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How poor does Cuba look?
The question is why anyone might think Cuba is doing OK, relative to northern Mexico. Megan McArdle offers (more than) two points:
3) Deep poverty is much more picturesque than moderate poverty. Poor countries have their old colonial buildings still standing, because no one had the money (or the reason) to tear them down and put up something bigger. The countryside is dotted with adorable houses made out of natural materials and natives wearing colorful traditional garb. Animals graze in verdant fields, besides teams of sowers and reapers. Middle income countries are smoggy, and almost everything looks like a cheaper, shabbier version of what you get in the US. Scenic landscapes are despoiled by cinderblock buildings with hideous tin roofs, or trailers; cities are choked with boxy modern buildings that look something like our housing projects. The genteel decay that looks gothic and intriguing on an old Victorian mansion just looks seedy when it's eating away at badly poured concrete. Affluent Americans underestimate the utility value of things like having personal space, or an automobile.
4) Cuba was relatively wealthy in 1959; it therefore has more of the markers, like old majestic buildings, that we associate with wealth.
I found the most evident signs of Cuban poverty to be the unceasing supply of articulate and sometimes weakly sobbing mendicants, none of whom sounded like con men, all of whom needed money to buy food and clothes for their families. The most shocking part is what small sums of money they would ask for or be made happy by. Or the numerous women -- and I mean ordinary women in the streets -- who would offer their bodies to a stranger (handsome though I am) for a mere pittance. Yes in Cuba there is good access to doctors but anesthesia is in short supply and the health care system stopped improving long ago.
If you want to understand northern Mexico, get out of the Tijuana tourist strip and visit Hermosillo. Count the number of new housing developments, and then count how many of them are inhabited by fairly dark-skinned, previously dirt poor, Mexican mestizos. Put that number over the number of buildings in Havana that do not have serious maintenance problems and see if you can divide by zero.
It's quite possible that a lower middle class Mexican eats better food than you do, but there is no chance of that for anyone in Cuba except the top elite. Powdered milk is a luxury there.
I've long thought that Prague looks much richer than it is, and that the ugly northern Virginia or Houston looks poorer than it is. Where else looks deceivingly rich or poor?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 26, 2008 at 06:04 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
I think a lot of Western Europeans underestimate how poor Russia is based on the elegant-slash-bombastic architecture of Moscow and St Petersburg. Throw in a sprinkling of luxury goods retailers and large black German cars, and the deception is quite effective.
Anyone having a stopover in London but only seeing Heathrow will no doubt think that they are in one of the poorest corners of Europe.
Posted by: Johan Almenberg at Feb 26, 2008 7:45:54 AM
If you ignore the generally ugly communist look of the city, Cluj-Napoca Romania has many aspects that belie its poverty relative to Western Europe. The residents especially have a cosmopolitan flair that is hard to see through.
Posted by: Jeff Holmes at Feb 26, 2008 7:50:28 AM
I'm surprised how many people come back from Cuba talking about how wonderful life is there. Yes, there's a lot to like (the look of the place, the music, the people) but if you ever managed to get people to talk to you about their life (including talking to doctors and teachers from the supposed jewels in Cuba's crown about the organisations they work in) then you get a different picture. And yes, the many sobbing women offering to have sex with you 'for free' if you give them some food for their children, is also a clue. I know Haiti is worse, I just am surprised how many people think Cuba is better than it is.
Posted by: Luis Enrique at Feb 26, 2008 8:07:50 AM
....think Cuba is great? Take the ferry from Old Havana, right across the street from Hotel Santanderia (sp?), into Regla, where actual Havana residents live.
Posted by: shawn at Feb 26, 2008 8:14:03 AM
GDP per capita for the Czech republic is something like 12000 $/yr, with high PPP compared to the US (the world factbook uses an almost factor 2 PPP multiplier, but that seems a bit too high to me) . Add in that Prague is the richest part of the country, and I'd say that Prague doesn't look poor because it isn't poor.
Posted by: greatzamfir at Feb 26, 2008 8:17:59 AM
College campus are gorgeous and teem with gorgeous young men and women, bubbling with hope and youth. That's one reason people just can't bring themselves to believe that academia is screwed up.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Feb 26, 2008 8:36:50 AM
Seoul and Gwangju in South Korea look much much much poorer than they are.
Posted by: Rue Des Quatre Vents at Feb 26, 2008 8:46:02 AM
I grow up in a poor, corrupt but non-socialist economy. I was always amazed at how easily Americans would dismiss progress in places that weren't picturesque, run by rulers they didn't like.
