CARLOS SLIM IN
MEXICO
“The power of the
megarich does not stop at America's borders. As
Chrystia Freeland writes in her 2012 book Plutocrats, ‘the
rise of the 1 percent is a global
phenomenon,’
with the world bifurcating into
the rich and the
rest. A website
on the power
elite could offer links to its international
members. A page
on Mexico's Carlos Slim, for instance, could
point out
that his fortune
(estimated at more than $70 billion) is equal
to about
6 percent of his country's total annual GDP [Gross Domestic Product], helping to make it one of the most unequal societies in the world.
6 percent of his country's total annual GDP [Gross Domestic Product], helping to make it one of the most unequal societies in the world.
“As a 2014 Oxfam
briefing paper explained, most
of Slim's wealth
derives from his having gained
near-
monopolistic control of Mexico's telecommunications sector when it was privatized twenty years ago. Over the
seventy years that Oxfam has spent fighting poverty around the world, the report stated, it has seen "first-hand
monopolistic control of Mexico's telecommunications sector when it was privatized twenty years ago. Over the
seventy years that Oxfam has spent fighting poverty around the world, the report stated, it has seen "first-hand
how the wealthiest individuals
and groups capture political institutions for their aggrandizement at the expense of the rest of society." It's impossible to understand Mexico's many problems without
taking into account Slim's dominance, yet he rarely appears
in reports about that country. Earlier this year [2015], Slim more than doubled the number of shares he owns in The New York Times Company (to nearly 17 percent), making him its largest individual
shareholder
(though the Sulzbergers retain control). It's interesting
to note that Slim rarely appears in
the paper's news pages. On the
surface, this seems
a glaring
conflict of interest.”
Massing, Michael, ‘How to Cover the One Percent,’ The New
York Review, January 14, 2016, pp: 74-76.
