Evo Morales Gets Bounced; Seeks Asylum in Mexico - Page 17 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15162158
@wat0n as for your attempts at refuting John Perkins claims on what he did with the NSA? The NSA was a codebreaking organization. Snowden discusses what they did in terms of trying to manipulate world resources. It makes sense. All of it. The NYT tried to demolish Perkins. Their conclusions taken from wiki:

Articles in the New York Times[7] and Boston magazine,[citation needed] as well as a press release issued by the United States Department of State,[citation needed] have referred to a lack of documentary or testimonial evidence to corroborate the claim that the NSA was involved in his hiring by Chas T. Main. After an extensive investigation, the New York Times concluded that "the arc of Mr. Perkins's career seems to be described accurately," although they did not find evidence to support "some of his fancier claims," including those involving the NSA.[7]

Why did they not find the fancier claims? This:
In a 2006 statement, a State Department release claims that much of the book "appears to be a total fabrication... the National Security Agency is a cryptological (codemaking and codebreaking) organization, not an economic organization... Neither of [its] missions anything remotely resembling placing economists at private companies in order to increase the debt of foreign countries."[8] Perkins responds that Wikileaks and Edward Snowden documents clearly demonstrated that the NSA is involved in a wide range of activities that have nothing to do with codemaking and codebreaking and that often serve to undermine other countries and their leaders.[citation needed]


Now why would an agency doing dirty deals to gain money and power and influence to resources they should not be involved in lie about a tie to a man who writes books about economic himan activity? The logical conclusion is that they don't want a spotlight on their underhanded secretive and immoral actions. That is that.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-23123964

Why would the NSA hack into huge amounts of texts, emails, phone calls, etc? Of other nations? It is mostly to know how to benefit from what is valuable to very powerful and wealthy economic classes of people Wat0n. Information means MONEY nowadays. You can even make money selling the information of some poor person who makes hardly anything because that person might buy some junk food or not and the junk food sellers are willing to pay them to have more accurate access to the ones who love their brand of chips. Lol. Damn capitalists. They think by being spies they can hide their immorality and lack of ethics. The reality is though Wat0n that if you don't have morality and ethics in everything in life? You pay for it. In the end, no one trusts you. And trust is key to government, business, and social and economic activity. Keeping people believing bullshit. Is key to success in unjust economic systems.

Being whores though who are educated and should know better? Very unkind results.
#15162180
Tainari88 wrote:Wat0n, what the hell are you talking about? Unique? You really distort what I say don't you? How many times have I written on this forum about the Imperial POWERS in history? Over my twelve years here I have written about the concept of EMPIRE. How that motivates the worst problems in human history. I don't say it is the USA only. Of course not. The USA is really really bad in one way only. They purported to be a democratic republic who respects human rights and democratic representative forms of self governance for all nations and do the exact opposite because it is about aggression and greed. The UK, France, etc never claimed to be about some form of democratic representative republican forms of government. They were not ex colonies turned oppressors Wat0n. They were clear. They followed an Imperial past that was about class conscious societies. The same ones that pushed a bunch of immigrants out of their nations from the lower classes to go and set up shop in the United States of colonial times. The 13 original colonies Jamestown, etc. The USA was founded by people from the lower classes sent to the colonies by not having favorable conditions in Europe to who they were...yet they betrayed all that history for GREED. Who is worse? Some King George and other colonial powers like Spain and Portugal who never renounced monarchy and imperial ambitions? Or the USA promising freedoms from tyrannies and a representative form of democracy but acting the same or in Latin America worse than the original monarchies and elite upper classes from the Old World Imperial powers of the past? I posit it the USA is worse. Don't betray what you say you promote and imitate the same model that produced the republic and the reason for a change in political philosophy and society. It is worse. People expect something and get something that is not at all what it promised. With monarchy and class consciousness you expect that imperialism fully. With rhetoric that is about republican forms of democracy you don't. You get taken by surprise. It is called two faced behavior. No one in human politics likes total liars. That is what they are Wat0n. What motivates such bullshit? Greed. They want the land, the minerals and the profits. The dollar is first and then the military from the USA secures it for them in places they had no right to dictate policy IF they believed in respecting the right to self-determination. They don't believe in either democracy or self-determination for governments that they have an interest in destroying because the rich corporations or banks, etc are the ones dictating foreign policy and so are the plutocrats in that nation. Now, you see the consequences in the USA in plain sight. The congress, senate and the legal system will be favoring people who are the ones fronting the money for their campaigns in Washington DC. They have not gotten rid of Citizens United, they have not gotten rid of black budgets and slush funds. They have not reformed the filibuster or gotten rid of it. It is legal to accept a lot of money for speeches and for campaigns and to allow people who don't capture the most popular votes to run the nation. It is anti-democratic. This is a natural consequence of allowing greed and capitalism to run as the PRIORITY over democracy. It is a terrible problem. But that is the USA's issue.


