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How a small third world country became the top economy in Latin America

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South America Map
South America Map

So, I’ve been watching the Democrat debates, and I’ve noticed that all of their candidates are proposing economic policies that they say will improve the lives of Americans. But have the candidates ever been able to try out these policies, and proven that they work? One way to evaluate policies is to look at other countries that have tried them, to see if those policies are proven to work.

I’ve been reading a book called “Money, Greed and God” with my friend Carla, which talks about what does and does not work to alleviate poverty. The author basically outlined two approaches. In the first approach, the government 1) confiscates the wealth of the most productive workers, 2) nationalizes (takes control of) the businesses of the most successful entrepreneurs, 3) restricts trading between citizens and with other countries, with minimum wage, price controls and tariffs. In the second approach, the government does the opposite: 1) lowers taxes on the most productive workers, and 2) lets entrepreneurs compete to provide goods and services to consumers, and 3) lowers restrictions on internal trading and trading with other countries, e.g. – eliminating minimum wage, tariffs and price controls.

Let’s take a look at two Latin American countries that went in opposite directions. Venezuela and Chile. Then we can finally find out which policies actually achieve results for the people.

Here is how Chile started out in 1973.

PROBLEM: Price controls and tariffs:

Prices for the majority of basic goods were fixed by the government in 1973. Even though Chile was and still is a small economy, the level of protection­ism was high. By the end of 1973, the nominal average tariff for imports was 105 percent, with a maximum of 750 percent. Non-tariff barriers also impeded the import of more than 3,000 out of 5,125 registered goods. Just as economic theory predicts, large queues in front of stores were usual in Santiago and other cities in Chile as a result of the scarcity caused by price controls.

PROBLEM: Government taking over private businesses:

The decline in GDP during 1973 reflected a shrinking productive sector in which the main assets were gradually falling under government control or ownership through expropriations and other government interventions in the economy.

PROBLEM: Deficit spending and government printing money:

The fiscal situation was chaotic. The deficit reached 55 percent of expenditures and 20 percent of GDP and was the main cause of inflation because the Central Bank was issuing money to finance the government deficit.

SOLUTION: lower or eliminate restrictions on trade:

The most important economic reform in Chile was to open trade, primarily through a flat, low tar­iff on imports. Much of the credit for Chilean eco­nomic reforms in the following 30 years should be given to the decision to open our economy to the rest of the world. The strength of Chilean firms, productive sectors, and institutions grew up thanks to that fundamental change.

SOLUTION: let competing entrepreneurs in the private sector provide goods and services to consumers:

A second fundamental reform was to allow the private sector to recover, adding dynamism to the economy. In fact, important sectors such as elec­tricity generation and distribution and telecommu­nications were still managed by state companies. After we implemented a massive privatization plan that included more than 50,000 new direct share­holders and several million indirect (through pen­sion funds) shareholders, these companies were managed by private entrepreneurs that carried out important expansion plans.

SOLUTION: let people take responsibility for their own lives instead of depending on government:

The 1981 reform of the Chilean pension fund system deserves special mention. Under the leader­ship of Minister José Piñera, an individual capitali­zation account program was designed with specific contributions, administered by private institutions selected by the workers. The Chilean Administra­doras de Fondos de Pension (Pension Fund Administrators or AFP) has been replicated in more than 20 countries, and more than 100 million workers in different parts of the world use these accounts to save for retirement.

SOLUTION: allow parents to choose the school that fits their needs from competing education providers, and push school administration down from the federal government to the municipal level, where it would be more responsive to voter’s needs:

In 1981, Chile introduced a universal educational voucher system for students in both its elementary and secondary schools. At the same time, the central government transferred the administration of public schools to municipal governments…  The financial value of the voucher did not depend on family income.

RESULTS: And I was able to find a nice short, description of how all that worked out for them on the far-left Wikipedia, of all places:

The economy of Chile is a high-income economy as ranked by the World Bank, and is considered one of South America’s most stable and prosperous nations, leading Latin American nations in competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption.

