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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Why do HN commentators assume Mexico is a 3rd world shithole?

It's kind of surprising how a country that China has only just caught up to in GDP per Capita [3] and HDI [4] is assumed to be a shitshow of an economy.

Hell, the household income in China [0] (~$4,000) is still 30-50% of Mexico's [1] (~$12,000)

Mexico has it's problems, but most of that stems from the Peso Crisis in the 1990s, which was similar to the recession China is faced during COVID.

[0] - http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202201/t2022011...

[1] - https://www.economia.gob.mx/datamexico/es/profile/geo/mexico

[2] - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

[3] - https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/country-insights#/ranks

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Because it is in a lot of ways?

[Mexican living in Mexico here]

I've had the chance to live in other countries in Europe (Germany and the UK) for 8 years. I also have lived most of my life (and currently live) in Mexico.

As someone else said, "rich" people in Mexico can live a good-enough life. But the problem is that 43.9% [1] live in poverty in Mexico. That is, they don't have a way to make ends meet. Worse, the next 20% are just barely living by.

On top of that, society is naturally corrupt. You have corruption ingrained in the Mexican culture. From the typical politician corruption, the "plata o plomo" narco corruption, the police officer "get out of a fine" layman corruption; to the "inconsequential" I'll stop in the middle of the street for one minute, just-because. Like, normal layman people always have some reason why some law or rule wont apply to them. It's freaking enraging.

Finally you have lack of accountability. In Mexico only 1% [2] of the crimes are resolved. There's murders, assaults, robberies, violations, everything you can think of, and police, the judicial system and all that branch does absolutely nothing. They don't do their work. Moreover, normal people are scared of going to the Prosecution Authority (Ministerio Publico) because they know most likely they will be abused and further defrauded there.

> Mexico has it's problems,

You have to have lived in Mexico to understand the extent of the brokeness that we have here. A lot of people who live in Mexico and haven't had the chance to live somewhere else will tell you that "it is not that bad", but it is just a lack of knowledge of what "Normal" should be, part a coping mechanism and part Stockholm syndrome. (What else can people do?)

[1] https://imco.org.mx/las-cifras-mas-recientes-de-pobreza

[2] https://www.impunidadcero.org/impunidad-en-mexico/#/

That is definetly true.

Lack of law and order is a massive issue in Mexico, as well as the collusion/merger of organized crime and politics.

That said, all the exact same fears you mentioned that average Mexicans have are the exact same ones that your average Chinese, Indian, Russians, Brazilians, non-Singaporean ASEAN nationals, etc have as well.

Mexico is not a "First World" (aka Advanced Economy) in 2023, but it is a solidly upper middle income/lower high income country. If China can be counted as a "developed" country, then by extension Mexico and pre-2022 Russia should as well.

My comment stems from the fact that the American image of Mexico resembles that of Syria, Libya, or Venezuela.

The kind of horror stories you hear in Michoacan, Oaxaca, or Tamaulipas are similar to those you'd hear of Guizhou, Yunnan, or Xinjiang. The difference is the Chinese govt used a mix of severe repression AND co-opting cartels/triads into the economy (eg. "incentivizing" Triad members to leave Macau and invest in Cambodia)

>The kind of horror stories you hear in Michoacan, Oaxaca, or Tamaulipas are similar to those you'd hear of Guizhou, Yunnan, or Xinjiang.

C'mon this is kind of assinine comparison/argument. It's fine to remind everyone that Mexico is comfortably middle income, and well beyond development indicators needed to build effective manufacturing sectors but they also have law and order problems leading to homocide rates 4x higher than US, 60x higher than PRC. Mexican dysfunction gets disproportionate reporting in US media being basically domestic news adjacent, but it's not completely unwarranted. Mexico may not be categorically an war zone like Syria or Libya but with homocide rate like Venezuela, domestic serenity is closer to failed state territory. That's what people think about when they think of Mexican 3rd world horror stories - open, persistent level of extreme violence gov can't control. Perception worsened by Mexican geography where unlike PRC where violence (especially gun) is thorougly suppressed or extreme persisent violence previously limited to largely frontiers (also now suppressed), in Mexico one is rarely ever more than a few 100 km from crazy town - it seems close everywhere. Mexico still feels like worse 90s Hunan where armed villages had homemade artillery battles. It certainly feels more dysfunctional than ASEAN barring Myanmar, including Sihanoukville Cambodia where PRC pushed triad operations. I say this as a Chinese shill who ranks Mexico city over most tier1/2 PRC cities.

