-----Mensagem original----- De: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]Em nome de chavd Enviada em: segunda-feira, 24 de julho de 2000 17:30 Para: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Assunto: Request for statistics on Chile
Can anybody help me with statistics on the changes in income distribution in Chile during and after the *Pinochet reforms*. On the one hand, I find data on the increase in AVERAGE income, on the other, I find data showing an increase in POVERTY. I am a Bulgarian journalist, trying to write an article on the less known aspects of neo-liberal reforms (privatization, deregulation etc.). In my country, the information space is flooded with shining examples of successfull shock therapy but without any attempt to give the whole story. Chile is the oldest and most persistent case, a pillar of 'market' ideology. Needless to say many of the readers I write for are wondering how come they are drinking bitter medicine for a whole decade without feeling any healing effects. Everything has caved in - consumption by the lower 80%, market demand even for basic necessities, investment (even in agriculture, deemed advantageous by the IMF), savings, employment, school graduation - and our reform-minded elite is telling us that the GNP and AVERAGE wages are increasing. So now we are experiencing private ownership of capital, income disparity, no price regulation and subsidies, almost free trade across borders - and all signs of a deep depression. Part of the nice numbers is an artifact of the state National statistics institute. It started incuding non-monetary *added value services* in the GNP. Almost all Bulgarians own apartments from socialist times - so living in your own home is now accounted for as renting a dwelling from your own self! Critics inside the country know this is idiotic, but internationally it contibutes to the positive results from the implementation of structural adjustments with IMF support. I strongly suspect that Chilean and similar successes in easily attainable sources are mostly statistics - that is, worse than lies and damn lies.
Chavdar Naidenov
I will try to tell you what I know, but my souces are in Portuguese and I don?t remember most of them. Chile has been sustaining a growth rate of 5-7% since 1984, althought they had lower rates in the last 2 years (2% and -1%), but it seems the economy is recovering. Wealth concentration worsened a lot since 1973 and the 10% richer have incomes 18 fold higher than 10% poorest. Only Brazil, in Latin America, has worse figures. Unemployment is now near 8%. Absolute poverty rates increased to 40% during Pinochet years, but are claimed to be reduced to something near to 25%. Infant mortality (15/1000) and illiteracy (5%) are very low, so the Chile is the first Latin American country in the IDH ranking in Latin America. Life expectancy is also high (more than 70 years). The Concertacion governments, in power since 1989, were able to increase social spending and decreased poverty. The danger in Chile?s economy is the Social security system, privatized in the 80?s. They have very high return rates from investments but as more people became elegible to retirement, those rates will surely fall. An eventual collapse of this system would be a complete disaster for Chile, since those Private Pensions Funds control many Chilean enterprises. The second trouble is that 50% of the active population is not in this system and so the poor will be badly hit in a eventual recession (I don?t have information on the effects of the 98-99 recession over poverty rates). As it had happened in many neoliberal miracles, there was really improvement in life standards but the poor benefited much less than the middle class and the richer, and they remain in a very weak position if the growth decreases. Another thing: Chile is not South Korea or Taiwan, where state driven industrialization happened and wealth diferences between rich and poor are smaller. The Pinochet government followed an ultraliberal policy that effectively destroyed the local industry and Chile is heavily dependent upon exportation of cooper, fish, fruits and other agricultural products.
Alexandre Fenelon