Fotografo de Bodas, Santiago

September 5, 2011

The post I wrote the other day on Chile’s middle class has kept people talking. I can’t even count how many emails I received on the subject, or how many friends, clients and family members have even brought it up to me in conversation since then.

The thing is, most of them were kind of shocked. They’ve said things to me like, “I can’t believe I’m in the top 10% of highest earning families in Chile. How can that be? We live a normal lifestyle.” Which again, proves my point — that lifestyle is not “normal” to the rest of Chile. It’s normal to the people who live in this world, where we all travel, live in nice neighborhoods, eat out sometimes and maybe have a nana that comes once a week. It doesn’t feel luxurious, but considering that only a small percentage of the population can live that like that, it’s definitely not “normal.”

Which brings me to the protests and the general unrest that’s been going on.

Lately, there’s been a tension in the air. I’m not just talking about the student protests, but in general. It’s the same kind of tension I felt the last time we were in Buenos Aires, when everywhere we went, people were talking about how unhappy they were with the government, with the inflation, with the economy, etc. It felt like an explosion about to happen.

That’s how Chile feels to me right now. There is an unrest. There is a feeling that things MUST change, that we can’t go on the way Chile has gone on in the past. Something’s gotta give.

Emily wrote about the student protests a couple weeks ago. I think she did a really good job summing things up.

While I am not so fully on the side of the protests, simply because I don’t like the violence that always follows them, I agree with the students that the education system needs to be reformed. I definitely do agree with their creative methods for protesting the system — ie, doing a massive Thriller dances in the streets, or running laps around La Moneda, staging a kiss-in, etc.

Now, is free education the solution? Probably not. I really don’t see that working here. Chileans would be completely unwilling to pay the high taxes that a completely free education system would require. However, the playing field needs to be leveled. As it stands now, what they’re doing isn’t working.

That’s why we pay for Marcelo to go to college.

BECAUSE HE NEVER HAD A FAIR SHOT.

He is one story of millions. He comes from a low-income family. He went to the best high school his family could afford, which was a technical school. After that, he started working in construction earning a minimal salary. It wasn’t the worst salary, he was getting by. But he couldn’t save money. He wanted to go to college and he couldn’t because he couldn’t afford to pay for it because he had the kind of job that one here gets after you attend a technical high school. Chile isn’t like the U.S. A construction worker doesn’t make 30 bucks an hour. You can’t wait tables part time and pay for school.

Here, public schools (lower education, I’m talking from kindergarten on up, not just college) are horrendous. The quality of education is so bad that students who go to public high school can’t compete with those who go to private high school. When the students graduate they take an exam called the PSU, which would be similar to the SAT or the ACT test in the U.S. Those who go to private high schools score high enough to attend one of the top three universities, La Catolica, La Chile or La USACH. Everybody else (read: most of the kids who went to public high school where they were poorly prepared for the exam) is left to fend for themselves and take their pick of private universities which are generally both more expensive and lower quality. And then. And THEN. When these kids graduate the inequities don’t stop there. Companies will put job offers in the paper that say, “Looking for a civil engineer from La Catolica or La Chile.” A lot of times they won’t even interview kids that didn’t have the good fortune to attend one of those three schools for undergrad.

And this guy has the nerve to say, “While there will always be people everywhere who want something for nothing, Chileans are quite happy with their economic prospects.”

Something for nothing? SOMETHING FOR NOTHING? That’s what he calls people like Marcelo, who worked his ass off for years in the construction business, every year managing to save, oh $500 bucks, in hopes of being able to attend college 15 years down the road?

Marcelo was super happy with his economic prospects — that’s why he was doing that.

The thousands of kids who were protesting want something for nothing, that’s why they were out marching the streets.

Seba’s family’s maid, who is barely literate, just loves her economic prospects and the fact that maybe three or four generations down the road one of her descendants will finally be able to attend college.

Hint as to why the author thinks Chileans are so happy with the way things are: HE LIVES IN A SANTIAGO WHERE IT SNOWS.

He also says, “I credit the police here for protecting private property and dealing with the violent rioters in a very professional way.”

