Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers. I'm your host Andrew Heaton

and I want to kick off today's episode with a historical query. Why did America become an economic powerhouse while Mexico did not?

Or for that matter, Canada, why did Canada, which is not terribly populated and did not have oil for the kickoff

party of the country, why did it become wealthier in Mexico by most metrics? Why is that? Is it culture? Americans and Canadians value hard work, but Mexicans have a, well, we'll call it a more balanced approach to life.

Well, that's hogwash.

I know several Mexicans here in Texas that work a lot harder than me on a daily basis for roofing

or doing other very strenuous manual activity.

I have a difficult time playing outside with my dog in this heat.

It is not a lack of work ethic.

And even if we get around the anecdotes of this,

you can find communities along the Mexican-American

border that started out as a unitary polity and have been split down the metal by the border.

But the culture shared on either side yet north of the

border more wealth so it's not that is it a religious thing you know the old

Protestant work ethic versus those libertine Catholics always drinking to excess during carnival

well if that's the case why is France doing so hot compared to Mexico or Canada or whatever. Italy is the fifth largest

economy in the world. Italy is actually pretty good. Arguably a fairly Catholic

country. That doesn't seem to be a very stout correlation, does it?

For that matter, why South Korea and Japan doing terribly well?

They're not Protestant.

I don't, when I think of Protestant hotbeds, I don't really think of Japan though I don't think that's it what

about natural resources could that be it America just has so many rivers and

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