I arrived yesterday in Uruguay, and today I read the news that Uruguay was nominated Country of the Year 2013 by The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21591872-resilient-ireland-booming-south-sudan-tumultuous-turkey-our-country-year-earths-got
I'm right now in Punta del Este, which is not the most representative city in Uruguay as to judge the country from that. The country is doing well in many senses. With this year's GDP growth Uruguay will once again surpass Chile in GDP per capita, and regain the 1st place in Latin America with the highest GDP per capita. Uruguay is a very small country with only 3,25 million inhabitants. Fortunately or unfortunately, the population growth has been stagnant for a long time already, due to the high education level and to the cost of living. This provides social stability, but makes the market remain as small as ever, and thus producing anything is comparatively expensive. This was strongly visible when the country joined the Mercosur and local industries had to close due to lack of competitiveness. So the country had to recycle itself into a service oriented country, by capitalizing its higher level of education. But being so small, and having neighbors that are 13 and 43 times bigger than itself, only make it very vulnerable to political bullying and to it's neighbor's crises.
Nevertheless, thanks to a lifelong tradition, Uruguay's biggest capital is social and political stability. Even financially, it is more stable than the most of Latin-American countries. But as for social and political stability it is number 1. Thus, whenever there is unrest in it's neighbors, it's natural that the rich try to move their money to the safest place. And this causes terrible resentment that is sometimes denounced like fomenting money-laundry, and things like that. However, the country has always fought to deserve the stability and the confidence it enjoys.
Today, unfortunately, the country is more polarized than before due to a high level of politicization, and too often the fellow-citizens lack the respect they should owe towards each-other. The present and previous left governments, despite gaining so much visibility with their highly-controversial proposals (which are good, although lack a real plan for implementation), is incentivating those differences due to political ideology due to the old and poisonous discourse using too frequently concepts like "the oligarcs", "the capitalists", "the poor exploited ones", "the imperialists and the Empire", etc. So, although the country is doing well in many ways, there is a dose of poison that this same government is not helping with.
Punta del Este is another thing. It's actually another world inside the country. I've been to 32 countries, and as for a man-built beauty, it's the most beautiful I've seen. But I'll write about Punta del Este in another article.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21591872-resilient-ireland-booming-south-sudan-tumultuous-turkey-our-country-year-earths-got
I'm right now in Punta del Este, which is not the most representative city in Uruguay as to judge the country from that. The country is doing well in many senses. With this year's GDP growth Uruguay will once again surpass Chile in GDP per capita, and regain the 1st place in Latin America with the highest GDP per capita. Uruguay is a very small country with only 3,25 million inhabitants. Fortunately or unfortunately, the population growth has been stagnant for a long time already, due to the high education level and to the cost of living. This provides social stability, but makes the market remain as small as ever, and thus producing anything is comparatively expensive. This was strongly visible when the country joined the Mercosur and local industries had to close due to lack of competitiveness. So the country had to recycle itself into a service oriented country, by capitalizing its higher level of education. But being so small, and having neighbors that are 13 and 43 times bigger than itself, only make it very vulnerable to political bullying and to it's neighbor's crises.
Nevertheless, thanks to a lifelong tradition, Uruguay's biggest capital is social and political stability. Even financially, it is more stable than the most of Latin-American countries. But as for social and political stability it is number 1. Thus, whenever there is unrest in it's neighbors, it's natural that the rich try to move their money to the safest place. And this causes terrible resentment that is sometimes denounced like fomenting money-laundry, and things like that. However, the country has always fought to deserve the stability and the confidence it enjoys.
Today, unfortunately, the country is more polarized than before due to a high level of politicization, and too often the fellow-citizens lack the respect they should owe towards each-other. The present and previous left governments, despite gaining so much visibility with their highly-controversial proposals (which are good, although lack a real plan for implementation), is incentivating those differences due to political ideology due to the old and poisonous discourse using too frequently concepts like "the oligarcs", "the capitalists", "the poor exploited ones", "the imperialists and the Empire", etc. So, although the country is doing well in many ways, there is a dose of poison that this same government is not helping with.
Punta del Este is another thing. It's actually another world inside the country. I've been to 32 countries, and as for a man-built beauty, it's the most beautiful I've seen. But I'll write about Punta del Este in another article.
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