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So Chile is a mess right now, and becoming more of a mess, specifically today. Customs officials and others went on indefinite strike starting today because, in talks with the government, they were unsatisfied with the mere 6% annual pay raise they were offered. The strike encompasses customs and, possibly (will confirm when not busy trying to figure out how to get goods out of port so I can stay in business. Thanks, Michelle.), municipal workers and public hospital workers. The unions contend that with inflation running about 5.5% a 6% raise is kind of balls. While that's true, it's also true that Chile is projected to have a fiscal deficit of about 2% of GDP this year, worstening in 2015, and since this is a poor country with a population less than that of the greater NY metro area we can't just borrow the money as would happen in the U.S.. Taxes are already going up (corporate taxes, and misc stuff you wouldn't know existed unless you had to pay them) to pay for EDUCATION REFORM and other huge clusterfucks to be announced so that avenue is a dry hole. Costs are going up because of taxes, because of the exchange rate (since dollars are fleeing the country like rats on a sinking ship), and because smaller companies that can't cope are being forced out of business. That fuels inflation, which fuels wage demands, which fuel inflation, etc... And in the middle of that goods can't get into the country, paperwork can't get processed, and in general things don't work because there's no professional civil servive and the political cronies put in place by Bachelet don't know what the gently caress they're doing. SOCIAL JUSTICE is more important than having a functional state. Awesome. Basically this bullshit is hosed and Simon Bolivar was right to look back on his life's work and despair. IMO a good dose of western imperialism would really spruce the place up because we are pathologically incapable of organizing anything more complex than an asado. I welcome your thoughts. God bless.
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Nov 26, 2014 15:45
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The Warszawa posted:Okay, the invocation of Western Imperialism has me baffled - what's the argument that Latin America isn't Western? There isn't an argument. I'm frustrated as hell, is all. If the US wanted to send a carrier group down here and take over I'd be 100% on board because atm our own government is incapable of keeping things running smoothly. The Warszawa posted:Also, the pathologizing of institutional misfeasance and malfeasance as a social trait is something I've found pretty common in discussions of Latin America, including and perhaps especially those driven by Latin Americans - I'm sure someone's getting their PhD off a sociological study of how internalizing "we can't organize poo poo" facilitates graft and whatnot, but I'm interested in your perspective on how widespread that sentiment is in the region. For obvious reasons, most of my conversations are with members of various expatriate communities (either immigrant or refugee) and I'm curious how political thought on the region aligns and diverges between stayers and goers. LatAm is a big place and I can only really speak to my experiences in Chile and for me and the people I talk to, etc. Dissatisfaction with institutions is common but usually of low intensity. There is a pervasive attitude of "that's the way it is, take your number and get on with it" which helps people cope but also perpetuates and exacerbates problems. Chile is maybe a bit different than other places in the region in that institutions are more honestly incompetent than corrupt. The dude loving up your paperwork and adding weeks to an operation that should take days is just following a (bad) procedure to the best of his limited understanding rather than trying to shake you down. Lately things have gotten worse, as the Bachelet administration systematically purged the civil service and replaced career bureaucrats with political cronies. To help you imagine what that´s like, idk, imagine the chaos it would cause if the incoming administration replaced everyone in the federal and state judiciaries down to the clerks with people who are ideologically loyal but may or may not know anything about their actual jobs. This is a thing that happens with every administration to some extent in Chile but this cycle it went all the way down the hierarchy. hobbesmaster posted:Did Chile run out of copper and fish? It's a broad topic but I´ll try to give some background. Chile exports copper and some other minerals, fish, agricultural products and wines, and timber, and imports most of everything else. There is some limited manufacturing here but it's expensive to do it (labor costs are high, tons of regulations to wade through) and quality tends to be bad. the U.S. is Chile's biggest trading partner (I think) and almost all trade is settled in dollars, so the peso/dollar exchange rate is a primary variable affecting and affected by the country's growth and inflation rates. Right now the peso is weak and weakeneing because of a combination of internal and external factors. Internally the political environment has investors nervous and they're parking their money in safer places. Externally, the fed is likely to raise interest rates and chilean central bank is lowering interest rates (due to a slowing economy) and copper is kind of low, all of which weakens the peso. It's a pretty bad combination of factors. Average per capita GDP here is around 20,000 but really the economy is more two speed. People working in or around mining, financial services, and in a few other fields make much more and most people make much less. People living in the capital tend to make more - the provinces are pretty poor. Median income in Chile is probably around 10 or 12k. Labor relations here are complex and volatile, and could be a post all in itself eventually. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ci.html CIA factbook has some general Chile info though it's a bit out of date. The Warszawa posted:I'm pretty sure (though I may be wrong) that there's a ton of deferred or written off revenues from taxing Codelco because there appears to be an upfront tax deferral because of the capital intensive nature of the industry. So there's still copper it's just difficult to get state revenues out of it. That, and Codelco produces copper at iirc one of the highest costs in the world. I've heard Codelco is not profitable if copper is below $3.00.