Right. Plain clothes officers infiltrating the riots to incite violence therefor giving the police an excuse to throw tear gas and use their crazy water machines is “very professional.”

I agree that the media exaggerated accounts of violence — on both sides. In both the U.S. and in Chile from watching the news, you would’ve thought that the entire city had been thrown in complete chaos and darkness, when that was absolutely not the case.

But to to say that really nothing big is happening and that everybody is ladidori happy-go-lucky is absolute bullshit.

The author finishes the piece by saying, “Ultimately, Chile remains a free, respectful, market-oriented, opportunity-rich country on a long-term uptrend, and that hasn’t changed one bit.”

By the way, the man who wrote the article is PhD. who lives in Chile. Chile is definitely opportunity-rich for someone like him. It is for me too. Lucky us, we were both able to get a great education. In the U.S.

The comments to this post are already shaping up to be really interesting. I thought Marmo, in particular made a great point when he said,

“When media say “Chile has a 7% annual growth”, that means almost nothing for you and me, it only means that a few guys that concentrate the wealth here in Chile have had a good year. Those growth % numbers are a big lie. Using the same logic, if two people live in an island, one of them has 1 million dollars and two Mercedez, and the other has nothing, statistics will show for that island that the population has $500.000 and a Mercedes each.”

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25 Comments

CHAN! nice one kyle!

Comment by eileen — September 5, 2011 @ 8:18 pm

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it does seem so unfair doesn’t it? I don’t really know what to say actually. Reform is so impossibly difficult and no matter how necessary it is (and it seems it is always necessary) people say you go about it the wrong way.

Comment by Deidre — September 5, 2011 @ 8:24 pm

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cuackkkkk. The link doesn´t work but I googled it, read it, and was overwhelmed at the nerve of this guy and his complete incompetence considering he is a PhD but I guess while you can buy an education, you can´t always buy intelligence.

Comment by catherine — September 5, 2011 @ 8:31 pm

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I agree with you, mostly. There´s a missing fact : The funding needed to reform education can´t be produced by people´s taxes alone, it needs to be reached by eliminating the tax evasion going on in higher levels, just avoiding “elusion” (corporations pay taxes, then get those taxes back with tampered accounting), and then by stop considering normal that foreign corporations pay 5% taxes for extracting commodities here in Chile, while the same corporations pay 6 times that % in any other country.
After that, we all will realize that when media say “Chile has a 7% annual growth”, that means almost nothing for you and me, it only means that a few guys that concentrate the wealth here in Chile have had a good year.
Those growth % numbers are a big lie. Using the same logic, if two people live in an island, one of them has 1 million dollars and two Mercedez, and the other has nothing, statistic will show for that island that population has $500.000 and a Mercedes each.
Good post, Kyle, I will never cease to admire both of you for what you have done with your friend Marcelo.

Comment by Marmo — September 5, 2011 @ 8:40 pm

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Mining companies pay a ROYALTY of 5% of their revenue, in addition to regular corporate tax (and income tax etcetera) In SOME (not any) other countries they pay 30% of their profits in royalties, which for your average mine would work out at around 3.6% of their revenue. I agree they can afford to have the royalty raised, but compare the numbers fairly.

Comment by Steph — September 6, 2011 @ 7:18 pm

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I won´t argue about the fine tuning of numbers, it was just an approximate; I think the it doesn´t change much on the subject, even after your correction.

Comment by Marmo — September 6, 2011 @ 8:10 pm

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*applause*

Thank you so much for this post! It’s obvious by reading the latest opinion polls that a clear majority of Chileans want change (around 68-70% I think). And a lot of things do need to change, because although Chile has a ‘good economy,’ it’s still one of the most unequal countries in the Western hemisphere when it comes to wealth distribution.

Also on a sort of related point, if intercambio students are complaining about not being able to have classes with Chileans, I do understand that to an extent, but at the same time, they’re in Chile at a really interesting and important time (and besides, they can still have classes at PUC and PUCV, just with other intercambio students and not chilenos).

