Chile's riots, inequality does not mean what you think it means.

income inequality is not a measure of
poverty to a remarkable extent the measurements we now use that we call measures of inequality are in fact measures of wealth if we're going to go through the numbers in just a moment but the purpose of this video is to let you know that the analysis of why people are today rioting in the streets of Chile they're badly misguided they're badly misleading and I think they're mostly just motivated by an urge to offer an explanation that doesn't make any of us feel bad doesn't make any of us the audience feel responsible doesn't make any of us ask ourselves any tough questions Chile the average hourly wage 2010 to present and right there in the middle of the chart you see it jumps up when the minimum wage was increased then keeps on rising thereafter the rate of unemployment 2008 to present it's about as healthy as it gets in the year 2019 on the lower half of the screen there you can compare unemployment in Greece unemployment in Spain unemployment in Italy if the current violence in the streets were explained by the struggles of the poor robust growth in wages hmm pretty healthy employment unemployment ratio we're not gonna find the cause of why people are burning and looting and rioting in looking at these charts oh and there's the most impressive chart of all GDP per capita they don't have burning and looting in the streets of Italy they don't have burning and looting in the streets of Greece if you compare those two charts the chart we're looking at for Chile is absolutely as hopeful and optimistic as you could possibly get poverty in Chile is a problem but it maybe is easier to point the finger at poverty or this even more vague idea of inequality easier than it is to talk about genocide but what it means to have a country and a culture built on genocide the problem with Chile compared to other countries in the region compared to other countries going to look at as examples in this video is not extreme poverty and it's not extreme inequality either one of the terrible knock-on consequences of having a country built on genocide is that even fairly mild inequality is felt as an extreme injustice and most of these countries that have a history of genocide they also have terrible education systems education is crucial for upward social mobility and creates class conflicts mm another kind what are we looking at here this might seem familiar to you if you've been watching the TV news lately if you've been reading the newspaper thousands of people out in the streets Chile policemen with armored vehicles that look like tanks people throwing things at the tanks and flags teargas mm-hmm slogans these photographs are not from the Year 2019 they're not from the current riots they're not from the current protests they're from 2017 there's student riots protesting the conditions and prices in universities in Chile it happened in 2017 happened 2015 and the really large riots as I recall were 2011 this is an ongoing tradition of tension fundamentally premise not on economic inequality not on wage inequality not an inequality in earnings but the fact that Chile has an education system that's too expensive delivers too little value and fails to provide people with forms of upward mobility that really matter not just for themselves but for society as a whole in these conversations perhaps the deeper point I want to get across in this video inequality does not tell us what we want to know here we are looking at a chart of some of the countries with the lowest Gini coefficients in the world which is say these are countries that have very little inequality or they have better equality the best in the world in fact you're look here's a headline stating Ukraine ranks as the world's most equal nation now when you look at that chart how much does Ukraine have in common with Switzerland or Iceland how much does Ukraine have in common with Kazakhstan Malta Romania Germany these are all clustered around the same point on the chart these will have similar Gini coefficients but inequality does not measure poverty Ukraine may well claim to be the most equal nation in the world it's also one of the most poverty stricken here's a headline for you Ukrainian people still ranked among the world's poorest study finds this particular measurement of poverty and some was limited in some ways flawed measures Ukraine as being about as poor as Bangladesh Kenya and Nepal why was it that there were these riots in the streets year after year again and again over the quality of education in the cost of education in Chile there is in fact a mechanistic economic explanation the Ministry of Finance calculated the cost of free tuition for all students at two point one trillion Chilean pesos or 3.14 billion US dollars per year an amount deemed unattainable given the level of economic growth and tax revenue at the time falling Bachelet selection economic growth slowed to its lowest level in years due largely to the sudden drop in the price of copper which is a significant source of Chilean tax revenues there simply was not enough revenue to make good in the promise of free tuition at least not initially now it isn't just the price of copper and I did some research it isn't just the price of copper that's the problem Chilean copper exports are declining because they're running out of copper they still do have copper but it's deeper and deeper or beneath the earth the productivity of each labor goes down and down they have to pay people to dig more than a kilometer deep the days of open-pit copper mining near the surface are over and yes their economy really was dependent on copper exports as you can see not for such a long time but they had a boom period for several years with all that copper money coming in and now the boom