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Nov 26, 2014 16:40
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ronya posted:is the falling price of copper playing any role here? Yes. Copper's the #1 source of foreign exchange and also contributes something like 10% of government revenue, so falling copper prices make everything more difficult. Ardennes posted:A 2% deficit isn't a nightmare, Chile desperately needs some types of educational reforms and it needs increased revenue/counter-cyclical spending. In a large economy like that of the U.S. counter-cyclical spending is doable. A lot of the debt is held internally so essentially the U.S. can pay itself back. In a small economy like Chile's the buyers are external and the dynamic is different. Also, the exchange rate matters a lot. Tools available to large and productive economies are much more limited in Chile. Beyond that the educational reforms Chile needs are nothing like the ones being mooted, which are focused on elminiating PROFIT in public education (not joking, this isn't hyperbole). Asados are awesome. If only the government could run like a series of asados we'd be ok. =( Collected comments: Keeping order and making sure the lights stay on, that institutions function, etc, is literally the #1 job of a government. If you can't do that it doesn't matter how great your agenda is on paper. The great failure of latin america is having lofty goals but no ability to execute without loving everything else up.
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Nov 26, 2014 16:55
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ronya posted:the hate for even mild social democrats in Latin America can be explained in this angle rather easily - it is no less passionate than hate for immigrants in the developed West, even when immigration flows are not actually very high and the social problems of integration not actually very onerous. People who are Not Like You are taking your jobs and your politicians are taking their side, yada yada. Take a Western country, any Western country, and tell them that the government wants to add 10% of the native population in desperately poor immigrants in the name of social justice and the natives just have to deal or be condemned as racist, fascist, or both, and you get the middle-class reaction that you'd expect. I feel like there's a big disconnect between the way political leanings are perceived from abroad looking in and the reality of the situation - for instance in Chile, radical elements have a big seat at the table. The communist party is part of the government for the first time since Allende.. But more than that, leftward leaning governments (in the region) tend to be associated with corruption, incompetence, and a breakdown of order. THAT is why there's a lot of hate for leftist governments. If somehow competent people got into place and wanted to pursue a socially-democratic agenda I don't think it would be a problem. In related news a couple of days ago some protesting students chained shut a PDI headquarters (Chilean FBI) and used molotov cocktails to set it on fire. Three police officers were seriously hurt. Government response:*mumble mumble*.
