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Pure fantasy.


Or were you thinking of all the military juntas that turned out to be really really nice guys, once their enemies were all dead?

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I'm betting he interviewed well.

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Socialism = fascism.

Democracy = dictatorship.

Military dictatorship = free market.

Got it.

David Stockman? As in "trickle down economics"? That's your economic hero? Dear Lord.

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Riots that we paid for and orchestrated, and an economic mess that we helped create at the behest of ITT, Pepsi, and Anaconda.

Oh, and I am willing to be corrected -- but when exactly did Chile's economy become a marvel? If memory serves, it became robust in the 1990s, after the military stepped down and returned control to the civilians.

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Destroy the whole village? 15.4 million people had their lives improved dramatically at the cost of of one thousand lives (I don't think there were that many but I will let this statistic stand for the sake of argument). As opposed to Cuba where thousands have been executed, tens if not hundreds of thousands have been imprisoned in order to condemn and entire island nation to poverty over forty years. We didn't have to destroy the village in Chile. However, in Korea we pretty much destroyed the entire southern part of the country to keep a right wing dictator in power to prevent a socialist dictator from taking over. We could have not "destroyed the village" and let the Northern Koreans take over, but do you really think South Korea would be better off today if we had not intervened. In that situation is was better to destroy the village and install a right wing dictator who tortured and imprisoned him own people than let the alternative.

No, actually Stockman was more of a deficit hawk than a supply-sider. He liked tax cuts because he thought that the deficits they created would force government to cut back on othwise untouchable programs like Medicare. He made the mistake of admitting this to a reporter, and was spanked by Reagan.

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Please tell me you are not this stupid. Castro is in a league by himself. Allende had already destroyed the Chilean economy, condemning the entire country to years of abject poverty and was very likely going to turn the country in a police state.

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Why would I tell you anything. Let along something as ridiculous as me not being stupid. You already know the answer. How you are able to restrain yourself from telling that to all of us, I do not know. Perhaps it has something to do with having lived in Japan.

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According to the AP in 2002 (quick Google search): An official Chilean report concluded 3,197 people were killed for political reasons under Pinochet's regime.

This doesn't count the people tortured, disappeared, etc. In these situations a full accounting is tough to come by.

But hey, ya gotta break a few eggs, right? And I'm sure that there was no fear from anyone else in the country.

Can you explain the neo-con philosophy again? You know, the one about promoting democracy? Or is it only democracies whose policies you like?

So long as you didn't offer to fuck Stockman's wife as a tribute of your love for Stockman, I don't see why Bo should be offended.

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The NPR piece I linked to talked about these Chilean economists that went to the University of Chicago in the 50s and 60s under a US government program to spread the free market concept in Latin America.

They were Ivory Tower types until the coup. They were put in charge of the economy when Pinochet came into power in 1974. The article said that there was initial recovery until the debt crisis in the early 80s, and Chile was hit the hardest of all the Latin American countries. It seems that the current recovery started in the early 1990s.

The arcticle points out that the current government is socialist.

Well, I thought that was the whole point of supply side - at least among those who were honest about it.

I remember Stockman as the father of the principle of unidentified budget cuts - the (at the time) $40 billion "magic asterisk".

My memory of it was that he critisized Weinberger for increasing defense spending too much after the tax cut. He said that if defense spending was increased as much as Weinberger wanted that the tax cut would have to be rolled back. In addition, in order to get the tax cut through Reagan had to add all sorts of additional tax breaks to buy off Democrats - Stockman complained about that because it screwed his numbers up. Stockman got Reagan to increases taxes in 1984 (many conservatives have conveniently forgot that), and when Reagan refused to veto a bunch of farm subsidies Stockman said publicly that either the farm subsidies had to go, or we would need another tax increase, and that was the final straw.

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So does your view change if there were more than 1000 people killed by Pinochet's junta? More than 2000? And how much weight do you give to the torture and rape, etc., of people who weren't killed?

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Yes, but those civilians merely followed Pinochet's policies. By the time he gave up power, anyone who might have done otherwise had been killed or tortured into submission. It's a critical mass, 100th monkey kind of thing.

