MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

A review of Third World United States: the Argentina connection

Best selling author John R. Talbott whose books predicted the economic crisis that the US has gone through since 2003

United States online publication The Huffington Post published Tuesday an article whose title caught the attention of those in the Southern cone: “Becoming Argentina: A Review of Third World America.”

Written by John R. Talbott, a bestselling author whose books predicted the economic crisis that the US has gone through since 2003, it goes on about Arianna Huffington's latest book: Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream, in which the founder and owner of the online newspaper goes very strong on statistics that make it perfectly clear that the United States' middle-class is under threat, while she personalizes the hard data by incorporating individual US citizens' family stories at the end of each chapter.

The Argentina connection comes to stage when Talbott explains that economies cannot grow and develop broadly “unless economic opportunity is open to all,” and underlines that in most third world countries, their democracies “cannot control the oligarchs that so control their governments so the governments cannot stop high level corruption and create a level playing field for all economic participants.”

Thus, Talbott challenges the readers to “ask 100 economists and television pundits the reason for the latest financial crisis and you'll get 1,000 different answers that could leave you more confused than ever. Similarly, you would be equally confused if you asked their opinions as to why the middle class in the US has suffered for decades with stagnant real wages, reduced pensions, less health care coverage, greater personal and mortgage debt, and now greater unemployment and fewer job opportunities.”

According to Talbott, a both brilliant and simple answer comes from Huffington's realization that, just like most third world countries, ”American (US) democracy and our elected representatives have been bought and sold to the highest bidder. Corporate money in politics and lobbyists in Washington have created a government that is more concerned with the economic health of our biggest banks and corporations than with the well-being of our citizens. Huffington explains that the problem is not that our government is not working; it just isn't working on your behalf.“

Sad to read is that the article continues indicating that truth about the third world is that ”once these oligarchs take control of a country's legislature, it is very difficult for the countries to pass legislation necessary to accomplish real reform to clean up the corruption. Once your legislature is corrupted, real reform depends on the people rising up, organizing, protesting and demanding real change to their government. That is why poor countries in Africa and Latin America have such difficulty transitioning to growth economies and end up remaining poor for centuries”.