Comment by Bronwyn — September 5, 2011 @ 8:41 pm

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I forgot to add, that eliminating tax evasion and raising progressively the taxes, you don´t need to change the taxes normal people pay. Meanwhile big corporations get they tax money back using some dark maneuvers, any old lady living on a retirement pension, must pay 1/5 of what she buys in taxes.
I´m sorry for the double post.

Comment by Marmo — September 5, 2011 @ 8:46 pm

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good post Kyle, gave such insight of the current situation at Chile.

Comment by shue — September 6, 2011 @ 1:13 am

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Exactly Kyle. I once got a job at Talca University teaching English Language and Culture without an interview just because I was English. When I asked for the course plan, the guy said that I could just create it. Me? With no university teaching qualifications or experience? Make up a University course plan? And they were charging the students $700 a MONTH to study there. $700 a month for unqualified teachers with no structured plan to achieve non-existent educational goals.
There was also a mature EFL student I had who, no matter how hard she tried, could not grasp even basic English grammar, such as ‘a blue car’ rather than ‘a car blue’. She got her official qualification to teach English to public primary school children.
I could continue but I won’t, suffice to say that reform is certainly needed to the Chilean educational system yesterday.

Comment by Ray — September 6, 2011 @ 1:33 am

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Could not agree more. I wholeheartedly agree that the playing field NEEDS to be leveled. I don’t really understand how taxes work, but if somehow it could be worked out so that most Chileans could get a free education, I’m all for it. But if that can’t work for one reason or another, I agree that SOMETHING has to change.

Dr. John Cobin couldn’t be more out of touch with reality. Maybe if he actually came down below Plaza Italia for once in his life he would realize how it really is.

Comment by Abby — September 6, 2011 @ 5:33 am

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The internet allows even the crazies to have a platform for their ideas. If you read a few more posts written by the same guy, you can see that he’s so far out in right-field that his opinions are – from my perspective – completely irrelevant.
That said, of course there are more people in Chile and everywhere who would strongly agree with him. Just this morning my taxi driver and I were talking about how out of touch the government is in that they can see numbers like 70% of Chileans disapprove of the government and 76% support the students’ demands and still come on TV saying that the students are supported by a minority and that they, the government officials, are happy with how they’re doing their jobs. There’s still a group of people who fundamentally do not understand how the other half thinks, much less how they live, even when the numbers are right in front of them. That mental barrier needs to be broken somehow if those in power are ever going to have both the ability and the desire to understand and act on the demands of the majority.

Comment by Emily in Chile — September 6, 2011 @ 5:57 am

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I think your phrase ‘Hint as to why the author thinks Chileans are so happy with the way things are: HE LIVES IN A SANTIAGO WHERE IT SNOWS.’ explains so many of the disparities here in Chile!

Also, I agree with Marmo – a similar argument was being used in the UK concerning the budget cuts to education, culture and healthcare, where thd government was happy to pass on the millions of pounds companies like Virgin owed in taxes, and then cut those millions of pounds on disability benefits, the EMA (benefit to 16-18 year olds of low income families who choose to stay in education) and the NHS.
In Chile a familiar argument was about taxing copper – the marches in Calama were about demanding that 5% of the money earned from the regional mines should stay within the region, which would be both fair and hugely advantageous for the region of Calama. Taxing other industries of the same magnitude would surely permit Chile to fund at least part of it’s country’s education, no?

Comment by Natalie — September 6, 2011 @ 8:18 am

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It’s true that public schools in Chile are horrendous, but that’s true of public schools in every country. The solution is to abolish government involvement in schools and Chile is attempting to effect it providing the same amount of money to each student regardless of whether he goes to a private or public school. The private schools are gaining market share and if current trends continue, there will be no government schools in 20 years. Chile is the only country that is attempting to eliminate government from education, and that’s one of the reasons that it’s a special place that people from Europe and the USA should consider as an emigration destination. The education system in Chile is so outstanding that students score better than any Latin American country and nearly as well on international tests as some countries that are far richer, as I report in my blog:
http://brophyworld.com/voucher-education/

You concur with the students that the education system needs to be reformed, but don’t say what those reforms might be. One clue is your mention that three universities where rich people go are subsidized, but you stop short of advocating that the subsidies should be abolished. Nobody, rich or poor, has a right to go to school, and the reason is that somebody else has to pay the school. In contrast, we all have rights to such things as free speech because exercising it doesn’t require anyone else to pay.

