Post-Human “Economics” of Latin America

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Economies in Latin America Race Ahead

Under this jolly headline on June 30, 2010, the New York Times deployed a joyful panaorama of “economic” news from Latin America.

While the United States and Europe fret over huge deficits and threats to a fragile recovery, this region has a surprise in store. Latin America, beset in the past by debt defaults, currency devaluations and the need for bailouts from rich countries, is experiencing robust economic growth that is the envy of its northern counterparts.

Robust economic growth! Hurrah!

The World Bank forecasts that the region’s economy will grow 4.5 percent this year.

Hurrah! Brazil up 9 percent! Mexico up 5 percent! Peru up 9.3 percent!

And I was so delighted to read some good news (for a change) from somewhere in the Third World that I almost forgot to ask myself…

What exactly is up in all those countries?

Maybe wages or jobs?

But those words did not appear in the New York Times’ joyful survey of Latin American “economies,” and why not?

Because most of the “economies” in Latin America are so messed up that nobody can even estimate jobs or wages or unemployment or much of anything else that affects the well-being of actual human beings, and this miserable state of affairs was briefly adumbrated in the one and only negative side-light from the New York Times, 25 paragraphs down in the story, about Peru.

As much as 70 percent of the labor force still works outside the tax system, depriving workers of benefits and the government of revenue.

What a very informative factoid!

Why are so many workers in Peru deprived of benefits? Because they don’t pay taxes! But why don’t they pay taxes? Because nobody knows where they are, or what they get paid, or how many hours they work!

And that’s the human reality of most of Latin America, where “economies race ahead,” but their human components are more or less forgotten.