Well, the Soviets also claimed to be practicing the "highest form of democracy". So in that regard the US is not all that different, one actual difference is that the US was somewhat more reliant on its alliances than the Soviets were.

Also, like it or not, the US is a Constitutional democracy, despite its flaws. And Puerto Rico does get to enjoy that, despite your complaints over being a minority position, and indeed its Human Development Index is comparable to that of Argentina and just below Chile's - two of the most developed Latin American countries. And this is a Puerto Rico that is in a deep economic and social crisis for US standards.

Tainari88 wrote:Morales knew that he was the only one in the history of Bolivia who had Aymara interests. The native Bolivians finally had a leader. After centuries of rule by colonial mentality people with little regard for Indian rights in Bolivia. They had a voice. He also got a taste of power and thought it would be practical to keep going on his reforms. That actually did improve conditions for many Indian communities and the base for his popularity Wat0n. He was not popular with the Anez very wealthy class. Nor the ones who view Indian religions as satanic. But they are not the majority in Bolivia. If the rules say democracy is about majority rule? Indian values, religion, land and power should be dominant in Bolivia. It never was. That is why it was unstable. Fights between the interests of the Aymara, Quecha ethnic groups interests, and the colonial wealthy elite with paradigms of McDonald's and bullshit that never worked. BTW, McDonald's went bankrupt in Bolivia. They could not make money. The Indians did not like the corporate culture. It is an indication of the conflict in a microcosm. En fin, si crees en la democracia? Tienes que aceptar que lo que quieren la mayoria indigena del pais debe ser la que RIGE el pais. No las Janine Anez.


What are you talking about? The majority of the Bolivian population is mestiza, and the Aymara represented only 16% of the population in the 2012 census (all the "pure" indigenous population amounted to 20%). If you somehow want to count all mestizos as indigenous then the majority would be Quechua, not Aymara :eh:

More importantly, this is the cheap ethno-nationalism I was referring to. There is no reason for the Aymara to tolerate Evo's attempts to perpetuate himself in power just because he's one of them. And they indeed turned against him, just like most Bolivians did.

Allow me to remind you that in 2005, Evo Morales got 54% of the vote. In 2009, under the new Constitution, he got 64%. In 2014, 61% (he was deemed fit to run because the change in Constitution had reset the term limits). In 2019, the official result was 46%, and had the opposition ran together he and the MAS would've been cast out - they'd have lost in a second round.

Tainari88 wrote:Why do say this stupidity Wat0n? Why should Bolivia not enjoy its own resources? This is very telling here. You mean to say that the only ones who have the right to make money or have some money to spend and grow from are the outside capitalists and the minority rich elite in the nation? You are wrong. The resources are part of a land. The people residing, working and having historical, cultural and invested labor in that land have the RIGHT to profit from any resource and also the right to refuse the use of to outsiders. Would you like someone to come into your home that you sweat to pay the rent or mortgage to---and that you paid the furniture and the costs of building that house? To come in and declare it theirs because you are foolish Chilean pendejo who is inferior and only they are the ones who know it all? What kind of shit mentality do you support I wonder?


Where did I say that? They can enjoy the resources, but then I would not be dumb enough to believe that having temporarily higher global prices of whatever commodity you have in mind is a merit of the government, and I would definitely not tie the provision of key social services to those prices.

Instead, I'd just save the windfall profits so they will be ready to use when commodity prices eventually come down, as they always do.