Even if the the people living in a run-down shanty town had seen their real incomes double in the space of a decade, various visiting student activists would tend to dismiss this progress by noting that their lives were still miserable. It's hard to explain to wealthy students that there's a huge difference between living on two cups of rice a day vs. living on two cups of rice a day plus a small fish and having something left over for a cheap t-shirt or alcohol.
Posted by: jn at Feb 26, 2008 8:49:57 AM
This post about women selling their bodies to tourists for some food for their children makes me heartsick.
Does anyone here know of any worthwhile charities to help people in Cuba improve
their lives, hopefully by supporting market institutions and small
businesses?
Posted by: Matthew at Feb 26, 2008 8:51:15 AM
"Where else looks deceivingly rich or poor?"
Iceland. To my eyes, Iceland looks a lot poorer than its GDP statistics would indicate. I was confused about this disconnect for a while. The key to remember is that GDP is a flow. But our eyes see the stock of accumulated (net) wealth. Iceland has been desperately poor for centuries. I'm talking about on the verge of starvation poor. Only in the last few decades has any real growth occurred.
The general rule is that countries that are historically poor, but become richer in a short span still don't have much accumulated wealth, and thus look poor to our eyes.
In contrast, previously rich places that are struggling still have the lingering wealth accumulation. Cuba fits this pattern. As does much of Europe.
A better indicator of how our eyes see the richness of a place would be the SUM of all previous GDPs discounted for some rate of depreciation.
Posted by: Bob at Feb 26, 2008 8:55:19 AM
Large parts of Tokyo (the parts with endless rows of 3-4 story 1950's pre-stressed concrete buildings) look pretty shabby. I guess it's what comes of having your city flattened by bombing, and putting up replacements in a hurry after the bombing stops.
Posted by: Don K at Feb 26, 2008 8:59:22 AM
I agree with saying that Tokyo looks pretty shabby in a lot of places. Especially along the train tracks entering the city from Narita. Lots of the high-rise "mansions" (condos) look really cramped, moldy, and dirty. Many of the street level shops look shabby. Much of this is simply because of the insane density of the city, compared with the expectation of a very rich country's capital.
Posted by: Erik at Feb 26, 2008 9:10:10 AM
Houstonian here, and wanted to agree wholeheartedly with your observation. Houston looks poor for one of the same reasons it feels rich: the lack of zoning laws. With the exception of a couple deed-restricted neighborhoods, all the very nice parts of town have a few run-down houses (or abandoned warehouses or factories) among them. But because any of these can instantly (talking six months or less) become three $300k townhouses, house prices are very, very low ($150k median). With much less money locked up in mortgage payments, we have lots more left over for shopping and eating, and damn do we do a ton of that. On a traffic-filled trip to the mall last weekend my husband and I were lamenting oil at $100 a barrel.
Also, as a pretty new city (100 years old, roughly), Houston lacks the charming old buildings that make other places seem nicer. And the sprawling nature of the place means that offices are scattered all over, so we don't have the downtown density (less so than even places like Dallas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, etc.) that also is associated with wealth.
Houston also is one of the most diverse (on a neighborhood level) cities I've ever seen, but that's another topic, I suppose.
Posted by: Amber at Feb 26, 2008 9:36:04 AM
Yes in Cuba there is good access to doctors but anesthesia is in short supply and the health care system stopped improving long ago.
From what I understand in Cuba to become a doctor takes 5 years of post secondary schooling. If you make it easy enough to become a doctor any country can provide good access to doctors. (Another reason to battle the AMA and excessive licensing of Doctors.)
I've long thought that Prague looks much richer than it is, and that the ugly northern Virginia or Houston looks poorer than it is. Where else looks deceivingly rich or poor?
Amen, amen, amen long live the mobile home in the American south. I have long had the impression that poor people live much better in their mobile homes here in Florida than people do in my native Rhode Island but the mobile homes are a real eye sore. The poor rural south can be ugly but it how some people choose to live.
Posted by: Floccina at Feb 26, 2008 9:44:33 AM
I think that Bob (accumulated wealth) and Don K(wartime damage) have two parts of an explanation.
One of the biggest factors in judging the prosperity of a city is the architecture, and the quality of architecture is generally representative of the prosperity of the city at the time the building was built.
If you take a city that has been prosperous continually for many centuries, like Paris, then what eventually sinks in is that there is great diversity in the buildings - there are great buildings from practically every one of the last nine centuries.