Basically:

US GDP per capita: ~$69k

Canada GDP per capita: ~$52k

Mexico GDP per capita: ~$10k[1]

China has a similar GDP per capita, but makes up for it in volume. China's total GDP is closer to the US's than to Mexico's.[2]

That, combined with the fact that Mexico seems to have a serious issue with cartels within their borders[3], and the constant flood of illegal border crossings gives the impression of a state that isn't particularly well run, despite the government otherwise being a functioning democracy.

Basically, I think if it got a better handle on its organized crime problem Mexico would be viewed much more favorably by the average American citizen. Hopefully the recent increase in economic activity and resulting GDP boost will help with that.

[1]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=US+GDP+per+capita%2C+Ca...

[2]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=US+GDP%2C+Canada+GDP%2C...

[3]: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...

There are similarly issues with criminalization and organized crime within China itself.

Only 10 years ago there was a significant chance that the bus you were taking in Xinjiang might be blown up or shot up, though this has been resolved via severe repression and human rights abuses.

Furthermore, Red-Black Collusion has been a very real issue in China to this day, yet hasn't been uprooted [0] [1]. In fact, this was the technical reason used by Xi to purge Bo Xilai (Bo was extremely corrupt, but so is everyone else)

The difference is American tourists aren't walking around the equivalent of Shenzen c. 2005 or Chongqing c. 2010 or Kashgar C. 2011, but plenty of Americans are more keyed into and cognizant of crime in Mexico.

[0] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/27027760

[1] - https://academic.oup.com/book/25594/chapter-abstract/1929386...

You could have similar links about any country on earth. It doesn't change the fact that the crime rate in Mexico is orders of magnitude higher than China, and something that affects its image deeply abroad, just like Colombia.

Wow, genocide justification Spam this high up.. New low HN

Not justifying the camps. Check my comment history.

There were multiple ways to tamp down on the insurgency in East Turkestan without resorting to Nazi or Soviet-esque reeducations camps.

Can't we just read the words in the comments without trying to ascribe hidden meaning to them? The comment you're replying to was merely describing facts in a neutral manner.

Or replying with your same style:

Wow, unfounded ragebait Spam this high up.. New low HN

The guy literally called it “severe repression and human rights abuses” and you somehow twisted your thoughts to think he’s justifying it…you like outrage huh?

> Why do HN commentators assume Mexico is a 3rd world shithole?

Because the economic disparity between the US and Mexico is so vast that in comparison, it is a 3rd world country. Also, the millions of mexicans immigrating to the US, the neverending news about cartels, etc adds to the perception.

Also, most HN commentators are americans, not chinese. Not sure why you are comparing mexico to china.

> Mexico has it's problems, but most of that stems from the Peso Crisis in the 1990s

No it doesn't. The negative perception of mexico goes back to the first half of the 1800s when we conquered 51% of mexico and turned it into texas, california, etc. Remember the alamo, mass deportation of mexicans and so forth and that negativity has existed ever since. Also, the peso crisis affected mexico only, while the pandemic affected everybody, not just china. The world endured the recession while only mexico suffered immensely during the peso crisis.

Your numbers are way off. Mexico has a slightly lower GDP per capita ($10k) than China ($12k) as per 2021 according to the world bank [1]. Mexico has a median household income of $3.5K compared to China's $4.8K [2]. Mexico just fell behind China in both measures a couple of years ago.

The reason that Americans see Mexico as poor is that much of Mexico's wealth and higher standing of living is away from the border that Americans are more likely to visit. So we go by what we see in Tijuana and never make it to Mexico City. Its like if someone evaluated the USA based on Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama, they might have a wrong impression of the rest of the country also.

[1] https://datacommons.org/place/country/MEX/?utm_medium=explor...

[2] https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/mexico/annual-househol...

