COTTonLINE tries to keep a weather eye on major developments in Latin America - which along with Canada and the Caribbean constitutes our hemispheric “neighborhood.” Today, courtesy of RealClearWorld, comes a link to an Americas Quarterly article on Chile’s efforts toward writing a new constitution.
The profile of the selected Constitutional Convention delegates makes relatively clear that Chile is about to democratically give up the economic advantages it gained from the prior Pinochet-era constitution. That document, influenced by University of Chicago economists, helped Chile make major economic gains at the cost of increased economic inequality.
It seems likely that the same Latin America cultural anti-growth forces alluded to in our recent discussion of Peru are about to snatch defeat from the jaws of a partial economic victory in Chile. It is both sad and entirely predictable that wealth which was creating jobs and growth in Chile will migrate elsewhere in search of the less confiscatory environment which Chile is poised to voluntarily renounce.
