Dear Sir,
I’d like to make a few comments about your latest edition (July-2-8):
1. Yes, the Mexican mail is veeeery slow. It takes four to six weeks or more for a letter posted abroad to reach its destination in Mexico. Whether the letter or package was sent from Laredo or Tokyo makes no difference. Well, live with it, don’t bitch and adjust. Set-up important transactions or communications via Internet, e-mail, phone and fax.
2. Ajijic “Pueblo Magico”? There is a long way to go and much to do when you compare Ajijic with Tapalpa, Tequila, Patzcuaro or Izamal. Trash in the streets or along the Carretera and the libramiento; gazebo on the plaza not quite finished, main streets in need of repair and maintenance, parking along the lake in very bad condition and with an illegal fee. Also, the municipio will have to get the owners of many businesses in the downtown area to spruce up their facade, and to limit the street vendors (ouch!).
3. Finally a restaurant review I fully agree with! Yes, Pedro at his Go Bistro always offers dishes that are off the beaten path, interesting and savory. No filet mignon, arachera or vacio, no bass filet (basa! yuck), and no pasta Alfredo. Keep it up.
Jean-Claude Tatinclaux, Ajijic
Dear Sir,
The exit from the European Union by Great Britain is a cautionary tale for the United States. British voters were defrauded; much like Trump is defrauding U.S. voters. The Brexit vote has made Great Britain poorer, less dynamic and important. Trump has praised the development because he sees revenues in it for his own organization. Putting Trump in the White House will help him get richer and us poorer, while he makes our country less dynamic and less important.
Trump’s snake oil may sound attractive to some, but we must remember that once America’s place in the world has been diminished, no amount of rhetoric will put things right again.
Limiting free trade and reducing access to the world’s markets will cost us dearly. Americans will realize that Trump sold us a “bill of goods” like Brexit, let’s call it Amerexit.
What we need to do is reduce the “take” by large corporations, like Trump’s, from international trade through progressive taxation and closing loopholes. The increased revenues should be used to pay for health care for all, free public higher education, improved infrastructure and attacking global warming.
This will not necessarily increase stagnant working-class incomes right away, but it will increase their spendable money. And it will create more jobs than we can fill so we need young workers, which makes resolving the immigration issue an urgent matter. All this will increase purchase power which – in turn – will also help working-class incomes. Economics is not very mysterious, but to believe in Trump’s nationalism is stupid. His messages are not the answer; he’ll make things worse than Brexit. We live in an interconnected world; globalization is a fact and global warming is a fact, neither can be changed with slogans on baseball caps.
Assembly line jobs will always go to where labor is cheaper. If that is not an option, they are eliminated by machines. Business investors also need an income. Only competitive goods, services and people can survive, work for the sake of work doesn’t work. Education for everyone will create not just a hard working work force, but one that is efficient and that can address the economic malaise prevailing in many places across the United States. We must move forward and that requires more than Trump’s simplistic, jingoistic “solutions” because these solve nothing, they don’t even make sense.
John de Waal, MBA