Haim,
The difference between Argentina and America boils down to one issue --- trust.
You cannot trust people in Argentina. They will cheat you out of a dollar now, even if it destroys some arrangement that will give them a dollar a day for the next 100 years.
If you hire somebody, he will try to cheat you. If you fire an employee --- hard to do because of labor laws --- he will sue you.
If some government type finds that you have broken one of innumerable laws and regs, he will hit you with a huge fine, then make the fine disappear when you pay him off.
It is extremely difficult to run businesses or to mount any type of cooperative arrangement.
The city of Salta, population about half a million --- where my brother has lived and worked for 25 years -- has no manufacturing and no public libraries.
When I was down there a few years ago, there was an election in a neighboring province (Tucuman I think). The election was for seats in a local legislative assembly (equivalent in the USA to positions in a state house or state senate). Something like 100 positions were being contested. For these 100 seats, the number of people who ran was huge --- comic --- something like 10,000 or even more.
Behind such a farce lies a real problem: the only way to get wealth in Argentina is to get your hands of the mechanisms of government.
America is heading in the same direction. Fast.
We are turning ourselves into Argentina,minus:
1)the men, who are charming, witty, fun to be around, amazingly sensitive (and of course utterly untrustworthy), and
2)the women -- vibrant beyond belief, ALWAYS well turned out, usually good looking, frequently gorgeous – who if they take a notion can turn you inside out and upside down and take every penny you ever had or even heard about ------- and leave you begging for more. |
