Back in the 1970s, the nation of Chile embarked on one of the boldest sets of free market economic reforms in history. The government called in the Chicago Boys, as they were called, led by Milton Friedman and other University of Chicago free market economists.
They were given a free hand to redesign the Chilean economic system with property rights, a low flat tax, privatization of the Social Security system and industry deregulation. In 1991, Friedman wrote that Chile now “has all three things: political freedom, human freedom and economic freedom. Chile will continue to be an interesting experiment to watch to see whether it can keep all three.”
For four decades, the experiment worked better than anyone could have imagined. According to a study by economist Axel Kaiser for the Cato Institute: “Between 1975 and 2015 per capita income in Chile quadrupled to $23,000, the highest rate in Latin America. As a result, from the early 1980s to 2014 poverty fell from 45 percent to 8 percent.” Chile became one of the wealthiest nations in South America. And it happened in three decades, an eye blink of history.
The Marxists and intellectual class of Latin America always hated the free market reforms. They disparaged the Chicago Boys as “fascists.” They spent decades attacking the policies (with the stooges in the American media echoing their protests), even as Chile became the jewel of South America.
The Marxists invented a narrative of “inequality”: “The rich were getting richer, and the poor were getting poorer, and capitalism is evil.”
They infiltrated all of Chile’s cultural institutions: the media, the schools, the universities, the Catholic Church, the arts, the unions and even the corporate boardrooms. They spread their poisonous creed of collectivism to the populace.
Is any of this sounding familiar to our situation today?
Eventually, the leftists pulled off a political coup. In 2013, the left won the Chilean presidency. The free market reforms were systematically replaced with “spread the wealth” platitudes. In October 2020, voters approved a rewrite of the constitution, and now property rights and the rule of law are in danger.
Chile is now in economic free fall. The poor are getting crushed. The rich are pulling their money out of the country. They have arrived at “equality”: Nearly everyone is suffering.
Meanwhile, back in America, we have an economic transformation of our own going on. The Biden administration promises to help the middle class by handing out trillions of dollars of free money to citizens and paying people more money for not working than working. We will borrow trillions of dollars and pray that the Chinese continue to buy up our bonds and that our currency holds up.
Many of our constitutional protections and congressional rules of behavior, such as the filibuster, which protects the rights of the minority, may be headed to the shredder. The election laws are getting rewritten to benefit, significantly, the party now in power — the Democrats. The House has passed a bill requiring millions of working-class people to join unions and pay dues. The left is saying, don’t worry, this compulsion is going to help the working class. Sure.
A sock-it-to-the-rich tax increase is coming that will make the productive class and the job creators pay their “fair share” with tax rates of 50%, 60% and 70%.
Will this story have a happy ending?
The answer to that question might be contained in the frightening example of what happened in Chile. It is what our children and college students should be learning in the classrooms — fat chance. The left runs our schools now, too.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with FreedomWorks. He is the co-author of “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive the American Economy.” To find out more about Stephen Moore and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
Anyone who doesn’t believe the “defeat” of President Trump and all the congressional and senatorial candidates who had the bad luck of running in battle ground states was a rigged job, need to get back in touch with reality. The sabotage and blatant corruption against our country by Biden’s marrionettes is going to end making this country look like Chile and Venezuela on steroids. NOBODY would, with an ounce of common sense or logic. deliberately elect Senile Joe and his handler-traitors who despite being shielded by the press, made their intentions known for a very long time.
I DOUBT those fools, even know what reality IS, let alone could ever get back in touch with it.
Communism is on its way and the sheep in society, will blindly follow. The “sheep” are the liberals, the Republicans In Name Only and the Independents.
Since it is the Demorats we are talking about. I don’t think many of them are Commie. I believe that most of the Democrats are Fascists and Antifa is their Brownshirts.
In reality, the only difference between communism and fascism is the spelling. It’s the Hegelian Dialectic at work.
Commie, brownshirts. IMO BOTH ARe the same bloody thing.
Why were the people of Chile so dissatisfied with the utopian society created by the Chicago Boys that they overthrew their government?
Same basic reason works here – dissatisfied with Trump’s multitude of successes despite all the roadblocks in his path. Now they can be dissatisfied with $4-$5 gallon gas, a doubling of the Capital Gains taxes, and the possibility of having to join the denizens of more and more tent cities popping up everywhere, but at least they won’t be offended by those awful, hurtful mean tweets.
Becasue when the secular socialists take over they would rather rule in a hell of their own making than serve in an economic heaven made by others made with the help of God and people who create in his image,.
Cause they got BRAINWASHED by the media and schools, to HATE the economic prosperity they were enjoying.
JUST LIKE IS HAPPENING HERE.
History books, the old true ones not the new propaganda filled ones, are full of “I told you so” examples of the long established fact that socialism is the path to personal and national slavery to a totalitarian dictatorship.
No one who is capable of rational thought (a limited number, I confess) would willingly cooperate with their own personal and family’s destruction.
This is yet another case of “stupid is as stupid does” for the tens of millions of people who voted for a mentally depreciated senile old man for president.
ANd as the old saying goes.. YOU CAN vote your way into socialism. YOU HAVE TO FIGHT your way out of it.
It won’t be much, but the only satisfaction will be that after they have eaten us they’ll begin to eat their own. Many signs it is already happening in the woke community.
How will that be satisfaction? IF WE are not around to enjoy it?!