About prisoners, the old and the sick

About prisoners, the old and the sick

WE READ THAT IN THE United States there are approximately 2.2 million people dedicated to capturing and keeping 2 million prisoners behind bars. Imagine what it can mean for any country to capture even 1% of that market.

Other buoyant markets are those of the elderly care industry, whose demand in developed countries grows as the ratio of the number of young to old decreases. So are those in the long-term care industry, where continuous advances in medicine seem to generate almost infinite demand. 

It is strange then the insufficient attention that developing countries give to these services when negotiating their trade agreements, considering their current and competitive salaries, and that, on the other hand, it does force them to open up to the services sector via banking, insurance, auditing, etc. 

As an example, the economic impact to a poor country of a school that annually graduates a few thousand excellent bilingual nurses, to work around the world or in their own country, could exceed the benefits that a trade agreement would have on its agriculture and manufacturing industry combined. By the way, nurses would cancel their educational credits, perhaps even more easily than economists like me.

Furthermore, given the tensions that occur when millions of people seek to emigrate in any way to the labor markets of developed countries, in order to produce family remittances, it is surprising not to hear that the best way to avoid this illegal immigration, which is often destined in one way or another to care for prisoners, the sick and the elderly, it would be sending this same clientele to developing countries to be cared for. 

A real opening in services would allow poor countries to access sources of sustainable economic growth, while at the same time it would alleviate the pressures that the costs of caring for prisoners, the elderly and the sick exert on the finances of developed countries, to such a degree that They even threaten to make their own economies unsustainable. 

New ideas? No way! Papillon was sent prisoner to Guyana and Australia was founded with exported convicts. There are already European governments that pay in one way or another for the stay of their elderly in places like the Canary Islands, and history is full of examples of those who had to go to other places due to diseases such as tuberculosis.

Translated by Google from El Universal

What’s Chinese (as in inexplicable) in China

Travel to China and be fascinated. I assure you that for a tourist trip, if you get a special ticket, there is nothing that beats it. To go to the Great Wall, I got on a bus with only Chinese, who sang in Chinese with the help of a video where the ball jumped over Chinese characters. But, much more than that, was Chinese to me.

In today's China, most families have only one child. What will this mean for society? Could Latinos, for example, continue to be Latinos with one-child families? 

It is precisely when a country comes out of poverty and seeks to be at an intermediate level where any progress, such as going from bicycle to motorcycle and from motorcycle to car, demands a lot of energy. Is there energy and oil in the world to satisfy Chinese growth? 

The current model of economic growth in China would seem to take it in a very short time from being a rural country to a country where its citizens end up living like sardines in huge cities, and we intuit that such a destination is neither good nor sustainable. Observing how recent technological advances in the world already almost allow the most remote villagers to be present, almost live, in the very center of the capital of their empire, we have to ask ourselves: Are there really no new and better options? 

The current growth rate in China is brutal and from what we know that immense inequalities will arise between those who manage to climb into today's developed consumerism and those who are far from even entering the current millennium. All progress involves risks and may even require leaving victims in your obituary, but, if the injustices become too great, the past can claim. Will China, in a few decades, be able to do what used to take centuries and still remain China? 

Forgive the political indiscretion but, when at dawn, when the red flags were raised in Tiananmen Square, I saw how the human waves moved and kept a certain order only when they were instructed by the guards at the top of their lungs, I had to wonder if in the long run it would be possible to manage China with one of the current democracies of the “Viva la Pepa” (meaning, “let’s do what we want”) type. 

Finally, when I found myself on The Great Wall of China, to which I ended up riding in a yellow cart that looked like as one retired from a Disney Park and as I walked slowly through an incredible crowd, I asked myself, again and again: Will it hold? 

Translated from El Universal

Note: Written while being an Executive Director at the World Bank.

PS. “Also, we should never forget that historically, through all economic cycles, there is nothing so valuable in terms of personal social security as having many well-educated loving children to take care of you, and that you can’t, in real terms, beat that with any social security reform.”