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Nov 26, 2014 17:06
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ronya posted:that's normal - poorly-integrated immigrants are prone to populist cronyism and radical politics in the West too. Ethnic city machines have been a thing. The urban poor have political priorities besides eliminating corruption. That's fair enough. I would be happy amending my complaint to hand wringing over incompetent cronies breaking things. I would be much more relaxed if the agenda were the same but things were running smoothy, the government was paying suppliers on time, etc. edit: To be clear, the best would be to develop a professional civil service and a culture of not forcing that to turn over every election cycle. Failing that, yeah, it'd be good to at least have competent cronies. Ardennes posted:So how exactly beyond the issue "scaring away investment with educational reforms" is the situation going to be fixed with American troops on the ground if copper and other exports are taking a hit? IDK. It's not a serious policy suggestion - just take it as "could we get some competent people running things please". Ardennes posted:Should you raise interest rates with a economy increasingly coming under pressure? Just deregulate and hope American corporations bring manufacturing...even though you would have to compete with Vietnam for that investment? Like I said, Chile has very limited options for dealing with economic malaise compared to the states. Conundrums like "if we lower interest rates we will gently caress with the exchange rate" are real barriers to intervention. A good start would be to moderate the tone and abandon policies that are actively hostile to foreign investment, of which there are several. Modernizing labor laws would be another step. In the long term, as you point out, one of Chile´s major problems is a lack of economic diversity that goes back a long time and there is no facile solution for that. In the short term a lot has happened to scare away foreign capital and that is not making dealing with anything any easier. Ardennes posted:Education is a public good, the goal shouldn't be profit but quality and accessibility. The only way Chile is going to work its way out is focusing on industries that require universal and accessible education, it can't compete for low-tech manufacturing, that ship has long for much of the world. I agree with all of this. The question is how to get there, and the government's plan for education just doesn't do it. The big issue at the moment, for instance, is doing away with subsidies to the hybrid public-private schools - basically private schools where students receive a government subsidy to cover most of their tuition - and possibly buying them outright to make them fully public. Leaving aside the need to find $9-$17 billion dollars to pay for that (depending on whose valuation you accept), everyone hates this plan. Literally everyone. Because as lovely as private schools in Chile are, the public schools are worse and no parent wants their children to attend public schools. So there is a serious problem with quality and availability but it's not being addressed. Ardennes posted:Also, the Peso started to devalue back in mid-2013, Bachelet took power in March 2014, maybe she is so bad she caused devaluation under Pinera? The reason she won in the first place was because Pinera was widely seen as corrupt, ineffectual and capricious. There was a long primary full of revolutionary rhetoric and bad ideas leading up to the election, and as Bachelet's prospective government began to take shape and did NOT moderate leading up to the general people with money got pretty concerned. So yeah, the nueva mayoria (her coalition) was affecting exchange rates back in 2013. Bachelet won partially because people hated the right but mostly because she was a figure of godlike popularity when she came back to Chile and was able to ride that personal appeal into a sweep. It really was a phenomenon. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 19:26
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Ardennes posted:Modernizing labor laws is usually a code work for reduced worker rights and lower pay and benefits. It also unclear if Chile reduced worker rights to the bone what investment they would actually see beyond usual industries. Chilean labor law is pretty dumb in a lot of ways. Below are just a few: 1) It is very expensive to lay an employee off. Employees on a fixed term contract have to be paid out to the end of their terms whether they're performing or not. Employees on an indefinite contract accrue a month of severence plus one month per year worked. If an employee challenges their lay off as "unjust" (which they will) and wins (which they will) they can get another 50% in penalties and might even get their job back so that the whole process starts again. This creates some really perverse incentives compared to, for instance, an American style unemployment insurance system or even a more generous european system. But it's rooted in the cultural animosity between workers and management and so is untouchable. 2) Medical leaves of absence may be taken at any time, with doctors' permission, for anything from injury to stress, for an indefinite sequence of 1 week periods. While on leave an employee can't be replaced and they're entitled to return to their old job at their old pay plus whatever seniority they accrued while on leave. In theory this would be sort of ok but FONASA (the state insurance plan) gives no shits about fraud and the system is rampantly abused at great cost to the state and employers. When an employee decides they're outie it's not uncommon for them to take a year's worth of paid leave to pad out their eventual mandatory severence payment. 