RES: Brazil thread

Alexandre Fenelon afenelon at zaz.com.br
Fri Sep 7 11:22:51 PDT 2001


-----Mensagem original----- De: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]Em nome de Brad DeLong Enviada em: sexta-feira, 7 de setembro de 2001 00:31 Para: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Assunto: Re: Brazil thread


>I know everybody is supposed to know this, but I don't so somebody clue me
>in. Why is it that no undeveloped nation can modernize? Why do so many of
>these countries have a good decade or two, come close, but then fade away?

There are counterexamples (albeit not as many as I would like):

Italy Slovenia Spain Japan South Korea Taiwan Norway Sweden Finland

-Italy, the Scandinavian countries and Japan were countries of intermediate -level of development by 1900, the term underdeveloped is not good for them, -Japan, for instance had already high levels of litteracy and was a minor -imperialist country by 1900.

-South Korea still was not able to achieve "complete" development. Its per -capita GNP is still 30-40% less than the poorest countries of EU,and its -economy will probably face serious troubles in the next year. Probably -S. Korea´s relative position among worls economies is no better than the -Soviet one in 1965 (when it seemed the USSR had been able to break the -"development barrier")

-I don´t know what happened with Slovenia, but it has only 10 years as -independent state, if São Paulo state separated from Brazil it would -probably have the same development level of Slovenia, or even better, -due to its diversified industrial base.

Alexandre Fenelon



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