A common phrase used to explain this is “No son 30 pesos, son 30 anos,” or “It’s not 30 cents, it’s 30 years,” referring first to the 30 cent increase in the metro price, and second to the fact that it has been 30 years since Chile returned to democracy after an oppressive and violent dictatorship led by Agusto Pinochet.
Today, like the United States, Chile has a high rate of income inequality. A measure for economic inequality is called the Gini coefficient. It is a rating between 0 (meaning complete equality, or if everyone had the same amount of money) to 1 (complete inequality). Chile’s was .46 as of the World Bank’s 2019 estimate. That’s considered pretty high. The U.S’s Gini coefficient was .39. Now, compare that to countries like Norway, Denmark, and Finland with a Gini coefficient of only .26! (OECD, 2019). So what does this mean in real life? It results in a difficult job market and low minimum wages, a concentration of power in the hands of a limited number of families and established government officials, and a strong preference for capitalist ideals over social services. This reality isn’t unlike that which many feel the U.S. is experiencing. And I agree that in many ways this is true, but we also have unique perspectives.
The U.S. is a much larger and more diverse country with a longer history of democracy. Chile, however, is a highly centralized country (more than half of the population lives in the city of Santiago) with a young democracy and capitalist economic system.
