One must wonder how many posts it will take the frustrated adolescent to be done wanking off in public. I don’t mind teenagers indulging their natural impulses but come on….get it over with already.

And next time, please keep it in the privacy of your own home. Thank you.

bah bye.

Arguments ? Where ? Loony assertions that general economic policy prescriptions are ‘instrumental’ to, or responsible for state murder constitute arguments ? No empty slogans there, of course.

Tell you what. You are absolutely right. If Argentina’s economy collapses, it proves capitalism’s failings, regardless of the number of capitalist economies who either do not have those problems or have since recovered from them. And when a communist regime turns into an economic and human disaster, which happens virtually every single time, there is nothing wrong with the ideology. It’s pure coincidence and western propaganda.

And yes, go for it. By all means, go live in Cuba. It’s not like they get a lot of immigration anyway so you should be welcomed. After all, western leftists rarely put their feet where their loud mouths are by moving to those supposedly wonderful socialist havens.

I wonder why…After all, millions of people have given up everything and even risked their lives to move to America, Hong Kong, western europe, Taiwan, South Korea…But how many western socialists do the same the other way ?

Odd, that.

I take it you have nothing to say but rehashed slogans. Enough said.

Jonathan,
Every time you have no arguments you turn into complaining about style. You sound like an angry child and discuss like such.

You have a prominent link on top of your page to an article talking about the wonders of the Chicago School theories in Argentina and Chile.

I asked, and got no answer:

1. Are you guys still proud of Argentina going down the tubes thanks to the policies YOU guys claimed were yours?

2. Do you guys acknowledge the Chicago Boys recommendations in Chile were instrumented over a pile of murdered chileans?

To 1. I get ‘capitalism is great, Chavez is bad. If things turn good in Argentina it is thanks to us, if they turn badly, it is their fault.

Predictable. Dogmatic. Pedantic. I stand by them all

To 2. I get “go live in Cuba. Chavez is bad”.

You are welcome on our blog if you want to discuss issues in an adult way.

But if you want to call us liars, put words in our mouths, say we sympathize with murderers, ignore our responses and demand we answer your questions, get your own blog. I’m done wasting time with you.

There is still hope that after much self-important huffing and puffing, the adolescent troll will realize the amusing self-referential consequences of his name-calling. Or is there ?

In the meantime, one will note than when a free marketer points out to GDP growth or GDP per capita to support his position, he will be condescendingly told by the Palos of the world that GDP, income and money are not everything, assuming they are even relevant in the judgment of ‘social models’.

Interestingly however, as soon as it comes to proving capitalism evil, all we hear about from those same critics has everything to do with money, capital and GDP : from income gaps and healthcare spending to median income levels etc. Money, money, money. Funny how that works.

Case in point : China’s growth is 10% a year therefore you’re better off living there than in Hong Kong ! Game, set, match. I hope someone tells the poor people who still live in Hong Kong. I mean, they should know right ?

Just like Cubans have better health care and education than Americans. That country’s reliably honest and truthful government says so, so it must be true right ? Which would go a long way explaining the thousands of wretched Americans risking life and limb every year swimming across the Florida Strait.

Next thing you know, Chavez is a democrat. A former colonel who attempted and failed a coup in 1992, rigs election and the constitution to entrench his power and his cronies is a true democrat. Sure is. After all, Castro is one of his models and it’s mighty hard to argue with such obvious democratic acumen and credentials.

At which point a pattern emerges: creepy autocrats in uniforms are OK if their madness, incompetence and corruption are justified in the name of socialism. Pinochet, evil. Castro, good.

We are then told about Venezuela’s wonderful GDP, except once slight details such as the 16.9% inflation rate are taken into account, we find out that it currently clocks around -3.8%. Hmm. But wait ! If capitalist economic growth is inherently evil, negative growth has got to be good right ? Who can argue with such success in destroying wealth ? Wealth is bad so less wealth is good ! This Chavez dude is on to something. Genius, even.