Prague, for a comparator, is a much newer city than Paris, and was only really rich for a short period under Rudolf II, but was extraordinarily rich then, and had one of the all-time leading patrons of the arts spending the income of a great empire to beautify his capital. So there's lots of really good architecture, but for a completely different reason.
If you want a sense of the wealth of a city now, then the best way is to look at new buildings, and also at the people, and the businesses. It can still be hard - for instance a moderately prosperous city with big variations in wealth can look either very poor (lots of beggars) or very rich (expensive stores) depending on what you look at.
Posted by: Richard at Feb 26, 2008 9:47:01 AM
Heathrow really is two airports: Terminal 4 is clean, modern and well appointed (albeit overcrowded, about 10 years after it opened). Terminals 1-3 look like something from Karachi.
Haven't been there since T5 opened.
Edmonton is a bit like Houston north, an insane oil boomtown, but it does look a bit distressed. Partly because of a lack of stately old buildings and wide, tree-lined boulevards, and swaths of blah tract housing from the 40s and 50s (selling for $600K a pop these days). Many parts of Richmond, VA look a lot richer, but I'm sure it ain't.
Posted by: bartman at Feb 26, 2008 10:06:14 AM
I second the point about Heathrow.
Posted by: Chris at Feb 26, 2008 10:08:01 AM
PS talk about ugly rich and pretty poor, the Cubans seem to have solved the obesity problem.
Posted by: Floccina at Feb 26, 2008 10:12:51 AM
Prague is a wealthy city, in fact. Its GDP per capita is well above the EU-15 average. Plus, the income structure is relatively very egalitarian, thus no really poor neighborhoods.
Richard - it's pure nonsense that Prague is much newer than Paris. There are all architectural styles in Prague from Romanesque to Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism, Art Nouveau, Art Déco, Functionalism... to postmodernism. Prague's diversity rivals that of Paris, OK, Prague is smaller and not as rich as Paris.
As I'm spoiled with Prague's charm I often find other cities uninspiring. I like New York, Washington DC and Boston, but last year I've been to Seattle and was rather unimpressed. Thanks for the Space Needle, though. Atlanta was pure boredom then, sorry to say that, no offence intended.
Posted by: Pavel at Feb 26, 2008 10:22:27 AM
Bob says: "In contrast, previously rich places that are struggling still have the lingering wealth accumulation. Cuba fits this pattern. As does much of Europe."
Until quite recently, European per capita income levels were way, way below US levels, even in its richest countries. Perhaps European capitals gave you the impression that Europe was (relatively) rich in the past, but what you are really looking at are the leftovers of a concentration of wealth in a few cities.
Posted by: greatzamfir at Feb 26, 2008 10:24:31 AM
I think Cape Town's wealth and wealth distribution can accuratly guessed by the buildings. Some new lavish homes, many modest homes and appartments, lots of extremly poor shacks. (BTW great place to vaction, breath takingly beautiful, just stay way from the shacks)
Posted by: Mason at Feb 26, 2008 10:41:17 AM
I think Cape Town's wealth and wealth distribution can accuratly guessed by the buildings. Some new lavish homes, many modest homes and appartments, lots of extremly poor shacks. (BTW great place to vaction, breath takingly beautiful, just stay way from the shacks)
Posted by: Mason at Feb 26, 2008 10:42:53 AM
Urban blight is a well-known phenomenon. What about suburban blight? I have to guess there is some good analysis of this new development. The idea of development happening in extending rings around a major city is correct, but won't the rapidity of re-development also be a decreasing function of distance from the center? Taht is, will the next 50 years see a wave of suburban blight (where the displaced residents of gentrified city centers go)?
Posted by: Tim Kane at Feb 26, 2008 10:54:17 AM
http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=havana+cuba
Posted by: Floccina at Feb 26, 2008 11:05:30 AM
Jamaica looks poor and is poor.
Suburbia was largely built by moving the middle class from the cities to the outer areas. This was a result of the Great Society government policies of the 60s and 70s. I suppose a rebirth of good paying jobs in the inner city could bring people back. That seems to be happening since the 1980s, the result of Reagan's economic revitalization.
However, another trend is the growth of mega suburbs which are small cities in themselves. Also, airports are a magnet for attracting economic growth and consequent porpulation growth. Transportation is becoming a major issue due to energy costs. People may start living where they work again. Telecommutting is also growing, nullifying the transportation problem.
