Beware the Ides of March!
Today is Monday, 15 March 2010.
After General Augusto Pinochet, et al., assassinated the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Isabelino Allende Gossens, on 11 September 1973 (the original 9-11), backed by Nixon, Kissinger, and the American taxpayer, and became Caudillo, inaugurating a terrorist reign which only ended in 1990, he needed an economics guru.
Pinochet settled on the fantasist Milton Friedman, of the University of Chicago, best known to non-economists as the author of the fabulist novel and TV series, Free to Choose. (BTW: Friedman was opposed to the licensing of doctors. At my newly-established Milton Friedman Free Enterprise Memorial Clinic, I’m offering half-price out-patient brain surgery through April 15th! Call now! Operators [sic!] are standing by!)
Pinochet had a soft spot in his heart for Adolf Hitler and Nazism, as did many Chilean military officers. Hitler’s portrait hung in Army messes all over the country, where his birthday was regularly commemorated with lavish dinners.
The irony of Friedman, who was Jewish, creating a new economic policy for a Hitler-lover … Priceless. It allowed Friedman to romp with his twisted ideals of political economy. The result?
Chile’s economy did take off, but … the income and net wealth disparity has grown wider ever since. Friedman’s accomplishment was to create a richer economy with far more poverty and misery.
This became particularly evident after the recent earthquake, when the condos and homes of many Chileans in the north, who had only recently climbed from the lower class to the lower middle class, were destroyed. Minimal aid has been available to them. Many could not afford both to buy and to have adequate insurance, and are therefore ruined. Many con-servative pundits will fasten the entire blame on the bereft homeowners.
However, in capitalist Chile as in USA/USE, a different dynamic, in truth, prevails.
Home ownership is marketed to the masses as the Greatest Asset, the Foundation of Freedom, and the Fundamental Good. A moment’s thought gives the lie to this. Capitalism is structured so that some people will never earn enough to become stable home owners. However, predatory capitalism brainwashes that everyone can and should own a home. This was an important part of the recent American real estate bubble, or fraud: enabling people to buy housing beyond their means.
Nice work, if you can get it, I suppose.
Not!
After General Augusto Pinochet, et al., assassinated the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Isabelino Allende Gossens, on 11 September 1973 (the original 9-11), backed by Nixon, Kissinger, and the American taxpayer, and became Caudillo, inaugurating a terrorist reign which only ended in 1990, he needed an economics guru.
Pinochet settled on the fantasist Milton Friedman, of the University of Chicago, best known to non-economists as the author of the fabulist novel and TV series, Free to Choose. (BTW: Friedman was opposed to the licensing of doctors. At my newly-established Milton Friedman Free Enterprise Memorial Clinic, I’m offering half-price out-patient brain surgery through April 15th! Call now! Operators [sic!] are standing by!)
Pinochet had a soft spot in his heart for Adolf Hitler and Nazism, as did many Chilean military officers. Hitler’s portrait hung in Army messes all over the country, where his birthday was regularly commemorated with lavish dinners.
The irony of Friedman, who was Jewish, creating a new economic policy for a Hitler-lover … Priceless. It allowed Friedman to romp with his twisted ideals of political economy. The result?
Chile’s economy did take off, but … the income and net wealth disparity has grown wider ever since. Friedman’s accomplishment was to create a richer economy with far more poverty and misery.
This became particularly evident after the recent earthquake, when the condos and homes of many Chileans in the north, who had only recently climbed from the lower class to the lower middle class, were destroyed. Minimal aid has been available to them. Many could not afford both to buy and to have adequate insurance, and are therefore ruined. Many con-servative pundits will fasten the entire blame on the bereft homeowners.
However, in capitalist Chile as in USA/USE, a different dynamic, in truth, prevails.
Home ownership is marketed to the masses as the Greatest Asset, the Foundation of Freedom, and the Fundamental Good. A moment’s thought gives the lie to this. Capitalism is structured so that some people will never earn enough to become stable home owners. However, predatory capitalism brainwashes that everyone can and should own a home. This was an important part of the recent American real estate bubble, or fraud: enabling people to buy housing beyond their means.
Nice work, if you can get it, I suppose.
Not!
posted by HH at 8:18 PM
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