
Carlos Slim: biography of Mexico's richest man penetrates 'cloak of silence' - endrebak
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/06/carlos-slim-biography-diego-enrique-osorno-interviews
======
ClosureChain
I liked this article, except for this part:

"...his home country, where the middle class is burgeoning but almost half the
population still lives in poverty."

This is a naive claim, it may appear so because people here in Mexico
(specially in urban areas) spend a lot on bars, restaurants, vacations,
gadgets and even cars.

What the author oversees is that this same people have not enough savings in
the bank to survive even a couple of months without a job, owe lots of money
to the bank and are unable to acquire more relevant goods like a home.

What the author calls middle class are in fact poor people with lots of toys
and lots of credit cards.

~~~
true_religion
It depends on how you want to define the middle class.

Some people define it via income characteristics. So a college graduate, with
no house or car, can be middle class if they land a good job.

Some people define it via wealth, so a retiree with no income can be middle
class if they own their own home, and have a decent amount of savings.

Some people use the 'classical' (ala Marx) definition, in which the middle
class are the socio-economic group that can buy the labour of working class,
but typically work along-side them. For example, a mom-and-pop shop would have
middle class owners, and working class employees.

~~~
ClosureChain
Good point. Actually I think the strict definition of "middle class" should be
simply the average in a certain country.

However, for a lot of people including myself, "middle class" means people who
own at least a little bit of wealth in the form of savings, enough to be able
to survive for six months or a year without a job while not needing to cut
costs on anything.

This of course is not the reality for maybe 95% of Mexican Citizens who live
in perpetual debt with the banks and would go completely bankrupt if they ever
stop working for as little as one month or maybe two.

I live here and believe me, there is not such a thing as a "burgeoning middle
class" in Mexico; in fact, such claims sound like the typical BS politicians
try to sell to the people.

~~~
true_religion
> Good point. Actually I think the strict definition of "middle class" should
> be simply the average in a certain country.

That assumes a normal distribution of wealth. In an authoritarian aristocracy
or another similar government structure, you'd see pareto distribution wherein
the leadership has 99% of the wealth and the average person is sharing 1%.

Therein by the 'average', there is no middle class.

I think... economically, this is quite true: there is no middle class. Yet we
still call people who look like the classical middle class of yesteryear,
middle class: professionals, white-collar workers, freelancers, small business
owners. It's more of a social class now, than an economic one.

------
bhouston
This article is of brutal quality. I am all for uncloaking the superrich and
their agendas but this is about spurious links to wife's uncle's and whatnots
for at least 50% of the article. Then I stopped reading because I have better
things to do.

Please lead with better material.

~~~
endrebak
It is just a blog post. I hope someone will pick up the threads and see
whether there is anything of interest there.

If you want to read highbrow material, do not click on hacker news submissions
with such impish titles :)

(what lead me to post it was this HN submission:
[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/business/media/reporter...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/business/media/reporters-
in-las-vegas-try-to-crack-case-of-who-owns-their-newspaper.html?referer=))

~~~
dang
By the way, the title you originally submitted ("Reporters at NYT Try Not to
Crack Case of Who Owns Their Newspaper") breaks the HN guidelines, which ask
you not to rewrite titles unless they are misleading or linkbait.

Using HN titles to editorialize is something we specifically ask people not to
do, so please don't do that.

~~~
endrebak
I'm sorry for both not being aware of and breaking the rules. There is no
excuse for either.

~~~
dang
No worries! The rules remain rather obscure no matter how often we post things
like this.

