Tom Friedman misses the point

No, this Sunday's offering is not Tom Friedman's dumbest column yet. But "Narcos, No's and NAFTA" has plenty of blind spots.

For example, he notes that 40 percent of Mexicans are below that country's poverty line, which is well below our poverty line in the USofA, but adds that 75 percent of Mexicans consider themselves middle class.

He doesn't ask whether his beloved NAFTA has contributed to the problem at all.

He next notes how many Mexican parents are giving their children English names, but gives us no information behind this phenomenon, other than one Mexican economist:

What is also striking, (Mexican economist Luis de la Calle) added, are the names of the private schools in some of these poor Mexico City districts — like Iztapalapa: “They are called John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, Carlos Marx, Van Gogh and Instituto Wisdom.” Why such names? They are appealing to the aspirations of Mexicans, about 40 percent of whom live below the poverty line but 75 percent of whom identify themselves as “middle class” in polls.

De la Calle also studied the top 50 Mexican baby names in 2008. The most popular for girls, he said, included “Elizabeth, Evelyn, Abigail, Karen, Marilyn and Jaqueline, and for boys Alexander, Jonathan, Kevin, Christian and Bryan.” Not only Juans. “We have two middle classes,” he said. “One comes from teachers’ unions and Pemex and power companies, who milk the Mexican government. These are the middle-class conservatives, and they want to preserve the status quo. But there is a rising and far larger Mexican middle class coming up from the bottom who send their kids to the Instituto Wisdom and who have a meritocratic view of the world.”

Are these "English namers" impoverished Mexicans of the percentage claiming to be middle class, and trying to prove their claim with the namings? Are they hoping that this will make it easier for their children to get to the US, and stay there, without being arrested?

Probably not, if they're all in private schools. Which Friedman doesn't even investigate further.

He then notes part of the actual middle class in Mexico is people working in the oil industry. He nowhere discusses Peak Oil, the sharp decline in Mexico's offshore Cantarell oilfield, or how this will possibly increase poverty, decrease the Mexican government's poverty aid in the future, given than more than 40 percent of its revenue comes from PEMEX, and how this could increase emigration to the USofA.

His "No's" group includes people who oppose privatizing PEMEX, but, again, he provides no context as to how this would affect the Mexican government, poverty, etc.

So, out of his blind spots, while this isn't Friedman's dumbest column, it's on the lower end of the scale. And, it repeats a lot of his usual stereotypical blather.