As for the nominal increase in GDP proper, all of it was due to rising oil prices which, I am sure, benefits each and every citizen of Venezuela. “It’s all about the oil”, after all.

Last but not least, we must remember that if people are murdered by a state and that country’s economy is capitalist, capitalism must – and that is self-evident – be either responsible for, or intimately connected with those crimes. How could it possibly be otherwise ? As we well know, communism has never resulted in the deliberate killing, deportation or torture of anyone. It may be true that some ‘Great Leap Forward’ resulted in the death by starvation of about 30 million people, that one Pol Pot wiped out 25% of his country’s population and Fidel might be jailing and executeing dissidents but, you know….what does that have to do with socialism anyway ?

Pinochet, though….now that’s an evil right here. Who cares if it took the guy a decade to kill what Stalin dispatched in a week. He believed in free markets. Inconceivable !

Yawn.

As this is not only still wildly off-topic and all too predictable, I shall go to the pub and drink to Che, Kim and all those virtuous comrades who strive and struggle to ensure individuals are ultimately freed from capitalism by submitting themselves to the common good as defined by the Fidels, Hugos and Palos of the world.

Peace.

So go to Cuba. Socialist killing juntas don’t bother you, right?

Any killing state bothers me. I was a victim of one. One of my main problems with your proud standing behind ‘free-markets’ in Chile is that it hides the fact that it was carried-out by one of the most criminal cold-blooded dictatorship in the history of latin america. I never heard Milton Friedman or the Chicago School consultants repudiating the chilean government. As a matter of fact, I haven’t heard you repudiate it.

Is it socialist or free-market policies that are responsible for China’s high rate of growth since the late-1970s? Is it free-market or socialist policies that are responsible for the poor economic performance of El Salvador? You are quick to accuse others of overgeneralizing, so perhaps you will tell us why the tax cutting and deregulation which fuel China’s boom are incompatible with free-market policies. Perhaps you will explain how it is that countries start to do better economically when they adopt free-market policies, even if they have nominally socialist governments.

Your evasion of the obvious WRT E. Germany suggests that you know better. OTOH your remarks about Venezuela are almost incoherent. You are deluded if you think Venezuela’s recent economic performance has to do with anything other than the high price of oil. Chavez’s dirigiste policies have seriously harmed Venezuela’s productive sector. (And the recent elections were about as honest as elections in Zimbabwe.)

Look at the countries people want to leave. They want to leave Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. Always they go to countries that have greater economic freedom, not less. If your argument were valid, people would want to leave the largely free-market USA, yet almost all of the traffic is in the other direction. If free-market ideas were the cause of the problems in Argentina, why aren’t they causing problems here in the States?

Ahh, the good old days of the killing Juntas and their free-markets. Don’t you miss ‘em Sylvain?

So go to Cuba. Socialist killing juntas don’t bother you, right?

So, Silvain, any actual rebuttal on my points or your are just content with your pedantic ignorance on the effects of free-market policies in Latin America?

BTW, Venezuela’s GDP is the highest in years. And its people voted for Chavez 8 consecutive times with more than 60%. But you are probably not as much for democracy as for free markets. Heck, who cares about killing and torturing chileans if my ‘Chicago School’-friendly dictator will love me?.

Ahh, the good old days of the killing Juntas and their free-markets. Don’t you miss ‘em Sylvain?

Yes. I will admit the obvious on poor deluded Jonathan’s behalf. I have never set a foot there but Argentina was a complete and total heaven before the evil capitalists wrecked it. One only has to look at the hell Hong Kong and Taiwan are compared to mainland China to establish a clear correlation between free markets and financial crisis and poverty. The wonders of East Germany before reunification with the greedy bastards on the other side also comes to mind.

Thankfully, Venezuela is clearly doing so much better under Hugo Chavez than those poor deluded fools around South America who are naively following western capitalist canards.

