Wages and Panic Buttons

Fabian Balardini balardini at angelfire.com
Fri Aug 6 07:58:25 PDT 1999


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On Fri, 06 Aug 1999 09:29:41 Tom Lehman wrote:
>Stop at a gas station to get air for your tires in a minority neighborhood it will cost you 50 cents---go to a white neighborhood air for your tires will be free! I believe the economic term is price discrimination. I think this accounts for a lot of what goes on in Latin America---a small mostly white European minority of rich and super-rich lord it over the indianos, mestizos and zambos of "their" country.

Being from Latin America myself I'm not sure whether I should be pissed or feel sorry about your ignorant and racist stereotype of latin culture. But after so many years living in this country I am ready for americans and even "leftist" americans to surprise me with these kind of statements about Latin America.

Two points of clarification: 1) The racial problem in latin america is deeper than your superficial american view of black vs white. Yes, whites rule to the ridiculous level of having a German looking president in Guatemala, but to go from this to a theory of inflation where whites can increase prices as they please because the indianos, and the rest of the other american racial categories you want to use, will passively go along with it is an insult to the everyday struggle these people undergo resisting and fighting for a better society. From your perspective it must be very hard to understand Allende's Chile, Nicaragua Sandinista, Che's Cuba, Colombia's FARC, Brazil's landless movement, etc.

2) Not all countries in Latin America can be described as a bunch of guys fucking over brown people. In Uruguay and Argentina (approx. 40 million ) where 85%+ of the population is white, you have blond/blue/eye kids living in complete poverty, white people in power fucking over white workers. So your discrimination based theory of inflation is a ridiculous way of explaining the Argentinian hyperinflation in the late eighties and high inflation in Uruguay during the same time.

Angelfire for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.angelfire.com



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