the roots of why many economies in asia are growing faster with more modest inequalities than in Latin America run deep. Before addressing these “deeper” causal issues of nation state and class construction in the past, and the subsequent role of the state in promoting alternate pathways, a discussion of some of the more proximate determinants of recent trends is necessary. 1the contrasting links that these regions have forged with the global economy are especially notable (see table 2, 3, 4 and 5). On the whole – and here I am fully aware that I am on a hazardous terrain, generalizing about regions that are quite divers internally – asian countries have created economies with high domestic savings rates, careful channeling of foreign investment in to priority areas, significant capacity to export manufactured goods, and limited foreign debt. These economic trends emerged from planned activities of effective national states and helped stimulate economic growth. By contrast, many countries in Latin America that embraced the “Washington consensus” remain more dependent on the global economy, with lower domestic savings rates, smaller roles for nation capital, higher dependence on foreign capital to supplement limited mobilization of domestic resources, exports focused on lower value added commodities, and relatively high levels of foreign debt. These trends too resulted from policy choices of different types of states at the helm in Latin America, less effective, with sharp elite-mass gaps and more globally complicit. Each of these issues requires further elaboration, especially how these characteristics might have contributed to differing economic performance.