3) Chileans have to work a fixed schedule set by contract, and deviation from that without a bunch of paperwork is a violation for the employer if the employee complains (whether it was to the employee's benefit or not). Flex time is legally dubious. Allowing people to work from home is legally dubious. Allowing alternate schedules is illegal. Basically, we can't be modern about how people work. It frustrates everyone and yet it's untouchable because ARE WORKER PROTECTIONS. 1 and 2 are expensive for employers and actually contribute to lower wages because those things get factored into offers. They protect lovely employees, somewhat, but everyone gets payed less as a result. Awesome. 3 is a pain in the rear end for everyone. Ardennes posted:They sound pretty similar to American style "vouchers" which is worse than even charter schools. "No one wants to go to public schools" but exactly how many of the poorest of the poor people afford these private schools because they aren't free. Basically, public schools have been so undercut that the middle class is now pushed to support private schools, but ultimately it is going to led to predictable social divisions because not everyone can afford private schools, and if something isn't done then the public system completely fails. You have to understand the context. The U.S. has a pretty functional public school system in places that aren't poor. Chile does not have a functional public school system and hasn't since ever, really. The voucher schools are a lovely alternative to a functional public school system but they're still BETTER than Chile's public schools. The poorest of the poor (rural Chile) are hosed, yeah. It sucks to be poor. Bachelet's plan will not make it suck any less. No one is talking about quality at this point - it's literally an ideological putsch against the concept of profit. Ardennes posted:This sounds all like a lot of emotional charged wishful thinking, it is very clear Pinera was in big trouble. With respect, bro, you weren't here and you haven't followed the issue from inside the country. The right was going to lose but could have lost to a center-left figure like Andres Velasco, who was Bachelet's finance minister during her first term. Bachelet had huge star appeal that was pretty much unparallelled in Chilean politics. Now she's polling down around 50% iirc. Berke Negri posted:Is this the new Chile thread or can we talk about all issues re: Latin America? Because there seems to be a lot of dead people in Mexico and US levels of care appear to be around the level of however Turkey thinks of Kurds. I'm talking about Chile but talk about whatever you want re: LatAm. I think "lots of dead people in Mexico" is probably so common by this point it doesn't really register.
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Nov 26, 2014 20:59
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England Sucks posted:You're country is one of the smoothest running and most well managed nations on the continent Which is not saying much, but sure, ok. On the rest I disagree, clearly.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:05
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Badger of Basra posted:So essentially you're saying workers are treated too well, and they should just shut up and take what they're given so that your Yanqui overlords will invest more? No, I'm saying that the way things are set up is counter productive as hell and contributes to low wages and low productivity. We should do things in a way that does that less is what I'm saying.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:08
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Lawman 0 posted:Maybe you guys should import some weed from Uruguay and The weed here is mostly paraguayan. =(
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Nov 26, 2014 21:10
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hoiyes posted:Weird how Australia has/had worker protections very similar to these (having weathered constant attempts at erosion by conservatives) and still manages to be one of the wealthiest and happiest countries in the world despite their obvious stupidity. I couldn't speak to Australia. Maybe things there aren't administered by gomers. Probably they do not in fact work the same way, though.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:38
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hobbesmaster posted:This made me realize that I don't remember enough spanish to make jokes about Chilean spanish anymore. Something about unnecessary pronouns and muddling the language to make it sound like Portuguese or something. Chilean spanish is like welsh english.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:41
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Mr. Wiggles posted:These are all good things actually maybe you should rethink your economic positions? If only they worked out the way you'd think they'd work out. Alas. hoiyes posted:Well actually... IDK. I think it's a matter of degree. I've traveled all over and while I've met some dumb and sometimes truculent people nothing seems quite like home.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:59
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Badger of Basra posted:Maybe you would have had a decent administration if Pinochet hadn't overthrown Allende. Who knows! Maybe. Probably we'd be a failed state limping by on international aid. Chile didn't have the massive human and physical capital reserves to plunder that Argentina did when it decided to run itself into the ground.
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Nov 26, 2014 22:01
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Badger of Basra posted:You mean when it was run into the ground by a junta? Nah, by Peronismo.