After tearing down the public housing slums, cities like Chicago have large swaths of land available for re-development. Can the government screw this up? As the patronage armies and government bureaucracies grow in the large cities, taxes are becoming a major burden for the middle class and an obstacle to development. Increasingly, the center city is populated by an economic elite like ancient Rome. Government appointments are powerfully sought after. I think the practice of royal licenses may make a come back. Schools become dysfunctional. Instead of circuses were have public works like parks and sculptures. Anyone for a temple of Jupiter?
Posted by: jorod at Feb 26, 2008 11:14:49 AM
Amber writes:
> Houston looks poor for one of the same reasons it feels rich: the lack of zoning laws.
As another Houston resident, I don't agree that our lack of zoning laws is responsible for the city's appearance. Houston (and Texas in general) is undertaxed, and what revenue is spent on infrastructure is spent to increase sprawl. When housing does not appreciate in price, it makes more sense to buy new than to repair old. Also, Houston has been built up and then (virtually) abandoned several times, due to the cyclical nature of the energy business.
When I first came to Houston, I made the same remark that everyone makes: why, in a place with almost no winter weather, are the roads in such bad shape? The answer is that no one bothers to fix the old roads.
Posted by: Patrick at Feb 26, 2008 11:21:24 AM
After tearing down the public housing slums, cities like Chicago have large swaths of land available for re-development. Can the government screw this up?
Posted by: Independent George at Feb 26, 2008 11:56:22 AM
In contrast to Hermosillo, the Cuban Government, which is charge of such things, has not built a single new residence since 1989, although it has had 15,000 planned for the past 12 years.
This was told to me by a communist party hack during by one of those officials peculiar to socialist countries that will meet you and simply blurt out statistics for the entirety of a 4 hour meeting. The one about housing starts floored our group and we commented on it. As with everything, he replied that the reason the Cuban Government can't build new houses is the US Embargo, the Soviet Collapse, and, btw, have I mentioned how many doctors we have?
Posted by: guy in the veal calf office at Feb 26, 2008 12:25:55 PM
Many Irish towns appear to be poor but have high average incomes. Ireland has a very high per capita GDP.
There are two reasons. One already mentioned is that Ireland was poor in the recent past and doesn't have the accumulated wealth of, say, England. The other is that since Ireland joined the Euro the interest rate has been below the inflation rate for most of the time. This means that most people choose consumption immediately and do not invest.
It's strange. Go out in the evening and you will see women in expensive designer dresses walking through tumbledown streets to drink expensive drinks in expensive bars.
greatzamfir "European per capita income levels were way, way below US levels, even in its richest countries."
The discussion above about latent wealth shows the problems with income and GDP as measures of wealth. GDP change may be a good measure of progress, but is absolute GDP an accurate measure of wealth?
Early in the 20th century european cities were expanding but there was much already in place, much more was built in the US. The building of many american cities involved a lot of trade, but was this trade not part of the reason for higher incomes? Perhaps the problem is rather like an earthquake which makes people poorer but increases GDP?
It's a hard question to answer.
Posted by: Anonymous at Feb 26, 2008 12:34:06 PM
A few years ago I attended the American Go Association annual "Congress" (i.e., the main US national tournament of the game of Go, running for a week). In hallway conversations there, there were a number of spontaneous complaints about the lack of zoning in Houston. I started pressing people about specifically what the problem was (and not, I hope, leading the witness). I only got two specific answers, both substantially the same: that the rich and poor areas were all mixed up, and that it was disturbing to go from a tony shopping/restaurant/whatever outing and so often six blocks away drive past some ratty run-down area.
(Amber writes "Houston also is one of the most diverse (on a neighborhood level) cities I've ever seen, but that's another topic, I suppose." That's not quite a third version of the same observation, but it may be related.)
I've been to Houston a number of times, and I've lived in the Dallas area for about a decade. Some description involving something "all mixed up," seems to me more accurate than "Houston looks much poorer than it is." Dallas has (and various other cities in the DFW metroplex have) vast tracts of land which seem roughly as grotty as the stuff that bothered people in Houston. It's just kept much more thoroughly separate from most of the areas the Go players like to visit.
It seems easy to cultivate blindered vision on this issue. People from Dallas drove past some iffy districts of the DFW area on their way to Houston, and it didn't stop them from complaining in general terms about the deleterious effects of lack of zoning in Houston. And I lived in ratty and remarkably crowded housing when I was an undergraduate at Caltech, and as far as I know there was little political interest in zoning it out of existence. To receive protection from sharing bathrooms while sleeping in old bunkbeds two or three to a room, the kind of protection that others in the LA metroplex had reliably received for decades, perhaps we should have tried to create a stereotype involving stealing hubcaps, wallets, and TVs.