Tainari88 wrote:No, there is nothing cheap about ethnicity. Do you feel your Jewishness is expendable like some banana peel that you peel off and throw away? Or is your ethnic roots truly important and the indians identities just shit identities? Because if that is what you feel? You could be easily accused of racism. For sure.


I sure as hell don't feel it's an excuse to overlook incompetence and corruption. You aren't the kind of person who would not mind being ripped off by a Taino politician because he's Taino and that's all that matters, are you? :eh:

Tainari88 wrote:Also there is a difference between life and death essential needed resources and some expendable luxury goods. Water, air and food and medicine and education and housing that is adequate are basically life or death needs. Not something to think that is flexible in the human spectrum of goods and services. Do I have to point out the obvious? Ave Maria Wat0n...que te pasa?

No, that wasn't the issue. Did you see the video? They wanted to charge the residents of Cochabamba nearly 25% of their entire salaries. These people are making $2 bucks a day in salary. If your water bill is the same as your rent? How do you get ahead? Feed your family? Pay medical expenses?Educate your kids? You have a really bad understanding of reasonable conditions. You are quick to argue the merits of rapacious profitmongering versus reasonable utility and sanitation costs. Your argument sucks really. You reveal yourself as biased and immoral with this. I will be back. Because your arguments are weak. Someone has to teach you ethics Senor. Te falta etica.


Why don't you tell the whole story here? Why don't you mention that the hike took place because the Bolivian government insisted that the company fund a very expensive and uneconomical project (the Misicuni Dam) as a condition for the contract instead of using already existing dams that would draw water from the already existing dams from the Corani Lake instead of funding it itself or treating it as a different project? Even worse, Cochabamba's sanitation was already a mess before the privatization, which is why it was done in the first place.

I don't believe in a blind privatization of utilities. Whatever is privatized needs to be strictly regulated since utilities like water sanitation are usually a natural monopoly and that's how it's actually done in practice. Or if utilities are going to be owned by the government, the companies need to be kept away from the politicians' tendency to use them to pay political clients (ironically, that's how Pinochet's dictatorship dealt with water). Pragmatism above all.

Tainari88 wrote:Who has to do some damage control? The governments. Both of them. Will Evo be the one who would have responded with the damage control? I think he would have done it because he had to respond to Indian interests. The problem though Wat0n is that Evo will never be what Janine was. He won't go to the rich elite neighborhoods who have these environmentally unsound practices due to the investors and pro-capitalism at any cost people and kill them off to get rid of the problem. You got to negotiate with people who hate your guts in politics. Not kill them off. Something not followed by the Right wing in Latin American political history. Quote from your own article:


Llaman a que se active la cooperación internacional y demás aliados con fines solidarios y humanitarios para que se pueda suplir las necesidades básicas de los pueblos afectados por este flageo y se inicien de manera las medidas de restauración de la biodiversidad afectada.

The capitalists won't do that. It goes against the profit above all else foundation of that economic system. Admit that. If you don't? The rest is just you covering your real mentality. What Q has accused you of.


Both governments had to do damage control indeed, but tell me, why did they declare Evo as a persona non-grata then? Why is chaqueo still a thing, anyway? Europeans also practiced it at some point, but it was left behind once irrigation technology had improved to the point of making it unnecessary to burn forests to make way for agriculture, and it's not practiced in any developed country as far as I'm aware, including the US. So I don't see what does capitalism have to do with the issue of stopping chaqueo.

Tainari88 wrote:Socialism is not about emotion. It is a common political philosophy and parties advocating for it all over the world win real world elections and implement real world policies that are based on it. It is not some impractical thing. It never was. That is just lies Wat0n that are repeated over and over again hoping people believe it. It doesn't work. I am a person. One with logic and emotion. Both. I don't argue my politics like a British person because I wasn't raised that way. If you believe all cultures have a right to express their own ways of argumentation in an international political forum? Then you do that. You don't try to say that emotion is not pragmatic. Lol. Socialism is not about EMOTION. It is about not allowing tiny groups of elitist plutocrats accumulate governmental and economic power and not allow the ones working all day to get their needs met in an attempt to dominate all the resources for their own benefit. Anyone with half a brain will know that eventually the ones being squeezed dry and not seeing any benefits? Are going to rebel and lead to instability. Because human society should be about balance and logic not emotion and greed and pursuits of short term thinking and planning to please some people who in a corrupt system are allowed a lot more power than their numbers would justify. That is logical. Where is your argument that the rich and plutocratic are entitled to more and have to have more power because the working classes are inferior? Where? Because the arguments of the rich=superiority of intelligence are belied by this series called The Housewives of Beverly Hills. Hablas pura basofia.