In 2006, Chile became the country with the highest nominal GDP per capita in Latin America. In May 2010 Chile became the first South American country to join the OECD. Tax revenues, all together 20.2% of GDP in 2013, were the second lowest among the 34 OECD countries, and the lowest in 2010. In 2017, only 0.7% of the population lived on less than US$1.90 a day.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Chile is ranked as the 18th freest economy in the world. The World Bank ranked Chile as the 50th highest GDP per capita for 2018, just below Hungary and above Poland.

Now, you can contrast those results with Venezuela. I have been blogging about Venezuela for years on this blog, and documenting how they raised taxes, banned guns, nationalized private sector companies, raised tariffs, and increased regulations. They are now ranked JUST ABOVE NORTH KOREA for economic freedom – #179 out of 180 countries measured. Basically, they did the opposite of everything that Chile did – transferring power away from parents, workers, business owners, churches and municipal governments to the powerful centralized federal government.

Wikipedia explains how Hugo Chavez took over in 1999 and enacted a communist revolution.

More:

Since the Bolivarian Revolution half-dismantled its PDVSA oil giant corporation in 2002 by firing most of its 20,000-strong dissident professional human capital and imposed stringent currency controls in 2003 in an attempt to prevent capital flight, there has been a steady decline in oil production and exports. Further yet, price controls, expropriation of numerous farmlands and various industries, among other government authoritarian policies… have resulted in severe shortages in Venezuela and steep price rises of all common goods, including food, water, household products, spare parts, tools and medical supplies; forcing many manufacturers to either cut production or close down, with many ultimately abandoning the country as has been the case with several technological firms and most automobile makers.

They confiscated private property, took over private sector businesses, implemented tariffs and price controls, redistributed wealth via massive welfare programs, and pushed all decision-making out of families and municipal governments up to the federal government. By depriving the producers of their earnings, the country caused massive shortages of goods and services, to the point where people are fleeing the country, consuming zoo animals, and selling their bodies as prostitutes in order to get food and water.

Application

In the next election, we are not picking a tribe because of how they make us feel about ourselves. We are not choosing in order to see ourselves as “nice” and “not nice”. We need to look at specific policies being proposed, and see what works and what doesn’t work. The examples of Chile (rags-to-riches) and Venezuela (riches-to-rags) are helpful for voters who want to get RESULTS instead of FEELINGS.

I’ll leave you with a list of links from previous posts so you can see how communism worked out for Venezuela.

Related posts

 

News

Was Hitler a Christian? Is Nazism similar to Christianity?

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A conflict of worldviews
A conflict of worldviews

One of the strangest things I have heard from atheists is the assertion that Christianity is somehow connected to the fascism, such as the fascism that existed under Adolf Hitler. Two posts by Jewish author Jonah Goldberg from National Review supply us with the facts to set the record straight.

Let’s start with the first post.

Here are some of the points:

1) Hitler wanted Christianity removed from the public square

Like the engineers of that proverbial railway bridge, the Nazis worked relentlessly to replace the nuts and bolts of traditional Christianity with a new political religion. The shrewdest way to accomplish this was to co-opt Christianity via the Gleichschaltung while at the same time shrinking traditional religion’s role in civil society.

2) Hitler banned the giving of donations to churches

Hitler banned religious charity, crippling the churches’ role as a counterweight to the state. Clergy were put on government salary, hence subjected to state authority. “The parsons will be made to dig their own graves,” Hitler cackled. “They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes.”

3) Hitler replaced Christian celebrations with celebrations of the state

Following the Jacobin example, the Nazis replaced the traditional Christian calendar. The new year began on January 30 with the Day of the Seizure of Power. Each November the streets of central Munich were dedicated to a Nazi Passion play depicting Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch. The martyrdom of Horst Wessel and his “old fighters” replaced Jesus and the apostles. Plays and official histories were rewritten to glorify pagan Aryans bravely fighting against Christianizing foreign armies. Anticipating some feminist pseudo history, witches became martyrs to the bloodthirsty oppression of Christianity.