> Mexico has a slightly lower GDP per capita ($10k) than China ($12k) as per 2021 according to the world bank

GDP/GDP per Capita =/= Household Income

GDP is a representation of economic production (ie. how much shit you can produce).

Economic Productivity doesn't neccesarily scale with Wage Growth, hence why you see America's GDP per Capita approach $80k/yr yet median income around $60-70k/yr

> Mexico has a median household income of $3.5K compared to China's $4.8K [2].

CEIC Data's numbers are off on both matters.

The datasets I've included in my citations are those from the Govt of China (National Bureau of Statistics of China [0]) and the Govt of Mexico (National Institute of Statistics and Geography [1]).

The Chinese numbers I provided were released last year in 2022 and the Mexican numbers I provided were for 2020 (Mexico computes median income every 2 years)

In my experience CEIC Data's datasets are entirely off. Furthermore, digging into their datasets, it appears they aren't translating numbers correctly.

Some countries like Mexico and Italy report Median household income on a quarterly cadence, which CEIC doesn't take into account and explains why Italy's household income is listed at $15k despite the numbers provided to the EU are much higher.

> Your numbers are way off

In the future, when discussing economic metrics, I recommend sourcing directly from that Nation or State's Statistical Agency. The data they provide is more up to date and provides relevant context that 3rd party scrapers like CEIC or Statisa don't provide. Learning to speak/read Mandarin or Spanish helps as well, as policy discussions in China and Mexico tend to occur in those languages respectively.

[0] - http://www.stats.gov.cn/

[1] - https://www.inegi.org.mx/

You are comparing numbers taken from two different sources using two different methodologies, that isn't going to work. You need to take from one data set or do a lot of work to adapt "Govt of China" numbers and "Govt of Mexico" numbers.

> In the future, when discussing economic metrics, I recommend sourcing directly from that Nation or State's Statistical Agency.

This doesn't work. You are basically taking apples from one place and comparing them to oranges from another place. Unless you are willing to do a few years of meta-research to see how the numbers really compare with each other, they can't be compared in any meaningful way.

You are basically stating that all agencies that compare China and Mexico GPD/per capita along with incomes are wrong? Because I don't think you can find an aggregated data set out there anymore that has Mexico richer than China by most income and per-capita measures (and anyways, this only happened a couple of years ago, a couple of years in the future it will be no contest).

> two different sources using two different methodologies, that isn't going to work

They use the same methodology and provide the USD conversion they used. This is all in the docs. Don't argue with an ex-Policymaker who's job was devoted to analyzing and distilling policies from these metrics

> agencies that compare China and Mexico GPD/per capita

When comparing development and quality of life, Median Income is generally the goto, along with Health metrics, Internet Penetration, Education Access, etc.

GDP per capita was NEVER meant to compare quality of life, as it is Gross Domestic PRODUCTION. If ownership of production was 100% distributed equally, then GDP per Capita would be the same as your Median Income, but such is not the case.

Even comparing average income, for all aggregated data sets, China comes out a $1 or 2k or so ahead of mexico per year. E.g.

https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-coun...

> Mexico has it's problems

Like being completely compromised by the drug cartels and effectively a narco-state?[0]

[0]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/mexico-s-former-defense-...

That level of criminalization and corruption is no different than any other middle income countries sadly.

For example, the ex-Interior Minister in China getting arrested for corruption in 2014 as $14.5 Billion in assets were found [0]

Or $20 Billion in Russian investments being laundered in 2010-17 by the Laundromat [1]

Or the Odenbrecht Scandal in Brazil that toppled Dima Roussef due to $0.5 Billion in bribes [2]

Or the 2G Spectrum Allocation scandal in India that caused the govt to lose $25 Billion [3]

There is a whole subfield related to this which I did some research and policywork in.

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-corruption-zhou/exc...

[1] - https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/

[2] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odebrecht_Case

[3] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G_spectrum_case

The best living conditions in Mexico are better than the average in the US. The same applies to most Latin American countries. But the average living conditions in Latin America is still not great, and that is what drives perception.

Someone with US$1M of retirement savings would likely have a better retirement in Mexico than in the US - assuming they speak the language and understand the culture.

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