How Milton Friedman Saved Chile

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Get a barf bag ready. This reminds me of Peggy Noonan's claim that dolphins carried Elián Gonzalez to safety.

How Milton Friedman Saved Chile

Milton Friedman has been dead for more than three years. But his spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile in the early morning hours of Saturday. Thanks largely to him, the country has endured a tragedy that elsewhere would have been an apocalypse.

[lonestarnot]

1. PUKE!

:puke:

[hatrack]

2. What a pile of shit - maudlin, sentimental goo for the apple of all sociopaths' eyes

She could have published this in cartoon format and saved space.

:puke:

[JHB]

14. "He". The author was one Bret Stephens...

Accompanying bio:

About Bret Stephens
Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs, which runs every Tuesday in the U.S. and is also published in the European and Asian editions of the paper. He is a deputy editorial page editor, responsible for the editorial pages of the Asian and European editions of the paper, the columnists on foreign affairs, and the Far Eastern Economic Review. He previously worked for the paper as an op-ed editor in New York and as an editorial writer in Brussels for The Wall Street Journal Europe.

From March 2002 to October 2004 Mr. Stephens was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, a position he assumed at age 28. At the Post, he was responsible for the paper's news and editorial divisions. He also wrote a weekly column.

In 2004, Mr. Stephens was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, where he is also a media fellow.

Raised in Mexico City and educated at The University of Chicago and the London School of Economics, Mr. Stephens is married and has three children.

[dionysus]

3. jesus it's too early in the day to puke through my nose...

:puke:

[lonestarnot]

8. LOL!

:rofl:

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Absolutely Ridiculous

There is not one whit of evidence in that whole article. It's conjecture based upon opinion based upon feelings based upon philosophy.

The econometric evidence is not only absent from this article, it's absent from reality.
GAC

[Blue_Tires]

6. So it's just like the other 95 percent of all paleo-con columns...

[ProfessorGAC]

15. 95%?!?!?

I think you shot too low.
GAC

[izquierdista]

19. In other words, conservative logic

I have one edit: ...philosophy based on religious dogma.

[ProfessorGAC]

21. I'll Accept The Edit

I'll accept it because you're right. I should have said that.
GAC

[asdjrocky]

5. Can't even think about reading that.

[blm]

7. Man, she's a major IDIOT - GOPs demand LESS regulations for businesses including BUILDERS.

Hurricane Andrew devastated Homestead because of unscrupulous builders. I remember a handful of homes built by Habitat for Humanity - built strictly according to code - survived.

[blindpig]

9. Of course, and we have always been at war with Oceania...

geez, that's pathetic.

[HughBeaumont]

10. Wow, SOMEone didn't read "The Shock Doctrine".

Saved, my ASS. The exact OPPOSITE happened to them AND Argentina. Unbridled disaster corporatism KILLS everything it touches.

[malaise]

13. 1,000

That's the absolute truth

[malaise]

11. I told them to wait three days and check those devastated

coastal town that have been obliterated with both the earthquake and tsunami. He's right about one thing - Friedman was such an abysmal failure that the poor who weren't rich.

[JHB]

12. "educated at The University of Chicago and the London School of Economics"...

...where Friedman and the "Chicago Boys" are patron saints. No mere facts needed to laude them at any opportunity.

[JNelson6563]

16. I give this the Stinky Pantload of the Day award.

Oy.

Julie

[malaise]

17. What model of government was practiced in

Haiti if not even worse neo-liberalism. These hacks and fools are pretending that Haiti was some socialist state.

[ipaint]

18. It's happening now here.

"Many people have often wondered what it would be like to create a nation based solely on their political and economic beliefs. Imagine: no opposition, no political rivals, no compromise of morals. Only a "benevolent dictator," if you will, setting up society according to your ideals.

The Chicago School of Economics got that chance for 16 years in Chile, under near-laboratory conditions. Between 1973 and 1989, a government team of economists trained at the University of Chicago dismantled or decentralized the Chilean state as far as was humanly possible. Their program included privatizing welfare and social programs, deregulating the market, liberalizing trade, rolling back trade unions, and rewriting its constitution and laws. And they did all this in the absence of the far-right's most hated institution: democracy.

The results were exactly what liberals predicted. Chile's economy became more unstable than any other in Latin America, alternately experiencing deep plunges and soaring growth. Once all this erratic behavior was averaged out, however, Chile's growth during this 16-year period was one of the slowest of any Latin American country. Worse, income inequality grew severe. The majority of workers actually earned less in 1989 than in 1973 (after adjusting for inflation), while the incomes of the rich skyrocketed. In the absence of market regulations, Chile also became one of the most polluted countries in Latin America. And Chile's lack of democracy was only possible by suppressing political opposition and labor unions under a reign of terror and widespread human rights abuses.

Conservatives have developed an apologist literature defending Chile as a huge success story. In 1982, Milton Friedman enthusiastically praised General Pinochet (the Chilean dictator) because he "has supported a fully free-market economy as a matter of principle. Chile is an economic miracle." (1) However, the statistics below show this to be untrue. Chile is a tragic failure of right-wing economics, and its people are still paying the price for it today."

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-chichile.htm




"One of those who saw opportunity in the floodwaters of New Orleans was the late Milton Friedman, grand guru of unfettered capitalism and credited with writing the rulebook for the contemporary, hyper-mobile global economy. Ninety-three years old and in failing health, "Uncle Miltie", as he was known to his followers, found the strength to write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal three months after the levees broke. "Most New Orleans schools are in ruins," Friedman observed, "as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity."