4) Hitler favored the complete elimination of Christianity

When some Protestant bishops visited the Fuhrer to register complaints, Hitler’s rage got the better of him. “Christianity will disappear from Germany just as it has done in Russia . . . The Germanrace has existed without Christianity for thousands of years . . . and will continue after Christianity has disappeared . . . We must get used to the teachings of blood and race.”

5) Hitler favored the removal of mandatory prayers in schools

In 1935 mandatory prayer in school was abolished…

6) Hitler favored the banning of Christmas carols and nativity plays

…and in 1938 carols and Nativity plays were banned entirely.

7) Hitler abolished religious instruction for children

By 1941 religious instruction for children fourteen years and up had been abolished altogether….

And now the second post.

8) Hitler opposed the ideas of universal truth and objective moral absolutes

…Just as the Nazi attack on Christianity was part of a larger war on the idea of universal truth, whole postmodern cosmologies have been created to prove that traditional religious morality is a scam, that there are no fixed truths or “natural” categories, and that all knowledge is socially constructed.

Practically everything this man believed was 100% anti-Christian. But he fits in fine on the secular left.

Conclusion

Adolf Hitler was a man influenced by two big ideas: evolution and socialism. His party was the national SOCIALIST party. He favored a strong role for the state in interfering with the free market. He was in favor of regulating the family so that the state could have a bigger influence on children. And he favored the idea of survival of the fittest. His ideas are 100% incompatible with Christianity and with capitalism as well. Christians value individual rights and freedoms, small government and the autonomy of the family against the state. The commandments about not coveting and not stealing are incompatible with redistribution of wealth from those who produce to those who “need”. The differences are clear and significant. The Bible favors voluntary charity by individuals and churches. It does not favor redistribution of wealth by a secular government to equalize life outcomes regardless of personal responsibility.

Ignorant atheists and their myths

In a recent debate between Matt Dillahunty and David Robertson, Dillahunty made the claim that Hitler was a Christian, because in a campaign speech, he told a Catholic audience that secular schools were bad, and religious schools were good. Dillahunty thought that this meant that Hitler was a Christian. Robertson asked him when those words were spoken, and whether they formed the basis of any POLICY after Hitler was elected. Dillahunty didn’t know, because he just cited the quotation without knowing anything about the context, or about the historical period. Robertson informed him that the words were spoken in a campaign speech, prior to Hitler’s rise to power, and that nothing in Hitler’s policies ever took the words seriously after he came to power. It was the equivalent of Obama claiming to support natural marriage, then legalizing same-sex marriage once elected. He lied in order to be elected. This kind of ignorance is very prominent in the atheist (“secular humanist”) community, which survives on mythology which is never subjected to rational inquiry. Here’s another good example of this ignorance.

Incidentally, Dillahunty later said, in the same debate no less, that he “didn’t know” if the Holocaust was morally wrong. Right – because on atheism right and wrong are meaningless concepts, rationally speaking. They are reduced to personal preferences only, where each opinion is as valid as the opposite opinion, since there is no objective standard by which to judge different opinions. That’s why atheists can’t make moral judgements about anything, they just have preferences, like their preference for certain foods and certain clothes. Very important to realize this when talking to atheists, because they use moral language to describe their personal feelings and opinions.

Whenever I hear atheists speculating about whether Hitler was a Christian, I immediately know that they have not investigated anything very carefully, and are merely being insulting. It’s not worth having a conversation with people who are stupid AND insulting.

News

Google internal document calls prominent Jews Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro “Nazis”

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Google's new motto
Google’s new motto – should we start calling them “Goolag” now?

I’ve been following the anti-Christian, anti-conservative bias of Big Tech for years now, and blogging about each new revelation. We’ve seen pro-Democrat bias over and over in the products and services of Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Spotify, Pinterest, etc. But I never thought I’d see Jewish exegete Dennis Prager and Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro called “Nazis”.