Socialists always claim the same, yet cannot recognize that the system already failed over 30 years ago. Of course this is about emotion, it's the only cause for doing the same things and expecting different result besides Einstein's explanation for this sort of thing.

Tainari88 wrote:No Wat0n most of the readers out there don't have time for long history videos and most don't even know the basics. Why don't they? Latin America is an afterthought to them. Why? Our nations are not EMPIRES. The important people whom you want to imitate to be powerful and elite and superior. But you come from a land of Indians and poverty stricken Europeans and knocked off people by the USA. Instead of viewing them as the Imperialist snob assholes who don't study the histories of the inferior Latin American bumbling foolish low life people who don't have a right to like their own nations....you complain about the shortness of the video. That video has more information than the vast majority of American folks know about Chile. Again. EMPIRE. They have the luxury of not being informed about nations who are not powerful superpowers. No one cares about us Wat0n. About little nations like Chile or Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, etc. Why? Not empires. Because instead of treating all as equals they only care about the wealthy and the powerful. If you agree with them? Then you will be their whore. Identify with the strong tribe. Q won that argument with you. And you are what he accused you of. Start fighting for the ones who are not Empires. Because the land is diverse in many nations and are all part of supporting life. And as a human species we all depend on it to live. And being into class consicous Empire is DEATH to us all. That is my big point.


Laziness is not an excuse for botching history.

Tainari88 wrote:Look no one knows what would have become of Allende's government. He died on September 11th, 1973 en el Palacio de la Moneda. His relative became a famous writer called Isabel Allende. Married to a Gringo and living in San Francisco.


You're confusing two different Isabeles here. This Isabel Allende:

Image

Is not Salvador Allende's daughter, she was born in Peru to one of his cousins (and is Chilean by jus sanguinis). His daughter is this Isabel Allende:

Image

...A former Chilean Senator and Representative and President of both chambers at different times, one who is also not even a Marxist to the point that she supports the TPP-11.

By the way, neither would be considered to be part of "el pueblo llano". Allende's daughter, for example, went to a very expensive private French high school (La Maisonette) that is well known for being where the children of wealthy leftist politicians get a private education.

And we certainly know what became of it up to the coup. It was failing and he had been forsaken by the selfishness (yes, that's the term: Selfishness) of mining workers, who were among the best paid workers in the whole Government and yet instead of defending the Chilean Way to Socialism, they decided to put their private interests first and strike against the government. It's the psychological and practical collapse of the socialism you defend, because it's how it really goes: People are not as nice and solidary as you want to believe they are. They certainly were not, they looked for their own purse above all and once the Marxists messed with that, they turned against them too. And the Marxists had to repress their protest, because the Chilean government had become fully dependent on copper income, so the strike was the finishing blow to Allende's administration. In fact, the miners' strike ended after a failed military coup (the Tanquetazo) in June 29, 1973. But the damage had already been done and the precedent had already been set.

Best case scenario, I think, is that it would have just muddled through and been voted out in the 1976 election.

Tainari88 wrote:The neoliberal economics of Pinochet did not solve poverty issues in Chile. And today Chile doesn't like disappeared people and tortured people found in walls and in unexpected places. They don't like thinking about what happened to Victor Jara or anyone involved in that blood filled history.