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Nov 26, 2014 22:09
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on the left posted:Chile really needs to open up immigration. There are plenty of Chinese willing to come over and build extended family-run businesses that neatly sidestep labor laws that choke the economy. They already do this. on the left posted:Last time I checked, immigration to Chile is essentially impossible, either due to rule of law or bureaucratic hijinks. It's a beurocratic maze that people coming into Chile, and not knowing Chilean culture or institutions, are really ill equipped to navigate. I know people who have done it and people who are tearing their hair out trying to do it. Ardennes posted:The "guilty" middle class claim is garbage. Ultimately, if anything immigrants are going to be harmed by lack of education spending in the long term, and their integration is going to be much harder to actually achieve. In this case though you are really talking about privileging the entrepreneurial class over the urban working class in the name of helping rural workers but ultimately it is actually going to be a good thing for Chile if small businesses simply consolidate their workers rather than hire or is consumption drops from wages. That's certainly a point of view, I guess. Not good for the people left unemployed, for the companies, for the treasuries, for other small businesses, etc, but sure I guess the employees who don't get squeezed out during consolidation are doing alright. A fluid labor market would be better. Doing worker protection in a way that doesn't create perverse incentives that feed back into lower wages would be better (that is the dynamic created by #1 I mentioned above). Having sick time, basically state-provided short-term disability insurance, is fine if the state would enforce the actual rules. Spending more on education is fine. A good idea. But not willy-nilly on a plan that doesn't address quality or access. Unfortunately, in Chile, none of those things are easy to fix except by abstracting away the politics.
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Nov 27, 2014 13:19
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Ardennes posted:Yes, my point is that the education plans need to go forward despite middle class opposition, Chile is going to let too much talent go to waste if it loses effective universal education. The government might have to back was from making private/public schools fully public, but the subsidies need to be trimmed. Why these plans in particular, though? They are not going to result in effective universal education and Chile doesn't have effective universal education to lose.
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Nov 27, 2014 13:21
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Ardennes posted:Well, I won't be surprised if political stability takes a big hit. There is clearly slowing of demand and currently copper is at 2.96. What you are most likely going to see is a lack of consensus as both right and left wing groups on the streets are (from what I have heard) radicalizing. Curious which right wing groups are on the streets. What's your source for that?
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Nov 27, 2014 18:52
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Ardennes posted:http://santiagotimes.cl/chiles-coup-40-years-on-pinochetistas-and-the-active-far-right/ (admittedly it isn't about street politics) I've seen the Vice documentary. Um...I would take with great skepticism what "some" suspect. The source is probably a politician in the left wing of Nueva Mayoria and, well, they would say that. Violence is mostly attributed to the anarchist groups, which are very active in Chile. In this case three suspects have been arrested so I guess we could do some digging and look for their actual affiliations. Hopefully they won't be released like the last bunch, who were later picked up for doing a bombing in Spain. Ardennes posted:There isn't a firm line but as copper prices continue to drop there is a question of utility of the government shifting its position in order to improve profitability that may only be temporary. It isn't purely about the environmental aspects of it but it is a political decision that is going to have to take global prices and government revenue into account and obvious political liability is going to be a part of it as in every liberal(ish) system. In the long term Chile faces water and energy shortages that are going to become crisis indepedant of mining. We already pay, iirc, the highest rates for electricity in Latin America. The north of the country is largely unsettleable without more water. In Santiago, there was a big water scare after mudslides in the Andes contaminated what were apparantly most of the city's sources of water. Ardennes posted:As for the politics of Chile itself, the country is very polarized and historical memory is a big thing, it very well may better if some horse-trading happened and labor protections were modified, made more flexible in certain areas and then stronger in others and the same thing with educational reforms but there seems to be very little chance of consensus. It also makes laws harder to actually apply since there will be extra-parliamentary politics resistance. That said, I think that it is simply part of Chile's national psyche at this point and there isn't much to be done. Eh. Like I said, if Bachelet hadn't swept the primaries with her star appeal we would have most likely ended up with center-leftist Andres Velasco as president. In that case the tone would have been much more moderate and education reform could have happened in a more productive way. But right now, yeah, there is very little chance of consensus. Most likely in a year or two the center of the Nueva Mayoria will bolt and Bachelet´s coalition will be broken. Then, well, who can say. But there is IMO a third way. In other news apparantly the customs workers' strike is now over. No word on what agreement was reached.