is over and it ended just in time to cancel the plans to finally reform their system of education in response to the most violent and memorable riots of this kind that were as I mentioned 2011 feast with reconciling the high cost of free tuition and lower than expected government revenues the Bachelet government opted to pair the plan down and phase it in more gradually a move that ultimately allowed the government to enact the policy starting in 2016 this version cost 518 billion Chilean pesos or roughly 810 million US dollars a fraction of the cost of her initial campaign pledge the results of the educational form were not a disaster but they were disappointing that disappointment is what's directly fueling the protesters that are on the streets today if you even just look at the footage and look at the interviews with people within the protest most of them are University students most of them are young people some of them are high school students many of them will be veterans of the prior riots in 2017 maybe some of the older ones veterans of 2011 that's not ancient history meanwhile also pretty much every single responsible website you're going to consult on the problems that the electoral system in Chile is facing will discuss the divide between Chileans of European ancestry and Chileans of indigenous ancestry that's not quite the same thing as social inequality that shows up in these charts at all there is indeed a rich and ongoing history of riots from the Mapuche Indians from the indigenous peoples or at least the largest group of them there those riots go on and on year after year it's a very fundamental contradiction in their society which is in its own way a genocide of colonial society it's a fundamental problem that their electoral democracy cannot address or at least so far it has utterly failed to address when there are similar riots in Muslim countries people are very quick to talk about the religious roots of why people are rioting or why people are dissatisfied with their form of government in Catholic countries in Christian countries people don't want a question their religious and cultural context for why people are rioting is that linked to the system of education in my opinion yes yes it is I think in the 21st century the fundamental solution for countries like Canada the United States and Chile countries built on genocide of colonialism it has to start with educational reform from the ground up so when we look at Chile's place on this chart the array of countries with different degrees of income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient what can we really learn from this as mentioned Ukraine has nothing in common with Switzerland but they have almost exactly the same ranking here Ukraine is a poverty-stricken country tragically so in a never-ending war that they can't hope to win with the Russians absolutely tragic situation do you want to brag that Ukraine has some of the best income equality in the world there they have more economic equality than for example Chile even though as mentioned Chile is really losing its one most profitable industry the export of copper or copper mining do you have more optimism about the future of the economy of Chile or of the Ukraine in the next five years I think anyone in their right mind would say Chile including because of the charts I already showed in this video very impressive economic numbers and the last five years every reason to think it'll continue to be strong in the next five years and what can we say that Chile has in common with the other countries cluster next to Chile on the chart Chile and Israel Chile in the United States Chile and Mexico or Turkey so these are all countries with similar levels of income inequality do you really think that the rioting on the streets in Chile can be explained by pointing to what Chile has in common with the United States Israel and Turkey I think people reach out for these explanations because they're facile because they're feel good because they make us feel smart and virtuous they let us look at these riots and think that wouldn't happen to us because you live in a country with for economic equality they let us evade the really tough questions and the current political crisis in Chile raises very difficult questions indeed that are relevant to the United States they're relevant to Canada they're relevant to England the United Kingdom these are three countries that have expensive and very low value systems of education in the case of Canada the United States there are also countries that have their own profound problems with the separation of the religious in the secular sphere their countries that have profound problems that are rooted in Christian cultural attitudes they're invisible to us they could step back and look at the situation Christianity has a lot to do with it in the same way that the politics of Lebanon right now Islam has a lot to do with it right we don't want to ask ourselves those questions and above all else we don't want to ask the questions about genocide of indigenous people but the real weakness of our democracies the real weakness of our democratic institutions the profound hypocrisy of our education system that's built on that genocidal tradition this weak imitation of Europe being sold you know overpriced in a colonial country there are really a lot of different questions for us to ask ourselves here including the question of whether or not Bernie Sanders reformed for education offering free tuition would work out any better or any worse than chilles reform in education because they promised free tuition starting in 2016 it's because of the failures of those reforms the less than impressive results of those reforms that right now the streets of Santiago Chile people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know