real economists, whose decisions affect how real real large amounts of real money are invested - are bullish on Mexico and think it'll become the world's sixth largest economy - bigger than the European ones, Korea or Vietnam - by 2050! The Economist predicted Mexico as the fifth largest economy by 2040 (using GS data; I'm not sure what they were using). And if you think, sure, 30, 40 years out, what's that worth - well, Mexico is one of the few third world countries that can now issue long term debt at almost first world interest rates, so, if you believe in capitalism and markets than it's pretty clear how capitalism is voting. How odd that Aaron Clarey doesn't know that, mere days after Mexico's first issue of thirty year bonds was pretty big economic news: wow, he's good at this stuff! For that matter, real economists - notably Jagdish Bhagwati, Mr. Brain-drain-emigration-models - would see Mexico's current emigration level as something for Mexicans to be optimistic about, a symptom of progess (I'm feeling lazy - you can find a recent summation of how this works from Kanbur and Rapoport (2005) J. Econ. Geog. 5: pp. 43-57).

Now, given Aaron's history of comments about Latin America and, for that matter, about Latino Americans, you might think, OK, I can guess why he's breaking with capitalism and economics here. And it might explain why Aaron Clarey thinks it's a big deal that China and India are putting out more engineering graduates (granted, of dubious quality) than is America, but doesn't even notice that Mexico, though smaller than America, is also heathily outpacing America in pumping out trained engineers.

It's nice to know that when Aaron's loyalties are divided between the jingoistic bigots and the capitalists, he knows which way he wants to jump!