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." 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.
[Excerpt - Article by William Keegan, The Observer, U.K., 22 June 2003
Quote:'Lunch With the FT's' world scoop is that Friedman has changed his mind: he admits he was wrong. Having had all that baleful influence on economic policy everywhere from the United Kingdom to Chile, Friedman has recanted.
The economic quote of the month - and probably the decade - is that Milton Friedman now admits: 'The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success.' He added: 'I'm not sure I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.' (FT, 7 June 2003).
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist
ReplyDeletedue to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important
for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves
Henry A. Kissinger
Monetarism
ReplyDeleteMonetarism is a school of economic thought that emphasizes the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation. It is the view within monetary economics that variation in the money supply has major influences on national output in the short run and the price level over longer periods and that objectives of monetary policy are best met by targeting the growth rate of the money supply.
Monetarism today is mainly associated with the work of Milton Friedman, who was among the generation of economists to accept Keynesian economics and then criticize it on its own terms. Friedman and Anna Schwartz wrote an influential book, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, and argued that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." Though he opposed the existence of the Federal Reserve, Friedman advocated, given its existence, a central bank policy aimed at keeping the supply and demand for money at equilibrium, as measured by growth in productivity and demand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetarism