Excélsior took a detailed look at the budget plan presented by Carstens yesterday, discovering that it would slice about $2 billion from various security agencies (I'm not sure exactly how Mérida would fit into that, but I guess the hope would be that the aid could partially make for those cut), while economic and social development agencies will see an increase of about $12 billion. Cutting security spending is perhaps a bit worrying, depending on how those cuts are distributed, but I've never thought that Mexico's primary security barrier was a lack of funding.
The extra money for development spending is encouraging, although unfortunately it is accompanied by a $4 billion cut in education. As with security, improving education is not merely (or even primarily) a matter of spending more, but as an indicator of governmental priorities, such a cut is worrying. Education may be an easy place to decrease spending during a budget crisis, but as El Universal pointed out earlier this week, improving Mexico's educational system is a must for Mexico to become a world economic power around the middle of this century. As long as it remains perennially low on Mexican leaders' list of priorities, the "demographic bonus" will be a dud.
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2 comments:
A lack of funding is a huge problem for Mexico. First and foremost in low salaries. That hits twice: first in trouble staffing investigatory units; second in fighting corruption. In fact, it hits thrice: redundancy is a good way of reducing corruption, but a bloody expensive one. Not to mention low morale is attached to low salaries.
Second problem hits on the judicial side. Courtrooms, prisons, and that stuff.
Third impact comes in nickel-and-dime problems.
I'd call funding Mexico's primary security barrier for one simple reason: it's the one I can see and the one I can figure out how to fix. The rest of the solution is above my paygrade, and may in fact not be known to anyone. That is not to say there isn't one, that's obviously untrue ... but the only way to find out what it is may be to unleash a boatload of state agents and agencies to kitchen sink the problem.
Only that requires both money and a tolerance for mixed metaphors.
"I'd call funding Mexico's primary security barrier for one simple reason: it's the one I can see and the one I can figure out how to fix. The rest of the solution is above my paygrade, and may in fact not be known to anyone."
That's a fair point, and I dont mean to suggest that the lack of funding doesn't matter at all, but I think the above-our-paygrade stuff (and defining what that is could be the subject of its own post) would still be a huge problem even if Mexico tripled its security funding tomorrow.
As far as the stuff you suggest in the first paragraph, all that is absolutely correct, but the reason I say that it goes beyond that is that Mexico has enough cash to be doing a lot more than that right now, it just isn't. For example the Mérida intiative: it's mostly hardware. According to Shannon O'Neil, only 20 percent of it goes to institution-building stuff, and only a fraction of that goes to anti-corruption measures like the ones you mention. This suggests a problem of misplaced priorities (on both sides) that goes beyond the lump sum of money spent.
This is even more true with education; the biggest barrier to stronger public education is not funding as much as a hidebound teachers union and its obscenely powerful boss, as well as a (relatively speaking) impotent SEP, that throws its weight around in all the wrong ways (I'm motivated by personal rancor here as well). I'd also add a lack of middle-class confidence in public schooling. None of that is stuff that you can reverse very easily with money.
In summary, I'm all for releasing a boatload of money and throwing everything at security (and education), but I just don't have much confidence that it will be spent on the right things, nor do I think Mexico needs to have vastly increased funding to start implementing the kind of stuff you are talking about.
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