Where does New York City turn to learn how to deal with lots and lots of poor people? Mexico, of course: we have a solid 50% of the population living in poverty, and one fifth living in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank.
So, Mayor Michael Bloomberg today begins a brief tour around Mexico City in hopes to learn something (anything) about such a phenomenom and how to fight it.
One program under the mayor’s radar is “Oportunidades,” under which poor families get paid for meeting certain goals such as attending parent-teacher conferences, getting medical checkups or holding down a full-time job.
What’s wrong with that? well, for starters most poor people in Mexico cannot attend parent-teacher conferences or get medical checkups simply because they live in communities with no schools or medical facilities; and don’t get me started on the “holding a full-time job.” In case you’ve missed it, the last sexenio left thousands of middle-class professionals without a job, full-time or not. (The poor don’t have jobs, period.)
Maybe Mr. Bloomberg ignores that a lot of those people he’s hoping to visit this week are already planning their trip North of the Border.
Mmmmm, maybe what he really wants to get out of this Mexico adventure is to learn how to actually –and literally– make the poor go away. Tricky guy, always ahead of the curve!
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