Do I have to explain everything to you?

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You are forgetting that all the people who weren't raped or killed immediately had a dramatic improvement in their lives.

Plus, you have to compare to North Korea or you can't really understand how wonderfal a right-wing dictatorship really is. Because, after all, Allende is Spanish for Kim.

Islam: a religion of peace and tolerance part 926
 

Jews are regularly referred to as "apes and pigs," mostly because that is what the Koran calls them.

I wonder if those q'urans clogged the toilets at Guantanamo?

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Bad things that happened under Allende's rule were his fault, and a sign of the inevitable Cuba-ization of Chile. (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain in Washington destabilizing the country.) Bad things that happened under Pinochet were unavoidable bumps in the road on the happy path to the eden promised by free markets.

You are correct -- I went and googled for the Atlantic article I remembered. He also is credited with "Rosy Scenario" (the overly optimistic economic forecast).

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Can you please cite this article. My understanding was that Pinochet brought in the "Chicago Boys". Pinochet wrote a constitution where he promised to leave by 1989. Which was when he did leave, although he didn't completely honor his promise by making him self permanent head of the Army. The socialists did come to power, but they did not touch one of his economic policies. The same is true today. They call themselves socialist but they have not nationalized a thing. Pinochet also started a privatised social security system that the government has not touched, and Clinton used to go around saying how great it was. Chile had the highest growth rates of any latin American country during the late seventies and eighties and was hit the least hardest by the debt crisis. Chile was the only country in Latin America during that time to have a stable currency and low inflation (except for Costa Rica). Maybe T-Rex can find the section on Chile from Commanding Heights, like he did Gorbachaves quotes. In that series they explained the whole process.

[I think this may be what you're talking about, but you'll see that it doesn't quite hold Chile up as the model you suggest. --t.s.]

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The quick web search I did put the estimate at 5,000:

• Pinochet — “in some ways, the perfect criminal because he had no compassion for his victims” — had an estimated 5,000 Chileans murdered, 1,200 of whom are still classified as “disappeared.” Many more were tortured. Hundreds of thousands of people were also imprisoned. Pinochet’s brand of state terrorism set a terrifying precedent in South America; the terror network known as “Operation Condor” was created by Pinochet’s head of secret police, Colonel Manuel Contreras. The network became formally established by an act of the First Inter-American Reunion on Military Intelligence in Chile in November 1975. From that point on, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay, among others, collectively participated in the extermination of political dissidents within their borders.

But that's from some source at UC Berkeley, which is inherently suspect.

So by installing Pinochet, we got to help spread repression to Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, too, helping to ensure the eventual triumph of democract there, too! Sweet!

Spanky, how are we supposed to decide which state-sponsored terrorists are bad for democracy, and which state-sponsored terrorists we should support to help the spread of democracy?

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It's here. You need real player or windows media player to hear it.

The article said everything you said, except the debt crisis thing.

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If you were given a choice of becoming a random citizen in any country in Latin America, which country would you pick? In 1972 Chile would probably have been towards the bottom of your list. Today it would probably be towards the top, if not the top. A whole nation pulled from economic ruin, to relative affluence. Doesn't that count for anything?

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Geez, Ty. Did you not look at the numbers for the gargantuan capital gains tax in Iraq in the late 90's?

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To quote you, you can't judge these things by hindsight. Are you really attributing Chile's affluence to Pinochet's murderous policies?

Which is more affluent -- China or India? If you could replace the governing system of one with the other, which would you pick?

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Not the part I read and linked to above:

• INTERVIEWER: Isn't it true that Chile was the real front-runner of these kinds of reforms, that the whole thing was tried there about 10 years earlier?
  
  JEFFREY SACHS: Chile was probably the country in Latin America that first started rather radical market reforms after a long period of heavy state interventionism. Chile, though, operated these reforms under a quite brutal military dictatorship. Bolivia was really the first, in my view, combination of democratic reform combined with economic institutional change.
  
  And Bolivia much more than Chile showed that you could combine political liberalization and democracy with economic liberalization. That's an extremely important lesson, to have both of those working in parallel and each one reinforcing the other.
  