No, it did not. The pragmatic reforms of the subsequent democratic administrations greatly improved it, and while poverty hasn't been fully eradicated, just as it hasn't been anywhere else in the world, being poor in Chile at least doesn't look like being poor in Bolivia or Venezuela. Pinochet however did do more for them, in practice, than Allende did. It at least worked to provide the poor with running water and electricity, how is this a bad thing, Tainari? Allende's administration for example was unusual in that it stopped the trend of increasing coverage of drinking water (purple line) that had been seen in the administrations before it (even the bad ones) and which would be resumed during the dictatorship until reaching 99%+ coverage under the democratic administrations:

Image

Source: Alegría y Celedón (2006), UN Research Institute for Social Development

Tainari88 wrote:I would not be into thinking superpowers are the answer. Not the ones like the USA who betrayed their own foundational principles for Greed. There are a lot of human empires who lost all power due to incessant wars and overspending and greed and elite with shit for brains. The USA is going down that way.


What makes you believe I think Chile should be completely subservient to the US? I think Chile needs to try to get along with all superpowers. That means signing free trade agreements with all of them, being open to investment by all of them and treating investors fairly (by not discriminating against them) and trying to act as mediator rather than firmly taking sides.

For instance, I don't like Venezuela's dictatorship but just as I don't think Chile should support it, I also don't think it should move against it. At most, it should issue one of those endless and empty condemnations of human rights violations, and that's about it. I don't think it should even join the US in slapping sanctions against it.

Tainari88 wrote:But if human beings decide to share and be fair with each other and not resort to killing and torture to stay in power? We might have a chance at survival.


That would be nice, but we know that's not how things work. They don't work like that in Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua.

Tainari88 wrote:Don't be a whore for capitalism Wat0n. History is not kind to the whores.


It's also not kind to fanatics.

Tainari88 wrote:@wat0n as for your attempts at refuting John Perkins claims on what he did with the NSA? The NSA was a codebreaking organization. Snowden discusses what they did in terms of trying to manipulate world resources. It makes sense. All of it. The NYT tried to demolish Perkins. Their conclusions taken from wiki:

Articles in the New York Times[7] and Boston magazine,[citation needed] as well as a press release issued by the United States Department of State,[citation needed] have referred to a lack of documentary or testimonial evidence to corroborate the claim that the NSA was involved in his hiring by Chas T. Main. After an extensive investigation, the New York Times concluded that "the arc of Mr. Perkins's career seems to be described accurately," although they did not find evidence to support "some of his fancier claims," including those involving the NSA.[7]

Why did they not find the fancier claims? This:
In a 2006 statement, a State Department release claims that much of the book "appears to be a total fabrication... the National Security Agency is a cryptological (codemaking and codebreaking) organization, not an economic organization... Neither of [its] missions anything remotely resembling placing economists at private companies in order to increase the debt of foreign countries."[8] Perkins responds that Wikileaks and Edward Snowden documents clearly demonstrated that the NSA is involved in a wide range of activities that have nothing to do with codemaking and codebreaking and that often serve to undermine other countries and their leaders.[citation needed]


Now why would an agency doing dirty deals to gain money and power and influence to resources they should not be involved in lie about a tie to a man who writes books about economic himan activity? The logical conclusion is that they don't want a spotlight on their underhanded secretive and immoral actions. That is that.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-23123964

Why would the NSA hack into huge amounts of texts, emails, phone calls, etc? Of other nations? It is mostly to know how to benefit from what is valuable to very powerful and wealthy economic classes of people Wat0n. Information means MONEY nowadays. You can even make money selling the information of some poor person who makes hardly anything because that person might buy some junk food or not and the junk food sellers are willing to pay them to have more accurate access to the ones who love their brand of chips. Lol. Damn capitalists. They think by being spies they can hide their immorality and lack of ethics. The reality is though Wat0n that if you don't have morality and ethics in everything in life? You pay for it. In the end, no one trusts you. And trust is key to government, business, and social and economic activity. Keeping people believing bullshit. Is key to success in unjust economic systems.

Being whores though who are educated and should know better? Very unkind results.


How does that support his claims that he worked along with the NSA? How about he outs his handlers there or show any sort of documentary proof of his relationship with it? :roll:

QatzelOk wrote:Image

As soon as a group of hapless and community-less people starts calling itself "great," atrocities commence against "the less great" and "the scapegoats." It's a formula for ruined cultures to follow so that they can be wealthy even after they've lost their ability to cooperate with others.

Self-coronating names like "Great Britain" and the "Exceptional Nation" are Terrorism licences like a 007 label.

