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Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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The New World vs. the Old World (Part 3)
Is cultural dominance shifting to the New World?In the USA we also have a nation-state, not just in Western Europe, but it too puts some sort of control over the immigration flows. 19th and the early 20th century America moved closer to the European model of designing the mainstream American, the so called WASP model. All the presidents through the 1950s were white, Anglo-Saxon and protestants. The first head of state who broke this rule was John F.Kennedy in 1960. Before his election, to be catholic in America meant to be out of the social and political mainstream. It is not anymore. Now even the majority of African-Americans share the main American values, they are part of the middle class. The Spanish-speaking minority is rapidly approaching this status. Society is opening and this openness plays an enormous role in the economic development of recent years. The new legal immigrants catch up with the American living standards within a few years (not within 2-3 generations as in Western Europe). That allows them to enter the real estate market as middle-class buyers and to stimulate the further increase in demand.The US population has grown by more than 10 percent in the 90s (compared with only 3 percent increase in Western Europe). This growth, coupled with the New Economy expansion, made it possible for the United States to reach almost 2 million housing starts a year by the end of the decade, i.e. roughly the same figures as the natural increase of the population itself (2.7 million annually). There was a time when the New World learned from the Old how to manage its economy and how to build its own nation-state. Maybe we are approaching the turning point of history when the Old World will finally open its eyes and learn at least one lesson from its TransAtlantic cousins. This lesson is very simple - if you want to increase your internal market, don't put artificial borders between human beings, just treat them as equal. You never know, maybe the son of the illiterate Indian migrant, who stepped down for the first time 20 years ago on American soil is now a computer literacy teacher of your own children.
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