Anyway. As of today, Terri Schiavo and Palo’s hobby horse finally have something in common : they’re both dead.

It’s now time to go to the local church. Every day, I pray God that the people of North Korea be spared the capitalist nightmare their Southern cousins have been enduring for now five decades. The poor souls.

“1. If the State has a revenue shortfall because it privatized companies, doesn’t that suggest that the State should reduce its spending?”

No. It probably means that the now privatized company was actually quite effective as a state company (which YPF was) and the revenue generated was shared by most population in a sensible way. Norway does it and it ranks as one of the most advanced societies in the planet.

“Why do you expect the shareholders of privatized companies to use their profits less productively than government used the revenues from nationalized companies?”

Because very often in third world countries they do. The now privatized Repsol-YPF takes the revenue back to Spain, where it probably did wonders to consolidate the capital markets. That money is not used ‘productively’ in Argentina. So from the stand point of the common argentine citizen, privatization just took money from the argentine treasury to put it in foreign markets. It did not work well.

“You appear to favor nationalized companies over private ones. Why?”

I didn’t say that. In fact, telecommunications in Argentina probably benefited from privatization as the system got a much needed investment resulting in modernization. I talked about the case of oil in Argentina (the biggest of the privatized companies). The country as a whole was indisputably much better with the state-owned YPF.

The point is precisely, that your ‘Chicago School’ dogma declares that privatization is always good, and seem unable to accept that in Argentina the result was not good.

I didn’t try to insult anyone, I don’t think I did, but I do realize I can sometimes sound that way. Sorry if that was the case. I just find there is a lot in common in between the position you guys take on the Lancet study and this. That is, you don’t seem as interested in the facts as in attacking any evidence that you might be wrong. You just proved it all the more clear.

1. If the State has a revenue shortfall because it privatized companies, doesn’t that suggest that the State should reduce its spending? Why do you expect the shareholders of privatized companies to use their profits less productively than government used the revenues from nationalized companies? You appear to favor nationalized companies over private ones. Why? Privatization generally works well, as long as it done carefully to avoid self-dealing and the creation of perverse incentives. If it doesn’t work well, that suggests that it was handled badly rather than that it’s a bad idea in principle.

2. The high unemployment was caused by government policies that wrecked saving and investment and businesses, and thereby destroyed jobs and job creation, not by liberalized labor laws. (How does “labor flexibilization” cause unemployment? The USA has much more flexible labor laws than do Germany and France, and much less unemployment. Greater flexibility makes it easier for businesses to hire and fire workers, which reduces the cost of labor overall and thereby increases employment.)

3. Privatization of Social Security worked well in Chile, why not in Argentina? Again, the fact that a policy turns out badly might mean that it was badly handled rather than a bad idea in principle. In that case it is counterproductive to blame the principle rather than inept execution.

4. Money flowing out of Argentina is a symptom, not a problem. The problem that causes this symptom is the Argentine government’s anti-free-market policies that make it risky to invest money in Argentine businesses or keep it in Argentine banks. Nobody wants to invest money in countries where the government might confiscate it.

Argentina was the most socially just country in Latinamerica before the Chicago and local ‘free market’ boys got to work there. In 1975 the rich top 10% had a share of the wealth that was 8 times that of the poorest 10%. Now that it’s 30 times higher. Unemployement was at around 6%, now it is 20%.

It’s worse now because the government ignored the free-market advice. Confiscating savings and failing to honor contracts are anti-free-market behaviors that have nothing to do with the Chicago Boys’ ideas.

considering what is said in this forum about Iraq and the assault on the only report that tries to understand what happened to the regular folks after the US invasion, I guess it is perfectly fitting that this crowd would be proud of the consequences of the ‘Chicago Boys’ intervention in Argentina.

You sound like an angry child. Do you want to have a serious discussion or do you want to insult us?