And your "like others in history" is like saying that you can't improve at all - all you are able to do is to just repeat the same errors of the past.


Nazi Germany foreign policy on the other hand was in fact very different from other powers in history. Normally, they would rather form alliances instead of engaging in conquest, particularly when they are no in material position to permanently conquer other powers.

It's funny that you talk about repeating the errors of the past yet you support socialist regimes who emulate the failed regimes of the past and then be surprised when they fail just the same :lol:
#15162325
@wat0n first off read the quote about Salvador Allende's relative. I said his relative. NOT his daughter. You are the one that assumed I said his daughter. You made a mistake in interpretation.

To make the debate move along why don't you state what you do support? Because painting me as a fanatic and pro whatever comes into your error filled assumptions about what I represent is not going to be good for debate.

It is Sunday and I have to make breakfast,cook, clean and do the Sunday thing here. And it doesn't include trying to get some Chilean man with false pendejadas about what the USA government and its corporations do as BETTER than all the rest of the horrors of stupidity that rich elitists do with power abuses in human history.

It really is time to get rid of the lies and illusions about Americans and their shit-filled actions in Latin America.

I really don't have to do much to make reality knock on your door @wat0n you are going to have to live in a world where you will find out through your own life choices how difficult it is to admire a system that collapses. Because that is what will happen.
#15162339
Tainari88 wrote:@wat0n first off read the quote about Salvador Allende's relative. I said his relative. NOT his daughter. You are the one that assumed I said his daughter. You made a mistake in interpretation.


Fair point.

Tainari88 wrote:To make the debate move along why don't you state what you do support? Because painting me as a fanatic and pro whatever comes into your error filled assumptions about what I represent is not going to be good for debate.


Also a fair point. Ok, so let's start with a few basic principles. First: Avoiding policies that have proven that they don't work would be the very first step. That alone leaves central planning aside because central planning simply does not work: In practice, it doesn't allocate resources well (it's always possible to technically respect the plan while not doing so in spirit, and also the plan itself will be flawed because it's impossible to figure out what the best plan is), and even socialists should have gotten this message by looking at China's example.

A second one would be to always try a policy with experiments first so one can see if they work in a controlled and smaller scale before committing large amounts of money by implementing them nationwide. If it works, then it may be worth a try nationally but even then there must be constant monitoring and evaluation since sometimes what works in an experiment doesn't work outside of that. And if it does not work, one needs to know why because it is also true that sometimes something may not work in a small scale experiment but can work nationally, although this would be rarer there are some areas where this is unquestionably the case (such as macroeconomic policy, where experiments are virtually impossible).

A third one would be to draw from what we know or theorize from the sciences (not just social sciences but natural sciences too) to design the policies to be tested. Experimenting also costs money so one would probably prefer to have a stronger basis than just intuition.

At last, quite evidently these policies need to solve things that are actual problems. It may sound obvious but it's not, since deciding what's actually a problem or if there is a desire to do what's necessary to solve it is up to the public debate. Maybe what you or I regard as problems are not seen as such by anyone else, and then... Well, we can't do much about it.

The first three can be addressed by having a professional civil service in the State that is kept separate from the political process and whose appointments are largely kept out of the clientelistic networks/patronage of political parties. These are technical issues and you need people who are dedicated to them and hired, promoted, etc based on merit. The fourth one is of course addressed by democracy. This could be solved by something like the US' Peddleton Act, i.e. it's not idealism but it's how it works in developed countries. You can also look at Canada or Western European countries for other examples of similar laws if you want.