Friedman's radical idea was that instead of spending a portion of the billions of dollars in reconstruction money on rebuilding and improving New Orleans' existing public school system, the government should provide families with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions.

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

The Friedmanite American Enterprise Institute enthused that "Katrina accomplished in a day ... what Louisiana school reformers couldn't do after years of trying". Public school teachers, meanwhile, were calling Friedman's plan "an educational land grab". I call these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, "disaster capitalism"."

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/excerpt

[troubledamerican]

25. Yes

[bullwinkle428]

20. Christ Almighty...I thought this was going be a headline from The Onion!

:mad:

[Blue_Tires]

28. +1

[mmonk]

22. Up is down.

And Pinochet was a saint beloved by his people.

:sarcasm:

[kenny blankenship]

23. Yes, Milton Friedman, renowned champion of govt. regulation

-such as Chile's earthquake aware building codes.

[Peace Patriot]

24. Reminds me of a recent Miami Hairball editorial: 'Venezuela heads toward disaster.'

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/02/08/1468724/venezuela-heads-toward-disaster.html

Venezuela heads toward disaster
OUR OPINION: Region's leaders need to act
(lede) "What little is left of Venezuela's democracy has taken a literal beating from President Hugo Chávez's uniformed goon squads -- again."
blah-blah-blah.

---------------------

You just can't believe that there can be so much disinformation, lying, distortion and untruth in one article. It boggles the mind!

But one thing that articles like this are useful for, is they give you a clear path to the truth. Rule of thumb: whatever a rightwing/corpo-fascist asserts, the opposite is true. I used this rule on the Bush Junta and it turned out to be infallible. And I've found that it is also useful in assessing Bushwhack sources in general, corpo-fascist 'news' sources, Pentagon statements, U.S. State Department statements, and other heavily corporate and frequently unreliable, lying sources of info. It is a good guide. Whatever they say, reverse it in your mind, and that is probably the truth--and work from that premise to find out the whole truth, if you can't guess the rest by peering into the black holes where information should be, reading between the lines and utilizing what you already know from history and current events.

In this case, we know that Milton Friedman fucked Chile up so badly, in every way imaginable, that it has taken decades of leftist government to recover and to reach its current fairly well off economic position and social stability. So we can tag this source for future reference. Whatever this writer asserts in the future, presume the opposite and you will be very close to, and maybe even right on, the truth. It saves time.

More sophisticated liars, like the New York Slimes and the BBCons, take more effort. With those, it helps to study their corporate/war profiteer agendas over time to see what the long term program is. The Slimes messed up on the WMDs in Iraq. That was worthy of the Miami Hairball. They really, really, REALLY wanted that war and couldn't contain themselves and printed goddamned lies day after day. We should never forget watching their bloodlust and greed leak out from the ink, in that instance, despite their generally more skillful propaganda. You can't always directly reverse what they assert and get the truth. You have to dig deeper. But, in any case, the far rightwing garbage--such as this stinking pile from the Wall Street Urinal--tells us, by direct reversal, what the truth is, and additionally tells us what the corpo-fascist agenda is, which we can then apply to the New York Slimes and BBCons, where that agenda is generally more hidden.

Clearly, dissing Naomi Klein is now part of that agenda. Her book is making headway, apparently, at educating the public on what is happening to us now, here, which first happened to Latin America over the last several decades, at the hands of the rich and the corporate, particularly U.S. corporate. Another agenda item is the on-going project of toppling the Chavez government in Venezuela, which this scribbler mentions--"...the proto-Chavista government of Salvador Allende..."--with the rather obvious hope that Chavez will go the way of Allende and be replaced by a U.S. friendly fascist dictatorship (as has occurred in Honduras). And a third agenda item is to restore the 'luster' of "free trade for the rich" and "trickle down economics," so sullied by the Bush Junta's massive looting and crime spree.

Look for these agenda items--identified here by the rule of reversal in the Wall Street Urinal--perhaps more subtly presented by the Slimes and the Cons. 1) Undoing the educational damage that Naomi Klein has been doing to the corporate agenda among the brainwashed, hypnotized, disempowered, demoralized masses (i.e., waking people up!); 2) Toppling the Chavez government; and 3) Preparing the way for the false narrative of "liberal failure," here, and installation of another Bush Junta to finish us off--we, the people, the majority of Americans--as a prosperous and progressive force in the world.

Never doubt that where the Wall Street Urinal pisses, they all piss.

[upi402]

26. Milton Friedman, big on forcing building codes on firms

and creating high standards for public works infrastructure.
:eyes: NOT

[leftstreet]

27. There are no words

Unbelievable

[MellowDem]

29. I think you are misinterpreting the article...

I think it's silly to give Friedman the credit for building regulations for sure. But I think some of the claims of Friedman as opposed to all forms of government regulations is a bit silly.

The article gives credit to Friedman because it was supposedly his policies which transformed Chile into a much wealthier nation, one which could afford to have building regulations and actually enforce them.

Haiti doesn't have building codes not because it is a libertarian paradise, but because it is too poor. That was the argument. So if you believe that Chile is better off economcally due to Friedman's theories, I guess one could agree with the article in some (small) way.