2. labor flexibilization that eliminated all safety nets in a country that was climbing to a 30% unemployement. That lead to the most active social unrest in modern times, with hundreds of unemployed taking to the streets (known as ‘piqueteros’)

3. Privatization of Social Security (big on the ‘Free Market’ agenda) led to record public deficits that could only be sustained by loans that increased the debt burden until Argentina could not meet its payments any longer.

4. Free market liberization that allow for the unregulated flow of money to and, mostly, from Argentina. The flow of dollars out of Argentina in the leading up to the 2001 crash is estimated in about a third of the total Argentina debt.

Argentina was the most socially just country in Latinamerica before the Chicago and local ‘free market’ boys got to work there. In 1975 the rich top 10% had a share of the wealth that was 8 times that of the poorest 10%. Now that it’s 30 times higher. Unemployement was at around 6%, now it is 20%.

considering what is said in this forum about Iraq and the assault on the only report that tries to understand what happened to the regular folks after the US invasion, I guess it is perfectly fitting that this crowd would be proud of the consequences of the ‘Chicago Boys’ intervention in Argentina.

I agree that you dislike Cavallo et al, but can you be more specific about which “market capitalism” policies you believe were responsible for Argentina’s problems?

Try to learn before commenting.

WRT Argentina, the government there repudiated its international debts and confiscated its citizens’ savings. Would you like to do business in a country like that? Me neither. Now tell me how this kind of incentive-killing behavior is in any way related to the respect for property rights, contracts and free markets that Chicago economists are known for.

And, by the way, it is probably a good time to retire the silly “What Latin America Owes to the “Chicago Boys” link at the top. 60% of Argentina’s population going under the poverty level as a consequence of the “Chicago Boys” policies of the 90′s would probably be a good reason. Or the great increase in infant mortality in northern Argentina due to your hero, Chicago graduate Domingo Cavallo’s tenure as a Finance Minister. But, then again, you’ll probably find ‘bad science’ to count poverty and dead people.
Time for Dr. Love to ‘debunk’ poverty in Argentina!

I’m also fascinated that judge greer now thinks his signature, above all others, rules. Who elected him?

And, how come there are rules that govern medical examiners; but in this case they can be tossed out the window? Or, maybe they won’t be?

But as tragedies go, I want no part of religion that has Honor’s Killings. And, this sure looks like one.

As did Waco, if you asked a few questions.

Did you know Janet Reno had no right to call for tanks? That tanks in American streets aren’t general issue?

When American saw tanks in China’s Teinemen Square, they “got it.” But in Waco death came first, and in much greater numbers against innocents, than just about any place out in the world (save the nazi beasts. And, the Soviet goons.) But, I mean among “normals.”

I also don’t think this issue is just for the Right Wing extremists. If anything, those folks look mighty decent.

Just as it took ordinary democrats to call Janet Reno and Wesley Clark OFF any opportunities they had to run for elected office. It’s the way it shold be in a democracy.

And, yes, I am waiting to see what Congress does about its subpoenas. It’s not exactly clever of people to toss away their jury summons’ … or their traffic tickets. And, way back when HUAC (That’s the HOUSE, not Joseph McCarthy, in the Senate) … but when they held those Committee Meetings, Arther Miller didn’t have to marry Marilyn Monroe. Other marriage, of course. But by a man who didn’t love her much. I’d guess neither did the Kennedy’s love “that woman” much.

But here, we gave a man a pass.

Did we do the same for Billy Clinton when he touched the fat girl?

Remove emotionalism from the subject. Just look at The Fairness Doctrine.

I’m going to bet there will be an accounting, ahead. This was a grusome way to treat a Catholic woman; And,yes, the POPE spoke! He said “no.” How far do you separate Church and State, to make it impossible for a Catholic who wants the Pope’s ruling to stand, to make a mockery of it all?

The specific thing which I said was on the face of it libellous was Shannon’s claim that the researchers had falsified their results. Could you make a correction, please?