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Nov 28, 2014 13:42
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Gough Suppressant posted:Could some people from the countries in the region post what are considered the more reputable online news sources? Having never lived in latin america it can sometimes be hard to tell what the equivalent of Fox or the like is without context. Like TheImmigrant said that's kind of a big can of worms. For Chile El Mercurio is more or less the paper of record. They tend to lean right. Also, to get an article published in El Mercurio you must write like you have a 3" diameter stick up your rear end all the time. La Tercera is a pretty good source. TBH The Clinic is at least as insightful as other national sources and more entertaining to read. Take any statement by a politician or uanttributed statement with a huge grain of salt no matter where it comes from. Chilean politicians are often American state legislature levels of incompetent and crazy.
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Dec 1, 2014 15:43
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:A few days ago the Bolivian foreign ministry said that there are talks to have a Morales-Obama meeting in order to reestablish relations (broken in 2008). I suppose that the developments in regards to Cuba will only solidify this. Venezuela would be the only outlier if Washington exchanges ambassadors with La Paz and Havana. Are you in Bolivia or following Bolivia? If so could you point me to some outlets where I can follow the push for soverign Bolivian access to the sea?
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Dec 18, 2014 14:55
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Azran posted:Thanks! I did not know other LatAm countries were having sinilar issues. At least in Chile, I can confirm that it's a pain in the rear end and so expensive it makes importing small items for personal use uneconomic. Unless you have a network of 
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Jan 27, 2015 15:30
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ronya posted:fast forward a few struggling center-left or centrist governments and I think you get modern Turkey, not Britain - that is, perennial accusations/invocations of a nebulous deep state that seems to continually foil left-wing plans or promise safety to the right-wing (where in practice 'it' doesn't remain a coherent entity capable of delivering either) Chile.txt
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Mar 17, 2015 13:03
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Customs on strike again. Woo.
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Mar 18, 2015 02:33
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Stockholm Syndrome posted:Hope you chileans get your poo poo in order. It'd be nice. Seems unlikely tho.
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Mar 26, 2015 12:39
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:Would there be any interest in making a "proper" catch-all Latin America (South America maybe? Mexico has its own thread and I've not seen much about Central America being posted) thread? This thread shows that there are people who would engage, but the OP (really the first few pages) is awful and don't inform anyone about anything other than the fact that Pinochet is not particularly well regarded. There's quite a few things going on at the continental level this year that may solicit further attention. The OP could have small effortposts about each country or something. It didn't start as a megathread. Feel free to make your own thread if you don't like this one.
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Apr 8, 2015 19:10
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:It lets companies outsource all jobs to smaller companies to go around labor laws. Sounds kind of lovely. OTOH it might help the brazilian economy if it makes doing business cheaper.
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Apr 10, 2015 20:21
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Ghost of Mussolini posted:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32261550 Now let me tell you why TPP is the next step in Chilean economic development.  Obdicut posted:It'll make the economy better for people that own companies, yeah. Not for people who work at jobs. I think you're looking at it the wrong way. It makes things better for people who don't have jobs, for one.
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Apr 11, 2015 15:12
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SexyBlindfold posted:I don't know, the UDI is by all accounts imploding as we speak ("our collective is on the verge of political collapse? Let's put Carlos Larraín back in charge! Just the refreshing gesture the people were expecting from us!"), but it seems like the SQM affair still has juicy deals stored somewhere. There's only so many greedy individual fucks who can be indicted before the populace stops seeing any relevant distiction between Penta's shady deals with the UDI and whatever excuses the center-left will put up for their part in the tax fraud. There are no alternatives. Trying to make something out of Penta was such a huge mistake when fraud in election financing is basically the norm and everyone has been involved in something.
