She pledged to hike the corporate tax and shift more funds to public education. Chile’s public schools are literally falling apart. I mean their ceilings are actually caving in. It’s even worse when it rains. The state won’t fix them because the state is run by the rich, and they don’t believe in spending one nickel on public schools. Why is that? Because the Cuban elite all send their kids to private schools! Their kids don’t go to public schools, so why should they support them?
The Chilean Model, praised by neoliberals, hasn’t really worked that well. I don’t care about macroeconomic growth. Chile can take all that growth and stick it you know where.
What the Cuban Model was engage in a mass transfer of wealth from the bottom 2/3 of society to the top 1/3 of society. The top 1/3 made out like bandits, while the bottom 2/3 got their pockets picked year in and year out. It was just typical Capitalist Class War – Reverse Robin Hood – steal from the poor and the middle classes and give to the rich and the upper middle classes.
This is the class war game that the upper classes always play in most every capitalist country. Class war is simply a fact of life under capitalism. You can’t get rid of it. Every class is trying to get a bigger share of their pie for their group. Usually only the rich are smart enough to play it well. In most countries, the poor and middle classes are too stupid to recognize their own self interests, and in many capitalist societies, the poor and middle classes are so brainwashed that they gleefully allow the upper glasses to pilfer their bank accounts. They even march off every year and vote for the very thieves who are ripping them off. It makes no sense.
All of those neoliberal articles singing the praises of the Chilean Model have some serious flaws. First of all, Chile is one of the only places where that model has ever worked at all. In most places, it has simply failed. Everywhere on Earth that neoliberalism was implemented in the 3rd World, the results were always the same: The top 20% made out like bandits and the bottom 80% got screwed, rude and tattooed. There was mass transfer of wealth from the bottom 80% to the top 20%. What’s so good about that?
What’s so good about schools with collapsing roofs? What’s so good about regular riots in the streets (about once every 3 weeks)? What’s so good about Reverse Robin Hood economics? Someone clue me in here…
Bachelet won 62% of the vote, creaming her conservative opponent. Here is what she said:
Chile has looked at itself, has looked at its path, its recent history, its wounds, its feats, its unfinished business and this Chile has decided it is the time to start deep transformations,” Bachelet told a jubilant crowd of supporters on Sunday night as confetti rained down. “There is no question about it: profits can’t be the motor behind education because education isn’t merchandise and because dreams aren’t a consumer good”
Exactly. For profit education is an abomination. Furthermore, it doesn’t even work as a general rule. The capitalists can have the whole market, but keep their mitts out of the schools, the roads, the parks and medicine.
For the fools who think a Socialist President will be a catastrophe for Chile somehow, keep in mind that the Chilean Socialist Party governed Chile for most of the past decade.
