The Illusion of a Solution: The problematic approach to solving structural inequality
The dilemma of social and economic inequality has come to the forefront in recent years as it has increasingly affected growing numbers of Americans and Europeans. However, this problem is nothing new in places like Asia, Africa and especially Latin America. Those countries most commonly associated with the economic periphery have suffered from structural economic and social inequality while the core industrial states of North American and Europe were often seen as more equitable. This economic and social reality has gradually as changed the 20th century came to a close and the 21st century dawned. Economic and social inequality have become major issues in wealthy countries because for the first time in three generations it is now apparent that economic and social mobility are not inherently positive in every succeeding generation. Policies in Latin American reflected on European economic and social policies have contributed to current state of affairs. These polices of education and social services were designed to fight a problem with the same substance as a desert mirage because to everyone that solution was a different illusion in the distance. Instead of focusing on the plurality of the problem there was a drive to fight a single aspect at a time, which proved costly in money spent and time wasted not planning for a different economic schema. Latin America’s current social and economic inequality is not the result of a singular political, geographic, or ethnic problem, but instead as part a global economic transition away from industrial development and a growing focus on information development.
The definition of economic growth and how to achieve it has changed drastically in the last thirty years. Many economic growth models from Rostow’s Developmental Model to Neoliberalism have not been found to be a universal answer for all global states. This means that as a Latin American state may want to being looking for alternate economic and development models. It is easy to look at China as the new model for how Latin America should behave to modernize their economy, but this disregards the fact that Latin American states are not in any way similar to China or its circumstances. China and their rapid industrialization has cast a long global shadow that makes it difficult for any outside state or even regional economy to compete. Global economics have moved away from heavy industry as a tool of development simply because only so many economies can have effective heavy industry or compete globally with those that do. Latin America is in a position where further industrialization would be costly both to state budgets and social stability. As Fukuyama correctly points out in “The Latin American Experience” China’s rapid economic growth created a vast amount of wealth quickly, but also a greater inequality that led to a number of social protests each year that are often brutally put down by the authoritarian PRC. The problem for Latin America states in this regard is that further industrialization is now prohibitive and not cost effective.
If further industrialization is off the table for development Latin America is simply left with only focusing on agrarian development or an information based economic system. However, a move to an information based economic system is causing disruption to traditional educational systems because of social and budgetary factors for many economies including Latin America. Furthermore, there is an inherent political danger in Latin America in creating a large highly educated population not just because of budgetary cost of doing so by investing in diversified university programs. For Latin American states this puts more social and budgetary power in teachers’ unions and universities, which according to Fukuyama are already powerful political actors. Latin American democracies by attempting to solve inequality with a new economic model essentially are destabilizing own democratic governments.
This same push for more educated workers in Latin America could parallel China’s experience and create a new class of information and vocational specialists that make social and economic inequality more stratified. Fukuyama identifies this same problem of crystalizing inequality again with countries like China producing ever increasing numbers of engineers and managers each year to fuel a transitional economy based off heavy industrial value to informational value. In China a more highly educated and wealthy class of professionals are creating obstacles for others in China. These educated professionals that themselves become a new social class of information specialists may see it in their interest to begin economic and social pressure to limit membership to maintain the value of their class. If this continues there is a possibility for greater economic and social stratification as society divides into two larger nebulous classes as those with information and those without.
As the world ventures further into the 21st century no one state or theorist has a clear answer on how to address the combination of a new economic schema to the old problems of economic and social inequality. Political and economic obstacles continue to define how any state approaches economic and social inequality and in that regard Latin America is no different. With wealthy European states and the United States experiencing slow economic growth and austerity measures it is difficult to demand more of Latin America or anywhere else in the world to immediately address this problem. Even cases of states that have developed rapidly like China have similar problems in economic and social inequality. The choices are not clear for Latin America because the world economic transition is shifting rapidly to an information value based system and there are no developmental models to follow in this new system. The solution to economic and social inequality is just as fleeting to Latin America because the entire modern world is defined by constant economic and social change. Permanent solutions to structural economic and social inequality are like a desert mirage, the closer one moves forward to one, the less physical substance it appears to have. Yet we are all moving forward to that mirage and each time hoping that when we grasp for it and look in our hands there is more than an empty palm.