It’s wrong to claim that the prosperity enjoyed by Chile is confined to a few rich people. One sign that many people have prospered is that there are triple the number of college students than there were 20 years ago, and 70% of the students have no parents who attended college. Another sign of widespread prosperity are the traffic jams in Santiago, which didn’t exist 20 years ago when fewer Chileans could afford cars. A third sign of prosperity is that Ben Casnocha, a young blogger who lived 6 months in Providencia, reported that college students are hiring maids to clean their dorm rooms, even though they could clean their own rooms.

Comment by Mark Brophy — September 6, 2011 @ 8:05 pm

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1.- There are more students than 20 years ago, that´s not the problem. The problem is that many of those students receive a poor service, (The example Ray provides illustrates weel enough this point), their education generates a huge debt that many of them can´t pay after they graduate, and many of them can´t find a job even related with what they studied. Just ask in any Falabella or Paris how many of the people that work there studied something and end up with nothing but debt.
2.- Traffic jams in Santiago, a sign of prosperity… You´re seriously taking a situation that occurs in some parts of one city as a sample of what happens in the entire country? To me, it´s just a proof that there are not enough new streets and city planification in some parts of Santiago.
3.- I´m sure your pal Ben Casnocha had a great time living in Santiago for six months, and those college students from Providencia surely live a good life, but I´m sure such luxuries can be found in Angola or Mozambique as well, among richer families.
I was going to say something more, but I read your blog and found this:
“Childhood education in Chile is a good example of how a military dictatorship can be better than a democracy.”
After living my entire life here in Chile, through Pinochet´s regime, and visiting a few other countries, I can tell you that I can´t agree with you in several points.

Comment by Marmo — September 6, 2011 @ 8:31 pm

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Yeah, life for intercambio students in Provi/más abajo =/= life for all Chileans (not knocking on intercambio students at all, and I’m sure the majority of them know that most Chileans don’t live like that…or at least I hope so).

And I’m sorry, but dictatorships never justify anything. And before anyone asks, that goes for Castro’s Cuba too. Just because I dislike Pinochet doesn’t mean I love Castro.

Comment by Bronwyn — September 6, 2011 @ 9:33 pm

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“Nobody, rich or poor, has a right to go to school, and the reason is that somebody else has to pay the school. In contrast, we all have rights to such things as free speech because exercising it doesn’t require anyone else to pay.”
Really? Gah. There’s no way rights are defined that neatly — you have rights to things that no one pays for, but once money comes into the picture, you have no rights? Unless you’re the one who has the money, I suppose.

Comment by Carrie — September 7, 2011 @ 8:41 am

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Mark, prosperity in Chile may have trickled down to poorer people to a certain extent, but as Chile has gotten richer, income disparity has grown. I don’t have sources to back that up right now, but I majored in Poli Sci and wrote a term paper on it, so I’m confident in what I’m saying (at least as of 4 years ago).
I met Ben Casnocha while he was here. He was nice, and he clearly wanted to get the inside scoop on Chile, but he was here temporarily, and the opinions he formed and shared were not the whole story. I fail to see what some college students with maids has to do with the issue of quality education for the majority of students.

Comment by Emily in Chile — September 7, 2011 @ 12:24 pm

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Moreover, wouldn’t the fact that (some) students have maids be a symptom of the income disparity in Chile? There appear to be plenty of people poor enough to be prepared to work for the (relatively small) amount of money students can justify spending on cleaning.

Comment by Stuart — September 7, 2011 @ 1:35 pm

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I mention the students with maids not as a comment on education, but as a sign of prosperity.