Posted by: William Newman at Feb 26, 2008 12:34:43 PM
@Patrick: "Houston (and Texas in general) is undertaxed..."
You have permission to get out, my man. Anyone who says that ANY place is "undertaxed" may walk off a pier. If that needs explaining, you need help.
Posted by: AJ at Feb 26, 2008 12:40:15 PM
Chicagoland is already experiencing suburban blight. Despite the vast size of Chicago city, land is more expensive due to higher taxes and regulation. Folks who are leaving gentrified neighborhoods in the city are skipping cheaper neighborhoods in the city and going to cheaper suburbs, often the older ones that are in first ring of suburbs. Some have postulated that as cities age, they form rings of wealth and poverty, often with the core forming the wealthy ring. Chicago is undergoing a slow Manhattenization of its core along the lake. I like this development and I wouldn't paint the change as terribly as Jorod, but the city suffers from the patronage that spends so much of the city's money that they are now proposing a raise of the sales tax from 9% to 11% a move that could simultaneously drive out the poorest and the wealthy middle from the city, leaving only the fantastically rich in the center.
Posted by: ElamBend at Feb 26, 2008 12:43:11 PM
The necessary discrimination is not easy. I remember when I moved to Tucson from Omaha in my early 20s and was looking for a place to live. In Omaha you non consciously judge neighborhoods by such factors as lawn care, paint on the houses and rusty cars on the street ... none of which applied in Tucson. It took me several months to be able to learn this discernment. (Not including, of course, the obvious ... are you on a mountain by a golf course with grass lawns and swimming pools ... then you can't afford it.)
Posted by: Thomas at Feb 26, 2008 1:03:19 PM
Matthew: Such charities would be excellent things, if the Cuban government would allow them to exist at all.
Needless to say, foreign charities attempting to institute market economy at any level and aid the people of Cuba are, to put it lightly, not encouraged by the Communist Party, which necessarily views such actions as "imperialist subversion" or the like.
(Of course, if the Cuban government wasn't Communist, Cuba wouldn't be so dreadfully, horribly poor in the first place...)
Posted by: Sigivald at Feb 26, 2008 1:25:39 PM
Another vote for Ireland, even within Dublin. I remember (around 2002) crossing the Liffey from the shiny, bustling city centre, walking a block away from the main road and thinking I must have walked through a wormhole. Ramshackle buildings, street deserted except for the obligatory drunk asleep on the corner. There might even have been tumbleweeds.
Posted by: ricardo at Feb 26, 2008 1:43:25 PM
Well Tyler, at least we've established that Northern Virginia is ugly. There's something we can all agree upon.
-Your neighbors in the beautiful District of Columbia.
Posted by: Lee at Feb 26, 2008 2:08:49 PM
I live in Houston, too. Undertaxed is not the word I'd use. Property taxes and valuations are way out of line with market realities. The use of raising bonds has increased dramatically to fund everything imaginable. In the last election we voted on raising bonds to cure cancer. This is above and beyond the bonds we raise each election to pay for the new courthouse, new schools, new stadiums,and on and on. We pay hospital taxes. I think every city fee has increased.
The two major highways near which I live have been fixed as in completely rebuilt 2 and 3 times respectively in the time I've lived in my house. Taxation is not the issue.
Carrie
Posted by: Carina at Feb 26, 2008 2:44:43 PM
Accumulated wealth may explain the impressions of Venezuela I get from many foreign visitors. This could count as a "looks richer than it is" situation.
Posted by: Juan at Feb 26, 2008 2:58:59 PM
Castro managed to preserve a slice of Eisenhower-era America -- Havana looks like a set for "West Side Story."
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Feb 26, 2008 3:26:57 PM
Bucktown in Chicago. Maybe I have been in the Northeastern US & Europe for too long, but the exorbitant hoem pricing in Bucktown was the single biggest shock in going back to Chicago.
There seems to be a divide b/w undesirable second class places with growing industrial cores (Parts of China, Northern Mexico, West Texas) and desirable places that have been decimated by external factors (Budapest, Prague, Cuba). These places have wealth in structures because, barring external factors, it is a desirable place to be (and has been historically). The correct comparison for Chihuaha isn't Havana, it's El Centro, CA. The correct comparison for Havana is Miami.