But before we see who called these Jews “Nazis”, let’s see how a Google Executive in charge of censoring content explained in precise language how Google alters its products and services to benefit the Democrat Party.

The Daily Wire reports:

A new Project Veritas video that includes testimony from a whistleblower, leaked internal documents, and undercover footage of a Google employee discussing how the company is working to prevent “the next Trump situation” has been pulled by YouTube, a platform owned by Google, “due to a privacy claim by a third party.” This is the second Project Veritas Big Tech exposé video taken down by the platform in two weeks.

On Monday, Project Veritas released its latest Big Tech report, this time focusing on ways an insider says Google manipulates what information its users access in order to promote an ideological and political agenda. In the video, the whistleblower — whose identity is protected — walks Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe through internal Google documents that he says show that the search engine is a “highly biased political machine” that manipulates searches for the purpose of promoting its “fair and equitable” priorities, filtering out or deemphasizing even factual information if its creators deem that information “unfair.” To accomplish this, the company works to prevent “algorithmic unfairness.”

The video features clips of Project Veritas undercover reporters’ secretly recorded discussion with Jen Gennai — head of Google’s “Responsible Innovation” team, which monitors the responsible implementation of A.I. technologies — in a restaurant in San Francisco. In the video, she discusses the rationale behind the company’s A.I. principles. “The reason we launched our A.I. principles is because people were not putting that line in the sand, that they were not saying what’s fair and what’s equitable so we’re like, well we are a big company, we’re going to say it,” she says, adding: “The people who voted for the current president do not agree with our definition of fairness.”

[…]”We all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was — the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over — so we’re rapidly been like, what happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again,” she says in another clip.

[…]By the end of the day, YouTube pulled the video “due to a privacy claim by a third party.”

Although the video has been pulled from YouTube (which is owned by Google), the video can still be seen here.

But that’s not all. Leaked internal Google documents label Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro as “Nazis”.

The Daily Wire reports:

A newly-published leaked document contains what appears to be an email exchange among Google employees participating in a “transparency-and-ethics” discussion that includes a reference to PragerU, Jordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro as “nazis using the dog whistles.”

The document was published by Project Veritas Tuesday, a day after the conservative group released its report on how political and ideological bias influences the ways in which Google connects users to content. The group obtained the “newly leaked document from Google” via their tipline.

[…]”Today it is often 1 or 2 steps to nazis, if we understand that PragerU, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro et al are nazis using the dog whistles you mention in step 1,” reads the email that appears to have been sent to over a dozen other Google employees. “I can receive these recommendations regardless of the content of what I’m looking at, and I have recorded thousands of internet users sharing the same experience. I don’t think correctly identifying far-right content is beyond our capabilities. But if it is, why not go with Meredith’s suggestion of disabling the suggestion feature?”

I’ve already blogged before about how YouTube censors videos from Prager University, and how Google fires conservative software engineers. (That latter thing just happened again, by the way, but it’s getting so common that I didn’t even blog about it). But I never thought they’d do this to Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro.

Google-related companies donate 90% to Democrats

This firing of the Republican software engineer makes me wonder whether Google has a policy of discriminating against employees to make sure that no Republicans can work at Google.

According to the Washington Examiner, Google, YouTube and other Google-linked companies gave 90% of their political donations to Democrats:

A study released Thursday found that 90 percent of political donations by Google, YouTube, and other subsidiaries of Alphabet have gone to Democrats.

In 2016, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, Alphabet employees donated more than $5.8 million to Democratic candidates and causes, while only $403,042 was contributed to Republicans. Ninety-four percent of Alphabet contributions in that year went to Democrats.

Would that be a sign that their products and services are biased to support Democrats?

Google executives caught on film

Here are some highlights of a sting video featuring Google executives crying about the Democrat election loss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEj98mdBOBw?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

This was filmed a company-wide meeting, and it clearly communicates the political bias of Google leadership to their employees. The message seems to be: “if you want to work here, you have to be a Democrat” and “if you want to rise in this company, then you have to be a Democrat”. Does this open adoration for the Democrat party by Google executives affect Google products and services?