So what does work besides the above, then? Or perhaps we should say, what has the best chance of working (development hasn't been solved yet)? I'd say that accepting markets are a decent resource allocation mechanism, but that some regulation is definitely needed would be the first step. Natural monopolies (industries that by their cost structure will tend to have a single company) need to be regulated, in some specific cases even nationalized if monitoring is not feasible, if the latter happens then they shouldn't be used as an employment agency for political clients as it often happens (which is why I'd rather avoid having them owned by the government if possible, as I don't know how to prevent that). Externalities need to be taken into account by everyone and that means that either the government establishes a very thorough regulation to that effect or uses taxation/subsidies (depending on the case) to do so. As for macroeconomic policy, the government needs to smooth out economic fluctuations (which means saving windfall profits in good times to be able to spend more in bad times - this is exactly the opposite of what Venezuela did), and keep inflation under control (independent central banks with inflation targeting is the true and tried solution to this) since it hurts the poor most as rich people can always buy foreign currency or commodities to defend their savings, poor people can't because they have to eat and can't save. So for instance in Venezuela the elite there can probably live with the hyperinflation, be it because it's well connected with the government or because they accepted their losses and left the country with whatever they could save long ago. Many work in the US oil industry and left in 2004 or so after having worked in PDVSA for several years before Chavez was elected IIRC.

Speaking of poverty and inequality, these of course are a problem. So how does one deal with those? There are two sides here, taxation and government spending. So let's begin with taxation, this may seem obvious but the principle should be that all social policy needs to be funded in the long term, and that means that it should NOT depend on the current prices of commodities like oil, soybeans or copper to name a few because if it does then you will have to punish the poor by taking away from them the social benefits you had given them during the good times (and that they had grown to depend on) simply because the government cannot afford them anymore - this is probably one of the most cruel ways to treat them, to show them a better life for votes in the short term to just leave it to some future President to take it away from them whenever commodity prices fall and the government is now unable to afford to carry these transfers out anymore, and yet that's exactly what Latin American populists do. Anyway, as such, as far as it's concerned the tax system needs to be progressive, not on paper as it is in many Latin American countries (as with many things, that look good on paper but don't happen in reality) but in practice. That means that tax exemptions need to be repealed, except for some very specific ones aimed to provide incentives for investment such accelerated depreciation since they can help cash-strapped small businesses, which would greatly simplify tax systems and make tax collection a lot easier and evasion a lot harder. So, if some sectorial incentives are to be provided this should be done through subsidies. This has the added bonus of making these a lot more transparent, since they have to be voted into the budget and the amount of money involved is made explicit (if not, then well-connected businesses can just lobby to make some obscure tax exemption to their industries and no one will ever notice because the amount of money involved here has to be estimated). Just how much taxation is needed depends on the country, Chile will need to increase it and have a greater percentage of the population pay income taxes (a political minefield no one wants to deal with since people want stuff yet expect someone else to pay for it, yet it's absolutely clear it's necessary to get the revenue - right now some 2/3 of Chileans don't pay income taxes at all) while for example Argentina already has a very large share of tax revenue as percent of GDP (and yet they still have systematic large deficits, also a political minefield since they will either need to fund it by printing money and having hyperinflation or admit reality and cut spending, even taxation isn't an option anymore). Also, use both income taxes and VAT, the latter is regressive but it's a very easy to collect tax, represents A LOT of revenue and that revenue is stable over time so when there is a recession VAT revenue doesn't fall nearly as much as income tax revenue and hence the provision of social services and the welfare system can keep functioning even during the hard times. Compensate for this by having a progressive income tax scheme, again, with no exemptions. Furthermore, also use specific taxes for activities with negative externalities such as pollution (e.g. gas and fuel taxes, not the subsidies that are used in oil producing countries) and those whose quantity demanded isn't sensitive to price such as addictive substances (some of which are legal, like sugary foods and drinks or tobacco and alcohol, and legalize some drugs while also taxing them). At last, in some cases the government may also raise some money by auctioning participation in some activities that are inherently dependent on government involvement of some sort or which generate some economic rents (e.g. cell phone providers) to the highest bidder.

As for the spending side of things, let's make a deal: The poor and lower middle classes will indeed get larger government transfers than now (ideally very large, perhaps equal to a minimum wage or even more). In exchange, let's use minimum wages only in some very specific industries where businesses have large labor market power (so minimum wages will not be an obstacle leading to informal work, and thereby they will also be joining the established welfare system) and furthermore make recipients fulfill some minimum conditions that are good for society as a whole if they are to get the money, such as sending their kids to school and having them graduate, keeping them vaccinated, keeping them and themselves out of trouble (i.e. without engaging in crime), keeping their kids free of drugs, not making them work and so on. Does that sound fair to you? There have already been many experiments on the latter done in Latin America and beyond showing that if people are given this deal of getting money in exchange of sending their kids to school, having them vaccinated, etc they will take it and they will send their kids to school, make sure they get their vaccines, etc. Isn't this, after all, how development looks like? Having people with access to and using public services? And wouldn't this also help to decrease inequality? It may sound weird for some that it's necessary to pay people to send their kids to school, but for very poor populations it actually is.

