Spain’s ruling Socialists suffered a crushing defeat to conservatives in local and regional elections Sunday, yielding power even in traditional strongholds against a backdrop of staggering unemployment and unprecedented sit-ins by Spaniards furious with what they see as politicians who don’t care about their plight.Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the result was due punishment of his government for the state of the economy — the jobless rate is a eurozone high of 21.3 percent. But he said he had no plans to move up general elections, which must be held by March of next year, and pledged to press on with job-creating reforms despite the loud outcry of opposition to his party.
The win for the conservative opposition Popular Party puts it in even a stronger position to win the general elections and return to power after eight years of Socialist rule.
In what Spanish media said was the worst performance on record by the Socialist Party in local and regional elections, the numbers reflecting the loss were stunning: the conservative Popular Party won at the municipal level by about two million votes, compared to 150,000 in its win in 2007, and in 13 regional governments that were up for grabs, Zapatero’s party lost in virtually all of them.
One was Castilla-La Mancha in central Spain, where the Socialists have always held power. The Socialists also lost bastions like the town halls in Barcelona and Seville. The conservatives padded their majorities in Madrid and Valencia, in the latter even though the president is under investigation for corruption. Several other Socialist-controlled regional governments also fell. Spain’s electoral map turned largely blue — the color of the Popular Party.
I can see why Zapatero would want to avoid calling federal elections. Spain’s youth unemployment stands at 45% and he is very likely to be thrown out of power completely. I’m sure a lot of the young people voted for socialism, because socialism is so trendy in movies, music, in the universities, and on television . But the young people are finding out now that you cannot cover your nakedness with empty rhetoric, you cannot feed your stomach with feelings of self-congratulation, and you cannot coerce employers to hire you by demonizing capitalism.
I have been puzzled by the extent of the media coverage of some crank’s prediction that the world would come to an end today. People are always predicting the end of the world. So far they have always been wrong. Was there something about this particular prediction that was newsworthy? Did any significant number of people expect to wake up this morning and see graves opening and people ascending into Heaven? This morning, there were news stories to the effect that the world still exists. Really! Did reporters expect their readers to be surprised? Why, in short, was this silliness a major media event?
I wish reporters would pay as much attention to a more important failed prediction: the Obama administration’s assurance that its policies, including the “stimulus,” would foster job creation and prevent unemployment from reaching 8 percent.
And here are some charts from John’s post.
Community organizer Obama predicted that his $800 billion dollar stimulus program would keep unemployment below 8%:
Stimulus Job Creation Prediction
Ooops! Never send a community organizer to do an economist’s job.
How about all that spending? Surely ALL the spending must have created more jobs?
This should be the end of the belief that government spending creates jobs, but it won’t be, because the university is not committed to teaching what gets results, but what produces feelings of superiority. The secular elites feel that they should be allowed to redistribute the wealth created by businesses and workers. This feeling of entitlement to control and distribute is best put into practice with large-scale taxation, spending and redistribution of wealth. The professors think that their good feelings (subjective) will somehow, mysteriously, cause good effects in the real world (objective). The chart proves their mysticism wrong, but the university is insulated from feedback from the real world.
That is why we need to elect business owners like Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain.
As the U.S. languishes, Chile posted a head-turning 15.2% yearly gain in GDP in March, and forecasts for the year are rising. Why can’t we do that here?
A year ago, Chile lay in rubble, victim of the world’s fifth most powerful earthquake. So Chile’s 15.2% growth is a big bounce from a bad setback.
But it shouldn’t be dismissed as an anomaly. It’s a showy number, but not the only one.
The same day Chile released its data, Goldman Sachs raised its 2011 growth forecast for the country to 6.4% from 6%. In its annual regional business index, Latin Business Chronicle ranked Chile as having the best business climate in Latin America in 2011.
Such numbers are so alien to the U.S. in the economically debilitated Obama era, it makes sense to look at what Chile has done.
First, Chile’s policies for long-term growth were put into effect in the 1980s by the group of Milton Friedman-inspired economists known as the Chicago Boys.
Under them, Chile’s pension privatization cost nothing and left the country with no net debt. The private funds now hold assets worth 90% of GNP ($185 billion) — capital used to develop the country. Already, Chile’s education and infrastructure are the best in Latin America as a result.
Second, there’s free trade, of which Chile is a global champion, signing at least 58 treaties to gain access to 2 billion customers.
That’s a big reason Chile is close to full employment and is scrambling to attract growth-hungry U.S. entrepreneurs — and getting them.
[…]Bamrud says Chile has been turning heads with investors the past year and a half because of its emphasis on improving its corporate environment, its tax regime and its economic freedom, all of which rate highly.
“Chile has always been held out as a model for Latin America, but the reality is … it’s now a model for the U.S.,” he said.
Corporate taxes are the second lowest in Latin America at 18%, behind Paraguay’s 10%. The Latin average is 28%.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs’ chief economist for Latin America, Alberto Ramos, says Chile has wisely fostered growth by reducing the size of government and not printing too much money.
In 2011, it cut government spending to 5% of GDP, or $700 million, more than its projected 5.5%. So GDP has room to grow 6.4%, rather than 6% as first estimated.
Chile is doing the exact opposite of the socialist Barack Obama. Chile is cutting government spending, removing tariffs, enacting free trade deals, and cutting corporate taxes. Businesses and investors are moving there, and there are not enough people to work at all the jobs that are being created. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, communist dictator Hugo Chavez just reported 0.6% gain in the last quarter of 2010.
May Day — socialists’ paean to class warfare — evokes memories of Soviet tanks in Red Square and leftist radicals rioting. But Chile celebrates the actual empowerment of workers.
May 1 marks the 30 years since Chile became the first nation to privatize its social security system. By turning workers into investors, the move solved an entitlement crisis much like the one America faces today.
“I like symbols, so I chose May Day as the birth date of Chile’s ‘ownership society’ that allowed every worker to become a small capitalist,” wrote Jose Pinera, former secretary of labor and social security and the architect of this pension revolution. He is now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
What he designed has succeeded beyond all expectations. Yet Congress remains reluctant to adopt anything like it, despite efforts by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to partially privatize an American system.
Instead of paying a 12.4% Social Security tax as we do here, Chilean workers must pay in 10% of their wages (they can send up to 20%) to one of several conservatively managed and regulated pension funds. From the accumulated savings, they get a life annuity or make programmed withdrawals (inheriting any funds left over).
Over the last three decades these accounts have averaged annual returns of 9.23% above inflation. By contrast, U.S. Social Security pays a 1% to 2% (theoretical) return, and even less for new workers.
[…]In 2005, New York Times reporter John Tierney worked out his own Social Security contributions on the Chilean model and found that his privatized pension would have been $53,000 a year plus a one-time payout of $223,000. The same contributions paid into Social Security would have paid him $18,000.
The biggest threat to American solvency is the growth in entitlement spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The Democrats are stubbornly opposed to reforming these benefits, because they like the idea of transferring wealth from children, who cannot vote, to people who depend on government hand-outs, who can vote. And the best part of their scheme is that young people can be easily indoctrinated by the public schools to believe that have their future mortgaged away to buy votes is a good idea. It’s really very sad and unfair to young people.
WINTERY KNIGHT 