It’s Not Undocumented Immigrants Hurting Our Economy: It’s Mexico’s Richest Man

If you were to take a wild guess as to whom the richest person in the world is, who would you picture is ?el numero uno?? Logical thought would naturally point to Bill Gates or Warren Buffet perhaps. Would you venture to guess that the wealthiest person alive is an astonishing neither? This unlikely candidate isn’t from North America, Europe, or even an Asiatic Country. Would you be shocked to find out that this man is in fact Mexican?

That’s right. His name is Carlos Slim Helu and he is the world’s first richest man from a developing country. This Mexican born citizen is currently worth $73,000,000,000. If you got lost counting the zero?s, that’s 73 billion dollars, according to the Forbes billionaire list. (Forbes)

Slim is the son of Lebanese immigrants. His mother’s parents immigrated in the late 19^th century and brought with them a printing press which they used to create the first Arab-Mexican magazine. His father opened a dry-goods store in 1911, and by 1921 was already buying up large spaces of real estate in Mexico, which thus became considerable amounts of wealth for the Helu family. This son of an immigrant family was not by any means underprivileged in the traditional ?immigrant sense? that people commonly identify with. Fortune and favor gave Carlos Slim Helu a comfortable genesis.

Slim was trained in childhood to grasp hold of the business world before most kids his age hit puberty. The source of Slim’s wealth can certainly be attributed to his father’s unrelenting business ethic. By the age of 12 Slim had already purchased his first stock shares with the Mexican bank. By age 17 he was working his way up through his father’s company starting off at 200 pesos a week. He appeared to be a bright child from a young age and demonstrated much promise. He went on to study civil engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, while also teaching algebra and linear programming.

Surprisingly enough, by 1966 Slim was already worth 40 million dollars.? By 1980 he had his monetary hands on almost everything from industry, mining, and tobacco, to retail, construction, and food.

Later in 1990 with what came to be known as the ?guts of his wealth,” he purchased the?land-line?telephone company Telmex from the Mexican government. By 2006, ninety percent of the telephone lines in Mexico were operated by Telmex, while his mobile telephone company, Telcel, produced almost eighty percent of all the country’s cell phones.

Now this next bit of information is the most bewildering ingredient of his foundation of fortune. The unnerving truth is that he charges some of the highest overcharge phone rates in the world.

?People are in awe of this man and his wealth while ignoring how he’s acquired it. He has crippled the Mexican economy through his business practices and has single-handedly kept millions in poverty, all while lining his own pockets,? said Andres Ramirez, a Two Countries One Voice spokesperson, according to Market Watch.

Mexico, a country riddled with gangsters and corruption beyond imagination, has an employment rate so high that many of its most impoverished have to take an arduous journey across the United States border and adhere to lowly positions of work, just to support their families in desperate need back home.

There is just something clearly and utterly wrong with this scoundrel who, by the way,? is portrayed in the media and press as a ?philanthropic and humble man.” Why is a country that is in such dismal array allowing the wealthiest man in the world to commit conman-thievery in the worst fashion? Why has the media turned him into a national hero? If this?isn’t?the epitome of exploitation, then I fear its true interpretation. These questions need to not only be answered, but if there is any justice left in Mexican government in regards to its impoverished people, Carlos Slim Helu should pay whatever fees seem appropriate by a court of law for the repercussions of his unchecked professional manipulative monetary hoardings.

Mexico’s poorest people are directly contributing to Slim’s ever growing personal family fortune that ensures them a life in the trenches with each new bill sent from his company. In a technological world where information can be swiftly shared, maltreated monopolies like Slim’s need to be downsized to profits more relative to the service provided by its company. With the seemingly infinite ill-gained hyper profits that he is collecting, can’t he reinvest that money into telephone infrastructure to at least give quality internet and mobile service at the bare minimum? Now is the time to bring his abysmal scam to audit before he owns more of the world.

?Mexico loses 2.2 percent of its gross domestic product each year because of astronomically high cell phone rates, low Internet penetration, and mediocre service.” (Two Countries One Voice)

If you’re thinking to yourself that you’re at a safe distance from his fat sticky hands because you’re living in North America, think again.

• He is the largest shareholder of the New York Times (he gave them a $250,000,000 loan)\
• He operates a Saks fifth Avenue in Manhattan
• He owned 50 percent of the Hershey company as early as 1980
• He owned CompUSA
• And More

He is not just hurting his own people, but is belittling the quality of life for America’s citizens like you and me. If he’s suppressing his own native Mexican people to the point of desperation, think of how much he cares about the people of his neighboring country in the United States?

The service and product that Carlos Slim Helu provides to his customers, isn’t inappropriate. In fact, he’s making a product and service available that most people are currently demanding. What’s at true discussion here is why no Mexican officials have bothered to stick out their neck and stand up to this corporate fascism.

What good is a life if the only products you can get your hands on allows you only two or three options of service and a single corrupt man has his hands on those limited products? The result is, one man becomes king while millions become subservient to his reign of greed. Humanity should be arranged by now to aim past its dark ages of tyrannical corporate rule. Through technological communication, the people of the Mexican government, its people, and their North American friends need to take a real stand against such a corporate dictator and demand fairness among his consumer and provider relations.

There are numerous organizations and individual people standing up against this entrepreneurial suppressor, such as the coalition group ?Two Countries One Voice? and the ?Occupy Wall Street? movement, both of whom have recently been involved in protests to thwart Helu’s profits back down to his customers.

If you feel compelled to contribute to the cause and help fight the world’s greediest corporate bully, a good place to start is becoming a member of Two Countries One Voice to see what you can do to help bring some of those stolen billions back down to the people who deserve it.

Here is your villain.

About The Author ???C.W. Grima

Written by: C.W. Grima

Edited by AEK