Originally posted by jazzcom
You speak about the dignity of men and women to decide their own lives? Haven't they decided themselves into the mess that they are currently in?
Yeah, right. The poor "chose" the misery of poverty. The middle-class "chose" to live precariously dependent upon the inflation index. As for the rich, they obviously "chose" to exploit the corruption for their benefit.
All this was a matter of choice. Free country, isn't it?
No dignity can only be achieved by accepting the tough love that they need in my opinion.
"Tough love"? Who do you think these people are, Army rookies?
They could teach you and I a couple of lessons about tough love. Like waking up not knowing wherefrom your mother will provide breakfast. Is that the kind of "tough love" you imply.
Or, is it a couple of years of IMF and World Bank imposed austerity by which the loans will be repaid by monies better used elsewhere? Were you in Brazil and Argentina when this sort of "tough love" was administered there? It wasn't a nice sight seeing the middle-class sell thier household belongings to provide food.
The ordinary Dominican has had no choice whatsoever between right and wrong. It has always been between more wrong and less wrong - which has had this economy working at far below its potential.
Furthermore, I am not espousing that they be handed a solution in the form of more money grants ... that go down a black hole and achieve nothing. All they need do is correct the endemic corruption, and the rest will work itself out. It will not grant them a lifestyle of either American or European proportions, but not everyone needs to be driving about in a gas-guzzling SUV.
The US is too fixated on material enrichment as a class distinction? Europe is better? We have a difference of opinion. Give Europe a few more years of the French and Germans trying to control the continent. This will prove very interesting. It is the outcome that will argue my point.
I am certainly NOT proposing for the DR a socialist government. Neither would I propose the present American economic structure. Neither are adapted to the DR reality. The truth is somewhere in between, and I am merely suggesting that the Dominicans need to find it for themselves.
Have you ever been to the DR? It sure doesn't seem so to me judging by your posts
Yes, so?
The Dominican Republic is having much the same problems as a good many countries around the world have had for the past thirty years: An incumbent class of individuals with their hands on the lever of power simply for personal enrichment.
It has happened in Iraq, Myanmar, Indonesia and to a more subtle effect in France, Italy and a few other Latin European countries.
I am simply not one of those who looks at the potential of something gone awry by mismanagement and says, "Well, hell, the ignorant bastards deserve it!"