On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 23:23:32 -0400, Tiny Human Ferret
wrote:
>Oliver Costich wrote:
>> On 22 Apr 2004 10:17:43 -0700, zerge@hotmail.com (zerge) wrote:
>>
>>
>>>"Eric Harris" wrote in message news:...
>>>
>>>>"Oliver Costich" wrote...
>>>>
>>>>>Do you know what market basket was used to analyze US and Mexican PPP?
>>>>>I'd love to see what it is, since I found Mexico very expensive for
>>>>>cars, appliances, DVDs. Even canned (and frozen if they even had that)
>>>>>foods were more expensive except for some Mexican items. I remodeled a
>>>>>condo there and brought everything for the bath and kitchen, except
>>>>>tile, from Home Depot since the Mexican equivalents were quite a bit
>>>>>more, even for things made in Mexico.
>>>>
>>>>I'd be interested in seing the "basket" items for each country too.
>>>>I really haven't gone shopping in Mexico since 1988, but back then
>>>>my family and I drove over to Juárez every week to buy groceries,
>>>>liquor, and occassionally household items. I don't know what
>>>>groceries in Mexico cost today, but back in the 1980s they were
>>>>heavily subsidized by the Mexican government to disguise the
>>>>magnitude of the economic crisis and hyperinflation it had created.
>>>>Offhand, I remember the price in dollar terms for processed grain
>>>>products like cereals and bread to be at least 1/2, sometimes 1/3,
>>>>the U.S. price for the same items (well, almost the same, as even
>>>>American-brand stuff like Lucky Charms seemed to have a different
>>>>taste, a taste I generally interpreted as inferior to the U.S.
>>>>products). But I know a lady from Nuevo Laredo who crosses the
>>>>border every week to shop at the local grocery store and Wal-Mart.
>>>>She says that while some food items are cheaper in Mexico (I
>>>>think she mentioned beef and chicken), other food items are
>>>>significantly cheaper on the U.S. side, apparently cheap enough
>>>>to justify a half day of walking and riding the bus, plus bus
>>>>fares and bridge tolls.
The exemption from duty is small but big enough to cover a shooping
trip for groceries. I did see lots of Mexican plates on cars at the
Costco gas pumps in Chula Vista.
>>>>
>>>>Another thing I often wonder about is why downtown Laredo gets so
>>>>many customers from Mexico. If you've ever visited it, it is
>>>>nothing but a bunch of small stores all selling cheap junk, most
>>>>imported from China. Yet every day of the week the place is
>>>>packed with Mexicans, all lugging bags, sometimes dragging carts,
>>>>filled with this junk towards the bridge. What's really strange
>>>>is the sidewalks are littered neck-high with empty shoe boxes
>>>>(Mexicans often remove products from packaging before entering
>>>>Mexico, presumably in an attempt to avoid duties), when there
>>>>seems to be an almost infinite number of shoe stores on
>>>>Guerrero Avenue on the other side. Aside from sidewalk gum sales,
>>>>I expect shoes make up the other half of Mexico's GDP. I even
>>>>bought a pair of dress shoes in NL, made in Mexico, well-crafted
>>>>and quite reasonably priced, so I can't figure out why Mexicans
>>>>would cross the border to buy shoes in the U.S., poorly-crafted
>>>>Chinese ones to boot.
Because you can't find reasonably priced shoes of quality in Mexico
anymore.
>>>
>>>Here. Go virtual shopping at Comercial Mexicana:
>>>http://www.comercialmexicana.com/app/offers/depto?depto=10
>>>Current xchange rate is around $11.30 pesos/dollar
>>
>>
>>
>> I've done that live in Comercialand several other Mexican supermarket
>> chainds when I lived there. Overall, I and my Mexican neighbors all
>> agreed it was more expensive overall than shopping in the US in, say,
>> ALbertsons.
>
>This would be one of the reasons why -- back in the days before the
>"maquiladoras" got offshored to China -- people who worked at the
>borderlands maquiladoras tended to cross the border on a day-pass and
>shop in the US, and import their goods back to Mexico. Assuming that
>Mexico also imposed a customs duty ("import tax" for you
>non-anglophones), apparently the price differential was significant
>enough so that the cost of a day-pass and buying in the US and also
>paying the import-tax were less than the cost of buying in Mexico.
>
>zerge, you have never addressed the issue of how subsidized US
>agricultural products are driving Mexican farmers out of business,
>creating outrage sufficient to provoke a citizen invasion of the Mexican
>legislative assembly, aboout 20 months ago.
>
>Speak.
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