Why is North America (US + Canada + Mexico) ,.more economically developed than South American counties.. is it just because the is US culturally that different , I mean South Americans.are we’re originally influenced by Western Europe as well . Or is the some geographic or climatic difference that affected development?
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This is a complex question that has multiple answers.
But
The biggest, I think, is multicultural. The more ideas you compact into an area … The more advancements you get.
Pretty rough for an ELI5, but essentially North america was set up as an actual colony to live in. Most of central/south america was set up to strip all natural resources then bail.
So North America was invested in like a 401K whole South was more like a NFT pump and dump.
First of all, it’s a bit unfair to characterize whole of South America as one monolith. It’s composed of many countries, with each country having their own set of unique circumstances and historical and cultural contexts which impact their current economic situation. Also till the beginning of the 20th century, it used to be a prosperous place with countries like Argentina and Brazil attracting immigrants from western European countries. Much of the countries in the region at that time were richer than European countries including their former colonial rulers i.e. Spain and Portugal.
It was mostly poor choice of policies by the governments. The import-substitution industrialization model adopted by most of the countries in the region where trade barriers and controls shielded the domestic industries from competition backfired as it created a class of businesses dependent upon government support with no incentive to improvise. The collapse of this model was the reason behind economic decline in many of the countries. Also political instability in the post-WWII era(partially cause by American interventions) meant that there was no stable direction of economic policies which ran the economies of these countries to the ground. Furthermore, countries rich in commodities i.e. Venezuela became dependent on the export of these commodities which exposed them to price shocks and economic volatility.
But there are still success stories. Chile was able to reform its economy and pursue reformist policies in a sustained manner and now is considered a high-income country. So in short, it boils down to the policies pursued by the governments and stability in the country.
This isnt an ELI5 answer of course, but I highly recommend reading the book *Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies* by Jared Diamond for an answer to this question.
North America was seen as a place to settle and expand into, as a place to colonized. This meant that the nations settling it spent a lot more time and money to build permanent infrastructure in this colonies, which were generally able to become self-sufficient. This isn’t to say that they didn’t rape the land or kill the natives. They just to have their own people over there doing it and invested resourced in developing the places they settled.
In Central and Southern America, the nations saw them land as a place primarily to extract resources from. Instead of bring over their own people to permanently settle in those places as part of the working class, they tended to use slaves, either conquered natives or from Africa. Outside of ports, military bases and government buildings, the foreign nations didn’t really put any people or wealth into the places they controlled.
Think about who populated NA and SA. Northern EU came to North America and they brought their laws and customs. Property rights, Protestant work ethic, etc. SA was populated by Southern EU that even to this day struggles economically. Southern EU wakes up late, takes a siesta in the afternoon, etc. The northerners promote on merit while southerners promote family. Bit of generalization here but still fairly correct. Also, the US and Canada had people come and want to live there. In Latin countries Europeans came to strip the land of wealth and send it back to Europe.
Pick up a good history book, I can recommend Howard Zinns “A peoples history of the united states”
Assuming that you mean the USA, by “North America”, then the premise of the question is not well founded: the USA is not ‘developed’ save for a very few (monied) people and only if one takes material development as the main indicator of developedness.
South America, in keeping with the rest of the world, puts a higher emphasis on social and health development, maybe not very well, but the emphasis is certainly there
It really depends on how you define ‘developed’
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