My impression of Chile is that it has always had large disparities of wealth and income, not a recent phenomenon. Relatively free markets help the poor more than the rich, although Chile has yet to prove it. The market has been free only 20 years, and that’s not enough time to diminish the wealth disparities. Pinochet manipulated the currency and destroyed it with inflation, and Allende put Bulgarian soldiers on all the main streets to suppress the citizens. Chile has made great progress.

Comment by Mark Brophy — September 9, 2011 @ 2:28 am

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me pareció muy acertiva tu publicación, te felicito Kyle! (encontré tu página en el diario La Tercera)

Comment by abby — September 7, 2011 @ 6:56 pm

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annoyingly, an entire resopnse i wrote to this was deleted yesterday when i tried to hit submit comment…bummer. anyways,i have to say you really ought not give air time to the crazy dude you mention above…this “professor” (i notice he has never taught or been given tenure at any university in the US or elsewhere) is clearly a super duper uber right wing bible beating freak – who seems to have deemed himself some sort of authority on economics (he should be embarrassed). only in chile would a dude like this get ANY airtime…and just bc he’s a gringo. the website he comments on is about as extremist as i’ve seen and in his CV it says he has done some work (i wonder what type?) for the wildly right wing heritage foundation. give me a break. and the finis terrae “university” (+ like u phoenix)where he also seems to have somehow landed a teaching gig i’d also point out is for not so bright (read: dumb and rich) opus dei types (the smart ones go to los andes and the really smart ones go to la catolica). In fact i’m not so sure that university gives its esteemed graduates much more bang for their buck than any # of these private for profit craptastic schools on every street corner in Chile. I totally agree that something needs to be done about so-called for profit schools – lots is being done here in the US to try to get them to shut their doors…or at least to sue the crap out of them for fraud…i do not, however, think that higher university education is a RIGHT that should be given by the state – that’s a bit too much for me to handle (i’m not an extremist lefty either)…not to mention i dont think everyone needs or should go to university. i do believe that access to decent basic education is a HUMAN right. and makes society better as a whole. i’d also disagree w/your statement that the 3 best schools are PUC, U Chile and USACH…particularly USACH…that school was better back in the day…today in Chile Los Andes, Adolfo Ibanez and even, to a certain extent, Diego Portales are all excellent schools (particularly for Law and Medicine at los andes and business is top notch at AI)…and i think part of why those schools are so good is bc they are private. anyways, that’s my 2 (or given the length perhaps 4) cents. good post

Comment by KM — September 8, 2011 @ 6:46 am

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perhaps this guy you mention above should take some classes (or perhaps offer to teach)at glenn beck’s new online school http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_wilentz

Comment by KM — September 8, 2011 @ 6:49 am

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Kyle I think you should start charging people a $650 consultation fee for your Chile advice.
I don’t know who that dude is, I don’t know what his credentials are, but my hubs is really smart, chilean, and currently finishing his degree in finance and he even admits that free market principles CANNOT be applied to something like education. That guy’s website made me throw up a little in my mouth.
That being said, dude, I’m feeling this turbulence everywhere.. not just Chile and not just people. The weather, politics, protests, etc. Kinda scary somedays!

Comment by Amanda — September 8, 2011 @ 7:30 pm

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I really liked this post, Kyle. It’s good that more and more bloggers are writing about this because I do think there needs to be an awareness created in order to help action take place.

I only wish more people could understand why the riots were happening here in the UK. People are so quick to dismiss the hooliganism of it all but no-one wants to try to understand *why* this happened in the first place. The underlying problem is that Britain changed when Thatcher was in power all those years ago and, unfortunately, it’s never recovered. Things took a downword spiral and, while Labour, tried to improve matters, it just never quite got there. Now that the Tories are back in power, things are worse than ever.

I do think to myself, ‘How can I leave the UK?’ but then I’m reminded about the state of my poor homeland and then I realise why so many people say to me, ‘Good for you. Get out of here while you can. There’s nothing here for people anymore.’

Sorry for clogging up your Chilean post about this. I just can’t help it. When I hear about the class differences in Chile, I’m reminded of the problems here too.

Comment by Ceri — September 10, 2011 @ 12:43 am

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