How about the U.S. help Mexico "modernize" by returning the 1/3 of their country that they stole. Coughing up most of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas would be a very nice first step towards modernization. Failing that, drop the bullshit and allow people to live where they can make a decent living.

I'd be all for Mexico taking a new economic policy like, say, Chavez is doing in Venezuela, use oil wealth to benefit the poor in a transition to a 21st century socialism that understands the market and how to use it.

I'd guess, however, that's not exactly want you have in mind.

Besides, oil is a best, a temporary fix. Pumping carbon in the air is retrograde strategically, no matter who puts it up there.

In any case, Mexico's biggest problems are centered at Chicago's board of Trade and the US Dept of Agriculture. And making changes there, well, that ball's in our court, don't you think?

Meanwhile, Mexico's greater economic independence and sustainability, truth be told, also means somewhat higher gas and food prices here. They can be offset a bit by lower taxes paid by you and me to subsidize big agribusiness, but this world is more interconnected than you might think, and you can't dump all the problems elsewhere.

These problems require intelligence, human solidarity and a compassionate heart, not macho bluster.

Carl,

Mexico's benchmark isn't Chavez's Venezuela. It should be Pinochet's Chile. ;)

Tells us something about you, 'About Time.' But Pinochet came to a bad end, and now Chile has left-of-center leadership, with women in top roles. But maybe that's really what you favor?

Charly Boy,

It's a nominal left-of-center government. Chile is a solid free-market society. And I don't care if it's a man or a women or if the party in charge uses the term "socialist"... as long as the economic policies are clearly free-market oriented. Pinochet might have experience a personal disaster at the end of his days, yet his contributions to Chile's progress are dramatic.

The beginning of wisdom about economics, 'About Time,' is there is no such thing as a completely planned economy or a fully free market.

Also, there's more than one market. I'm for the market in goods and services, but I'd like to abolish or severely regulate or restrict capital and labor markets. Basically, I'd like workers to own and/or control their own factories, divide up profits as they see fit, but compete in the marketplace for customers for their products.

It's called economic democracy, or the socialist market economy. Unlike the 'free marketeers,' it holds there's no such thing as an 'externality' (no free lunch, price things at their true cost) and that markets, however creative and dynamic, often fail. And dealing with market failure is the main reason for government, and to have socialists leading government rather than tyrants like Pinochet.

Mexico's economy and its problems are very much linked to the US. Hows the lament go? "So far from God, so close to the United States."

carl wants self-managed capitalism

No, 'Te He,' a critical part of capitalism is that workers are paid a wage and alienated from their tools, the means of production, and someone other than them takes the profit.

Here they own their tools and workshops, and wage-labor is abolished. For income, they take a portion of the value they produce, while the rest goes to improving and maintaining their tools.

You got the self-managed part right, but the rest is a 'successor system', something new under the sun, and a transition to something even better.

Variations on it are being deployed in Mondragon, Spain, Italy, Venezuela, Vietnam, China and Argentina.

And as its succeeds, it works against the joblessness and misery that compels workers to leave their homelands.

They finally got rid of that broad. The next thing they need to do is get rid of the policy where illegals breed like rats here in the hopes of having an anchor baby.

If illegals have a child born here, it should be as illegal as the parents..and deported immediately