Oddly, Sachs doesn't buy this whole "dictatorship plus markets equals democracy" thing. Maybe he's hung up on Russia.

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This question does not often occur to me. Would you like me to do some extradition research for you?

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I'd want to know more about my chances of being tortured for my political views in the other countries before I made that choice. But, hey, I'm funny like that.

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Different article. The one I cited was an NPR reporter who went to Chile to talk to the Chicago Boys. It aired last week.

ET change country, because it would have been irrelevant if she'd gone to Bolivia

Caption, please.
 

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Pinochet is a great person to use because from day one the Liberals hated him so much. Allende was beloved by the liberal elite and throughout Latin America. He was roundly praised by all the Democrats at the time. His form of socialit demoracy was going to bring in a new era of prosperity for the Chilleans. He was also the favorite of Hollywood (just like Castro was) Of course his policies brought immediate economic collapse. Of course the liberals claimed that his economic policies did not cause this (printing money, massive nationalizations, price controls etc). But the evil US corporations had engineered the collpase to give the CIA and excuse to get rid of him.

Everyone thought that Pinochet was just a stooge of American corporations that was sent in just to enforce evil US capitalistic interests.

When Pinochet starting paying Friedman as an advisor and brougth in his minions there were riots throughout central american and everywghere Friedman went. Everyone thought that Chile was simply going to be exploited by US corporation and the economy would be ruined.

Pinochet followed the Chicago Boys suggestions to the letter. He turned off the printing presses, cut of all subsidies to farmers and chilean companys, and completely opened up the entire market to free trade. He cut taxes and he created a privatized social security system.

Over time the economy grew and the liberals kept coming up with other reasons the economy grew. Natural resources (which Chile has very little of)etc. They also tried to claim that the wealth was only going to the wealthy and that the poor were worse off. Of course eventually all these claims were not supportible

The movie Missing came out, with Jack Lemon, making all sorts of claims about the coup. It turned out that almost the whole movie was a fiction. I could go into it but this is getting too long.

I have heard many debates about the amount of deaths in Chile. However, I do know that the liberals around the world have to make it the worst most repressive country anywhere to cover up the fact that there has been an economic miracle. Evil Milton Friedman,s plan worked, the US did not squeeze the peasants dry and socialists and liberals around the world hate the fact that their predictions were wrong. Every economic policy Pinochet produced, they are against, and is evidence against their positions throughout the world. So the liberals and the socialists focus all their energy on establishing the case that Pinochet was the most evil dictator of all time. But no matter what they do they can't argue that the Chicago Boys produced a miracle that benefitted every strata of Chilean society.

Caption, please.
 

"Little Bunny Foo-Foo, hopping through the desert, picking up insurgents and bopping 'em on the head"

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No one is arguing that -- if you disagree, please point to a single post in this entire thread in which anyone makes that argument. We are arguing that an economic bloom (one that many think didn't start until 20 years later, but hey) doesn't justify installing a military dictatorship and supporting the torture and murder of many thousands.


You apparently would rather see your neighbor tortured than your wallet lightened. It's a values thing, I guess.


But go ahead and trash liberals some more -- it obviously gives you a big ole hard-on, and allows you to dismiss what Chile itself has said about Pinochet's dictatorship.


To answer your earlier question to me, "Bolivia." Mad props to Ty. My first thought was "Brazil" but then I realized this was the wrong board.


To answer my earlier questions to you, "China" and "China". Got it.

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yes and look where Bolivia is today and where Chile is today.

Chiles' per capital income is $4,590 and Bolivia's is $990. In the 1960s their economies were very similar. In Bolivia economic liberalization and democracy may be working together, but Chile's dictatorship and free economics worked a hell of a lot better.

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Because of Castro, people are being tortured and abused at Guatanamo today.

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That was a wonderful post.


Viva la junta!

Caption, please.
 

POTY

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Bolivia and China and India and North Korea.

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And Brazil.


ETA... Ah the naming rights. I will savor this for a few moments before sending Ty my submission. I am open to bribes. And bribes may not even be necessary if suggested names involve Spanky.