At last, there also needs to be a discussion in some countries with regards to some issues that affect the middle and even upper classes (yes, they also have their problems). Much of it mirrors that of developed countries and actually some of the problems there are also becoming a thing in Latin America. For instance, my own millennial generation are becoming emancipated at 30+ years old, like in Southern Europe, because of high rents to the extent that even university graduates are having trouble affording them. Even I only managed to do this after moving to the US. And the reason is exactly the same as it is in both North America and Europe. I still think the poor are and should be the priority since their lives are much worse than that of the middle and upper classes, but this is a serious problem that has already led to political unrest and thereby a discussion on NIMBYism needs to be had, because these are terms that aren't even heard in the Latin American discourse (another one that is non-existent in the lexicon is gentrification). One way to help with this is to take teleworking seriously so as many people as possible can work from home and give some relief to the public transport systems by simply not being forced to commute to work every day when they don't even need to be in the office on a daily basis, hence they can move to cheaper places instead of having the commute/office location be a serious aspect of deciding where to live. Just moving towards going to the office a couple of times a week would probably help, a lot, with this.

Tainari88 wrote:It is Sunday and I have to make breakfast,cook, clean and do the Sunday thing here. And it doesn't include trying to get some Chilean man with false pendejadas about what the USA government and its corporations do as BETTER than all the rest of the horrors of stupidity that rich elitists do with power abuses in human history.

It really is time to get rid of the lies and illusions about Americans and their shit-filled actions in Latin America.

I really don't have to do much to make reality knock on your door @wat0n you are going to have to live in a world where you will find out through your own life choices how difficult it is to admire a system that collapses. Because that is what will happen.


Didn't you get to live through that in the late '80s and the '90s as a socialist?

Anyway, the US will be fine I think. Ironically it's much closer to what you seem to be advocating than Latin American countries are for the most part. I pay way more taxes here, as percentage of my income, than I ever did in Chile and than I would do if I went back. There is also more welfare here and less inequality too. The government (taking the net effect of all levels combined) actually redistributes more income than in most, if not all, Latin American countries. The public sector also provides more social services than in most Latin American countries and they definitely work better too. And let's not discuss wages, people from many parts of Latin America do whatever it takes to get into the US for a reason, even if they die trying.

You may now complain about racism in the US, and indeed it does exist, but Latin Americans replace that by being classist and discriminating against poor people sometimes in ways that are way more explicit than the racism you can see in the US (and it's not like racism doesn't exist either, it's just not the main category for discrimination overall, just like classism also exists in the US but is a lot more subtle and is secondary to discrimination by race and even gender/sexual orientation these days). At last American (or perhaps I should say Anglo) identity politics sucks but it has already expanded to Latin America thanks to social media, and it was the Left who spearheaded the process of having it become a social and electoral issue as a way to have something to sell now that socialism collapsed in the '90s. So even that advantage Latin America could boast about compared to the US is gone.

Other things where it's not clear to me which is best is in socialization, as Americans are a lot less social and way more respectful of your privacy than Latin Americans are. On one hand this is bad, since it's harder to make friends than in Latin America and you have less fun. On the other, Latin Americans will often stick their noses where it isn't their business to do so and often without any good intentions but simply to talk shit about you in your back. So there's that, it's not easy to see which culture is better in that regard.

The only thing where I think Latin Americans are clearly superior is in taking care of their parents when they grow old and more generally in their right to keep their families united. Anglos seem to care less about that, and would rather send their parents to retirement homes and be done with it. Those also exist in Latin America but people at least resist doing that. The American position is understandable to some extent, since people have a right to live their own lives independently and one needs to leave the nest (indeed, that's the good side) but I don't like the idea of just sending my mother to a retirement home when the time comes.
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