Studies show bias in Google products and services

What about the study showing that they promote progressive news sources ahead of conservative or unbiased ones?

Breitbart News reported in March 2019 on how Google used their products to influence elections:

New research from psychologist and search engine expert Dr. Robert Epstein shows that biased Google searches had a measurable impact on the 2018 midterm elections, pushing tens of thousands of votes towards the Democrat candidates in three key congressional races, and potentially millions more in races across the country.

The study, from Epstein and a team at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), analyzed Google searches related to three highly competitive congressional races in Southern California. In all three races, the Democrat won — and Epstein’s research suggests that Google search bias may have tipped them over the edge.

This confirms a previous study from 2016:

The research follows a previous study conducted in 2016 which showed that biased Google results pushed votes to Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. Democrats and Google executives have disputed these findings.

[…]Users performing Google searches related to the three congressional races the study focused on were significantly more likely to see pro-Democrat stories and links at the top of their results.

Here’s another study reported in May 2019 by the UK Daily Mail:

Google’s bias towards left-wing media outlets has been laid bare by an algorithm which detected that it favors sites including CNN and The New York Times over others.

According to data compiled by researchers from Northwestern University, the search engine promoted those sites over others repeatedly in November 2017.

Of the 6,302 articles that appeared in Google’s ‘top stories’ page that month after a term was searched, more than 10 percent were by CNN.

The New York Times was the second most favored and accounted for 6.5 percent of articles. The Washington Post was third with 5.6 percent.

By contrast, Fox News, the most right-wing outlet in mainstream media, was the source of just three percent of the stories which appeared.

See for yourself the difference it makes:

Study: Google uses its products and services to supports Democrat Party
Study: Google uses its products and services to supports Democrat Party

I think we really need an investigation to get to the bottom of this.

Now, you might be thinking, what can we do to stop Google, YouTube and other big technology fascists? And the answer is, you need to switch to alternatives like DuckDuckGo.

And you need to vote Republican, and do everything you can to help Republicans win elections.

Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are all over these companies.

Senator Ted Cruz:

Are there any SENIOR EXECUTIVES AT GOOGLE who voted for Donald Trump? She’s not aware of any. What about the $1.315 million given to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by Google employees and $0 given to Donald Trump? She has no answer.

Senator Josh Hawley:

Congressman Louie Gohmert adds this on his official Congressional web site:

Congressman Louie Gohmert (TX-01) released the following statement today regarding the undercover video of Google released by Project Veritas:

“This video shows Google’s biases are now a threat to a free and fair election, all while they hide behind the immunity given by Congress years ago when they were supposed to be a simple ‘town square’ where everyone’s voice could be heard without biased results. In fact, Google references a significant role they see themselves fulfilling in the 2020 elections. This discovery should set off alarm bells throughout the country. It is no secret that Google has a political agenda. Multiple brave tech insiders have stepped forward and exposed Google’s censorship of content and specialized algorithms. This media giant’s ‘social justice narrative’ should distress all Americans who value a free and open society. Google should not be deciding whether content is important or trivial and they most assuredly should not be meddling in our election process. They need their immunity stripped and to be properly pursued by class action lawsuits by those they have knowingly harmed.”

projectveritas.comInsider Blows Whistle & Exec Reveals Google Plan to Prevent “Trump situation” in 2020 on Hidden Cam

I used to be a regular listener of Dennis Prager, but I switched over to Ben Shapiro and Andrew Klavan, because their podcasts are free. My favorite hour on conservative radio is Dennis Prager’s “male-female hour”, which had some of the most reality-based talk about men and women you could find anywhere. These two Jewish talk show hosts are extremely popular with Christian conservatives. It’s not evangelical Christian conservatives who have a problem with Jews. It’s the secular leftist socialists who run Big Tech.

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