Ireland's economic transformation offers lesson for Latin American nations - by Andreas Oppenheimer
Like most Latin American countries, Ireland was until very recently a poverty-ridden, agricultural, soccer-loving, Roman Catholic country best known for having a sizable part of its population living abroad and an economy that was heavily dependent on family remittances from its migrants in the United States. By some standards, Ireland was even poorer than most Latin American countries. The Great Irish Famine of 1846 left about 1 million dead. Until as recently as the early 1990s, Ireland was still one of Europe's poorest countries, and the Irish were often stereotyped as the British people's poor cousins. Like in many parts of Latin America, the most common joke in Ireland was, "Would the last person to leave the country please turn off the lights?"
My opinion: While Latin American countries should not follow Ireland's model, or any other, blindly - the region has the highest inequality levels in the world, and should do a better job than Ireland in distributing wealth - they could learn a lot from its successful immersion into the global economy. Note EU-Digest: what Mr. Oppenheimer is not mentioning is the fact that because the US has largely supported the military and wealthy (influential) ruling class in Latin America the distribution of wealth has not taken place. Only slowly now with the emergence of more Liberal minded democratically elected politicians some change is possible.
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