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Apr 14, 2015 13:32
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Markovnikov posted:The main problem with the currency is really inflation. Without inflation, the peso is as stable as any other currency. I really don't know what is to blame for inflation. Currency printing by the government to pay for poo poo? Speculation? Imports? If you could find a way to control that, you could slowly get out of the dollar restrictions and regain some semblance of normality. This country is no stranger to hiperinflation really. Too much spending relative to income. Capital flight caused by the financial panic and repeated crisis since Peronismo became a thing. A business environment in which no one will invest a single peso they don't absolutely have to.
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Apr 28, 2015 19:53
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Ardennes posted:Also, foreign investment is almost certainty not going to come from cutting back spending. Argentina is in a middle income trap and probably has been in one since the later half of the 20th century. Cutting back spending is necessary but not sufficient on its own, no. It would have to be one of many steps toward convincing both foreign and domestic investors that the country is not reeling drunkenly toward another crisis and debt default, and that Argentina is a place they can make money. I was in Buneos Aires last year and while I love the city lots, and in many places things are clean and have a fresh coat of paint, anything that required the least amount of actual money to get done seemed to have been deferred. I don't think the city has had a new metro car or a track upgrade since the system was installed. That's not "a middle income trap" unless that means "hilarious mismanagement and squandering decades of accumulated social capital".
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Apr 29, 2015 13:17
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Tony Sorete posted:I voted against the current local city government but there are new cars in the A-line and Alstom Brazil is making and delivering more for the H-line soon. There's some other real improvements across the city that took serious investment like rain reservoirs and drains to prevent flooding. There could be more stuff but that doesn't mean we're just getting a coat of paint everywhere because of delayed investment. Cool. It would make me glad to know my impression was mistaken.
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Apr 29, 2015 14:11
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Ardennes posted:How are you going to make money if the economy falls into recession? How would a recession not cause an even further crisis? What do you do about the peso? Why would foreign investors pour in money anyway looking at emerging markets? How are you going to make costly capital improvements if you cut back spending at the same time? Would cut education spending back to just to build infrastructure? Answer to all of them: digging yourself into a hole with short sighted populist policies puts you in a position where you have no easy, painless, or short-term solutions. What you can't do is keep digging. You have to arrive at a place where this doesn't happen and people are confident it isn't the sort of thing that happens in your economy. Chile managed a difficult and painful transition pretty well, eventually, for as much as the government seems determined to gently caress it up now, with much less human and social capital than Argentina has.
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Apr 29, 2015 15:59
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Ardennes posted:Chile's economic history is well connected copper and even today its economy will swing with its prices. Over 50% of Chilean exports are still connected to copper, and over 60% to mining. Chile has no magic bullet, you can't pull that one with someone who knows export statistics. It's a shame that along with your ability to google export statistics you don't know more history. Copper is not a new thing in Chile, and has been its major export in bad times (60's, 70's, into the 80's) and good. Sometimes it's a drag and sometimes a boon but since the 70's Chile has had nothing like the economic crisis suffered by, for instance, Argentina, despite fluctuating copper prices and, like I said, much lower stocks of human and social capital. By rights Argentina, which also has a plentiful endowment of resources, should be the most stable and prosperous country on the continent. Instead its neighbor takes that prize and policy is the reason for that. Why is it so hard for you to admit that leftist governments often make bad policy? Every time this comes up you post the same litany of excuses. Ardennes posted:As far as "short sighted populist policies", education and social spending are both necessary for an economy like Argentina. Military spending is quite low (.7 to .8% of GDP). You can always raise taxes but I doubt you would like that. Cutting spending has economic costs, there is no free lunch. As part of a stable economy that can support that spending, yeah, education and social spending are potentially productive and good long term investments. In the context of an economy that just cracked down on travel agencies to prevent dollars leaving the country, that confiscated billions of dollars in private pension funds and forcibly converted them to pesos, that is right now in litigation over defaulting on hundreds of billions in externally held debt and had to do a deal with China just to stave off collapse, one has to wonder whether priorities are misplaced. Or if, as you believe, leftism cannot fail but can only be failed. Yggdrassil posted:Argentina is an amazing country as far as resources go. The only thing that drives investors away is our high volatility, IE poo poo is going down all the time in here. The key to attracting investors is not by direct measures to lure them, it's to stabilize economy and end with the terrible economic administrations we had so far. The subsidizing of service corporations has to stop. The sub-par borrowing treaties have to stop. We need to develop a good plan to open our borders and generate a competitive inner market. We have the resources. 2015's Argentina has seen it's PBI grow by 2.5 times from the last big recession (1998-2002). This guy gets it and you should set aside your ideological commitment and listen to him. edit: True story, several years ago there was a deal in place with Argentina to export natural gas to Chile. A pipeline was built, and a terminal, but the gas flowed for just a little while before through mismanagement and overconsumption Argentina had to reneg on its end of the deal. Now Chile imports expensive gas from indonesia and the pipeline flows the other way.
wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Apr 29, 2015 |
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Apr 29, 2015 18:04
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Jack of Hearts posted:Since when is Peronism leftism? "Not real leftists" is also a popular response. =/
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Apr 29, 2015 18:18
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Ardennes posted:I recognize bad policy when it is apparent, and even then I don't think the current government is Argentina is great but in comparison you haven't offered anything. What do you want? I'm offering my criticism of your non-criticism. Ardennes posted:Copper prices were very high most of the 2000s, and in 2008/2014-15 took dives which has shown up the Chilean economy. That said, Argentina has bad leadership but the worst of it was in the 1990s and it wasn't very leftist. You can criticize the current administration (and its predecessor) for not fixing it, but it isn't a story that starts with them and going back to previous policy isn't going to fix it either. The world economy took a dive in 2008 and trade in everything with its major partners took a dive at the same time. Chile bounced back pretty quickly, though. 2014-2015 is partly copper and partly political. The dollar has actually been coming down a little because despite low copper prices imports fell off a cliff and we're piling up dollars. Ardennes posted:Yeah that is pretty much what I expected considering. Anyway, like I said there is no free lunch, and if they strap the budget now then they are going to have to pay for it later in a different form. It isn't even just illiterate children and riots you have to worry about, but a shortfall in income and taxation. LOL. Truly, the only way forward for Argentina is to keep digging. And definitely not to reform energy subsidies so it can sell natural gas to Chile and its neighbors.
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Apr 29, 2015 18:59
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Ardennes posted:It seems mostly to be copper, and general economic currents. The big aberration seems to be in the early 1990s but that is in part likely do to political change. You presented Chile as a model but ultimately Chile is a commodity focused economy both historically that doesn't map to Argentina. As for imports falling, it is probably a combination of a weaker currency, lower commodity prices on what Chile doesn't have (oil/gas) and general internal weakening. Chile is a pretty decent example of not loving up internal policy in a way that destroys decades of accumulated capital and leaves the government scavenging travel agencies for dollars, is the point. It's not down to the winds of fate that Chile didn't end up that way. Argentina's policies are going to look a little different because Argentina is different but the point that it can't afford, for instance, to subsidize an $8 monthly electric bill for a modern household of 3 still remains. Bachelet and her coalition are at least as important a factor in the recent slowdown as external factors. =/ Ardennes posted:Argentina would have to dramatically slash usage for it to happen. Yeah you can do that but in the end someone has to pay. Slash usage and invest in production, yeah. It's a thing that needs to happen.
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Apr 29, 2015 19:45
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Elias_Maluco posted:That's why we cant have nice things Pro troll.
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Jun 25, 2015 21:29
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gently caress. Yeah.
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Jul 5, 2015 00:50
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:This is actually terrible news. If you live on the wrong side of the Andes.
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Jul 5, 2015 23:03
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Azran posted:Something something Imperialist agents. Write an OP then 
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Jul 30, 2015 18:08
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