Development in the Dominican Republic

I recently was given the opportunity of a life time and I got to go to the Dominican Republic and Build schools, while I was there I noticed some very interesting things about the developing country. 

The most interesting thing I saw was that all their advertisements featured non-dominican looking people. I never saw an advertisement which displayed anything other than caucasians.  This was extraordinarily interesting to me because when advertising you would think you would want to display people like the consumer so that they could picture themselves buying the product, but there are very few caucasians in the country. There are so few that in fact that many of them hadn't seen many, if any white people at all. When I was working children kept coming up and asking me if my hair was real and if they could cut off some and keep it. As a group of 56 white and hispanic americans we gathered a small crowd every day of people wanting to watch "The yellow people" work. The dominican dream seemed to be to acquire a green card. Multiple little children asked me if I would pick them up when they got their papers. The dream of leaving the country to go to America was even in the minds of children at the age of 5. This to me was a clear example of lack of independence. Idealizing another country or group of people through advertising is not helpful for a developing country. 

(this picture was taken off the internet because I was only able to take pictures in a moving vehicle and most of the billboard pictures were blurry)

One area the country did show strong characteristics of development was politically. The D.R. is a democracy similar to that of the united states. The largest advertisements were almost always political. Many billboards featured the faces of one of the representatives running for office. Politically the country is quite developed, although it holds little global power because it is a relatively small country. Additionally the country has its own currency that is not tied to the dollar unlike many other Nations in the Caribbean.

This is a billboard for Julio Romero who is running  for political office. (Although not likely win due to recent sex scandal)

The Dominican Republic has a GNI of about 5,000 per capita which compared to the U.S. GNI per capita of 53,500 is startlingly low although it is about mid range for the Caribbean islands. One of the reasons for this is its huge informal economy due to street vendors who don't pay sales tax (although some do) and an alarmingly large drug and slave trade run by the dominican Mafia, who we actually came in contact with twice on the trip. While we were working one day the several men from the Mafia pulled up to the work site in a purple mustang and pointed to one of the high schoolers in our group and offered us $50,000 in cash on the spot if we would sell him. Another day two men came up and asked again if they could by two of us for $75,000. Both times we said no we are americans and thankful they left without any trouble. Prostitution is also a huge business in the Dominican and many of the guys in our group were approached on more than one occasion. One of the people in our group even had a pimp flash a gun at him after accidentally bumping into a hooker on the sidewalk. Unfortunately I decided asking a hooker or one of the men in the purple mustang if I could take a selfie with them probably wasn't the greatest idea so I don't have any pictures for this section.

Street venders selling fruit

Another way people in the D.R. try to avoid taxation is by leaving buildings "unfinished". Due to the building taxation laws the government is unable to tax unfinished buildings. In order to take advantage of this law many people leave huge lengths of rebar sticking out of the tops of their houses and storefronts claiming they are planing on building a second level and therefor the building is currently "unfinished" and not taxable.

Notice the rebar at the top of the building. This means the owner is not paying property tax. 

Chapter 10: Development

Article: Women as a Force for Change by Nicolas Kristof

The United Nations has made a goal to empower women, but unfortunately this has not been incredibly effective, so it is still legal in many countries such as Dubai for rapists to receive custody of children fathered by rape, then the women who were raped can also be prosecuted for having extramarital sex while being raped. 


Model: This is Rostow's Model of development. The model discusses the stages of development a country will go through.

Map

 I chose Mongolia for my map because it has been top ranked on the list of the world fastest-growing economies since 2012. It earned its spot on the list almost entirely by selling natural resources to China in recent years and it is fighting to continue its growth. 

1. 
   "Chapter 10: Development," Human Geography

Essay 
Readings:


"Can Extreme Poverty Be Eliminated?" Jeffery D. Sachs
"The Grameen Bank," Muhammed Yunisa

Why are people impoverished and what can we as a society do to help end extreme poverty?

            We live in a world plagued by poverty and unequal distribution of wealth. In recent years it has become apparent that we are closing in on the possibility of eliminating extreme poverty, however one in ever six people on the planet still are having to survive with only one dollar a day.  Throughout the centuries people have attributed poverty to numerous things: religion, race, gender inequalities,  diseases such as malaria and even the laziness of the poor themselves. But what is the real reason for extreme-poverty? Muhammad Yunus the founder of the Grameen Bank believes the reason is they are not

given the opportunity and resources to grow. He is of the opinion that “People.. [are] poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They [are] poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base.” If what Yunus believes is true and the problem is so simple to fix why haven't we fixed it already? 
            The root of the problem truly comes down to a flaw in the economic system and a flaw in humanity itself. Humankind is propelled by greed. Capitalism is based off of the goal of making a profit and in order to make a profit corporations often exploit people in developing countries. When large companies take advantage of people in countries with no minimum wage it creates an incredibly unequal distribution of wealth. The problem with our capitalist system that the pieces of the proverbial pie are vastly unequal. Unfortunately the fix for this inequality has been proposed in the past, however it developed into communism. What if there was another way we could help end extreme poverty without all things being exactly equal like in the communist system? The solution is for each country to give a higher percentage of their Gross National Product toward ending extreme world poverty. Currently the United States gives only .05% of out GNP toward foreign aid, which is extraordinarily low considering we are the largest economy in the world.  If the United States along with the other core countries in the world all raised the percentage of their national budgets designated toward ending extreme world poverty would not only be in sight, but it would be in reach.