Also, I question the definition of "richness" - I would take Prague over Northern Virginia any day of the week.
Posted by: Greg at Feb 26, 2008 3:44:29 PM
A bit off-topic, perhaps, but I find all this berating of Cuba somewhat question-begging. When Cuba finally falls to the west & capitalists are allowed free rein on the island does anyone seriously believe that the first thing done will be to help all the poor, hungry & homeless? Today many like to gnash teeth & wring hands over the deplorable standard of living in Cuba but we all know that when that glorious day comes there will be a mad rush to build up the coastline for vacationing Americans & the plight of those currently poor, hungry & homeless won't change significantly. In fact, income inequality will probably rise & rise, much like we already have here in the US. The poor will be cared for about as much as they are here. Which is to say not much at all. So why so much pretending to care about them now while still under communist rule?
Posted by: David H. at Feb 26, 2008 3:58:30 PM
I'm glad I've been doing some economics reading, so I can see right through the half-truths and criticapitalism that Mr. David H. posted above.
Posted by: shawn at Feb 26, 2008 4:12:28 PM
I wrote some reflections based on my own travel to all three places at Economists for Obama:
http://econ4obama.blogspot.com
Posted by: Don Pedro at Feb 26, 2008 5:26:18 PM
Tyler,
Thanks for now openly providing your own impressions. I would expect that northern Mexico,
which is way ahead of the rest of Mexico and the main area growing as a result of NAFTA, would
be well ahead of Cuba. Of course, as you know, southern Mexico is a different story.
So, did you actuall make it to the countryside in Cuba? That seems to have been the source
of the original arguments here. The countryside was much poorer than the city under Batista,
with many reporting a leveling between the two. So, the city is not well off, at least those
without access to income from the tourism sector, but is the countryside really all that poorly
off. In the previous thread some said that rural poverty in some other neighboring countries
really is worse. I do not know, not having been to Cuba.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Feb 26, 2008 5:38:37 PM
AJ,
Well, I won't tell him to walk off the pier, but as a recent addition to the DFW area I'll be happy to state that the reason I moved my family here had quite a bit to do with the low taxes. I got a much better up-front offer from a company in RI, but once you factored in the tax differential and the absolute need to pay for private schools up there....
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at Feb 26, 2008 5:43:15 PM
"The poor will be cared for about as much as they are here. Which is to say not much at all." David H.
So, what you're saying is that the women who are swapping their bodies for food for their children must have blown the Cuban equivalent of WIC and Food Stamps? Because I sure as hell don't see that here; all the ladies I see participating in the world's oldest profession in the US are working for far higher wages. Most of the "poor" in this country are fat.
OK, now you can change the rant to how Corporate America is shoving unhealthy food down the gullets of the poor.
Way up at the top, there, Matthew asked where he could donate to a charity that would help. When greedy Corporate America finally takes over, you know what? There will be lots of charities available to help, because, unlike the Cuban Government, corporations don't view them as competition. And all the people working for those soulless corporations are not soulless, and will have the disposable income to contribute to those charities.
YOu Socialists just hate to see another one go down, no matter how good it would be for those who are now in bad shape.
Posted by: bud at Feb 26, 2008 6:46:57 PM
I visited Monterrey for an MBA trip. The running joke about the city was "it's just like any city in South Texas, only more people speak English."
I liked Monterrey much more than Mexico City, which I thought was a polluted pit, with a few nice parts (Zona Rosa, etc.) Then again, I am an ugly, suburb-dwelling, car-driving, McDonald's eating (with 110 cholesterol) 'merican.
I must admit though, the food in Cuidad de Mexico was much better than Monterrey.
Posted by: DougM at Feb 26, 2008 8:26:15 PM
Travelling in the Rick parts of China, and in South Korea, the cities looked very similar. It was hard to tell one from the other, with one exception:
Korea had decorative Cabbages growing as roadside decoration. There would be patterns of red, purple, green and white cabbages on traffic islands and along round-abouts. There was never any free food left lying around in China.
Posted by: doctorpat at Feb 26, 2008 9:03:20 PM
"I must admit though, the food in Cuidad de Mexico was much better than Monterrey."
FWIW, my Mexican wife claims that we can get more authentic Mexican food here in Southern California than in Monterrey.
Posted by: Scott Wood at Feb 26, 2008 10:01:47 PM
I think USA is poorer than it looks and looks richer than it is... Agree?
Posted by: Ru... at Feb 26, 2008 10:06:54 PM
