Chile Wealth, Inequality, and International rankings

[admin]

Most and least corrupt countries report just came out. Chile fell some points from before, but still relatively high on the not so corrupt list. Not sure why they thought Chile is somehow more corrupt than it was before. Perhaps they mistook inane bureaucracy for corruption.
That being said, I wouldn't mind the ability to grease some bureaucratic wheels with some CLP lol as long as there are not shakedown road checkpoints like in some other places.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01- ... st-rampant

we often get that question fron clients, when they get frustrated with the beurocracy in chile. especialy clients that come from countries where corruption and bribes are common. they ask, "can't i just pay someone off" or "just my luck, i picked the least corrupt country to try and do this (crazy beucratic whatever) in".

sorry, chile traded corruption for beurocracy a long time ago. even if you tried to pay someone off, and they accepted the bribe, they probably would not know how it works and whatever problem you are trying to solve would just get more complicated.

[admin]

im going repost this from the other thread, as it is more relevant here.

drove the santiago to frutillar, in the middle of the summer vacation exidus:

yea, just got back to the south. somehow for all the years i have been in chile i have manged to carefully avoid that drive durring the vacation exodus from santiago. i had seen it on t.v., but never experienced it. my wife said 300,000 cars were expected to leave santiago this weekend.

you know those apocalypse movies, where the highways turns in to a parking lot, and there are lines at the gas stations? this was worse.

a 12 hour drive turned in to a 15+ hour drive, including a 20 km long traffic jam near los Los Angeles that lasted 2 hours. i was averging around 60 km an hour, for the first 5 hours (typicaly do that stretch at about 120 to 150). luckily i drove my diesel SUV and was able to skip refueling until i got south of the turn off to pucon / villarica (seems about 80% were heading to pucon). there were copec and other company fuel trucks basicaly chasing the zombie hordes south to keep the gas stations operational.

i got back to frutillar, and was greeted with another parking lot. i'm not going to town until next month after they all leave.

if you live in chile, never ever try to do that. it is just not worth it.

that is not venezuela running out of gas. that is not mexico running out of gas.

that is a super mega middle to upper class with money to burn, and everyone has a month of vacation to spend it.

[admin]

i calculated that each toll booth, and in that drive there is like 25,000 pesos of tolls, is making well over 1 million dollers per stop, over this weekend.

every gas station was full. lines backed up 50 cars.

i was at a medium size copec on a normal sunday once, in southern chile. just for fun i calculated what sort of cash they were moving. my wife and i drop say 50-60,000 pesos with a stop. tank of gas. perhaps some lunch. buy snacks and drinks for the road. figure a family of 4, with a gas guzzling SUV, well over a 100,00 pesos per car. i guessed they were doing 1,000,000 pesos a minute. on a normal day.

what i seen coming south yeasterday, they were doing 10,000,000 pesos a min, easy. i am suprised copecs don't get robbed more often. even with high rate of use of cards in chile, they are often sitting on tens of thousands of dollars in cash at any moment.

every copec station, every shell station, every petrobras station, etc, was a parking lot of hundreds of cars, and lines waiting for everything, for well over 800 km south of santiago.

that vacation exodus happens every year, and is getting bigger every year. i passed cars of all shapes and sizes. from the little compact Suzuki to even a Ferrari. Mercedes and BMWs are about as common and interesting as my hyndai suv. i passed a guy driving a new Ford rapport (say $70,000 u.s. at least), they got four dirt bikes in the back (say 5,000 each), towing a speed boat (say $ 40,000 u.s. easy), on top of the speed boat is a wave runner (no idea, but they are not chesp). guys got like $150,000+ u.s. in just toys, to go on vacation. i seen far more than just one of those in 15 hours driving.

those are type of vacations of a fully developed rich country, the kind i use to see as a kid in the states.

[admin]

some people have brought up the idea that this is all just chileans spending on credit, well above their means. the implication is that it is all going to collapse in on them and the entire country at some point.

well, a while back i read an article about new car sales. it said that only like 7% of cars sold were done on financing. i thought that was so strange at the time, i just dismissed it as too silly to be real.

the other day i was thinking about it. i don't know anyone rich or poor in chile that is making a car payment. they all own their cars outright, as far as i know. they all payed cash. there might be a few among them that bought on credit that i dont know about, but not many. not like i go around asking people, but not many.

i recall another article in the u.s., about a kid that got rich trading stocks, and he bought a Corvette with cash in California. the car dealer mentioned that he had not had anyone pay cash for a new car in like 20 years.

yea, chileans will run-up i am sure more than s little bit of consumer debt this vacation season, but nothing the vast majority can not pay-off. if the majority could not pay it off, did not have the household income, trust me the debt collectors in chile would send them back to the beging of the poverty line, fast. if a debt collector wants their money, it only takes them about 6 months to a year to sieze and auction your assets off when you fall behind in payments.

that would show-up fast in every other part pf the economy. there would not be billions of dollars in new cars, vaction toys, vaction houses, restaurants, hotels, etc being spent in southern chile this month. that is just the guys that came south. never mind the guys that left the country, or did not come south. the entire central region coast i am sure is under attack by santiago terrorists (sorry, tourist). the airports are collapsed, both domestic and international flights. millions of chileans also went over the boarder for a cheap vacation in argentina this year.

chileans, got the credit and the income liquidity to pull it off. the banks are not stupid, and they are not insolvent either. in fact the OECD was recommending a while back the banks in chile loosen up on their credit requirments and loan more money to consumers to juice the economy, but we see how that has gone in other countries.

that is mostly real money out there, not some goverment printing press, or some sub-prime bubble getting ready to implode.

[41southchile]

So I've decided to buy some goats , the truck driver I went to pick them up with yesterday , tells me he is 74 and has been driving since the 1960s, in those days he said it took 5 days to get to Santiago, the road wasn't even paved all the way. I found this interesting history on how the Ruta 5 evolved and has benefited Chile in many ways. http://www.economiaynegocios.cl/noticia ... ?id=347108

[admin]

My grandfather started building the Alaska, Idaho, Arizona portions of the Pan-american highway. He basically worked on it off and on for most of his adult life. He started off driving tractors and later owned his own company that worked on it. My mother was given rattles, from real rattle snakes, to play with as a baby. Every morning the crews in Arizona would blast the rattle snakes off the machinery with shot guns, as the hot engines would attract the snakes overnight. A friend of the family cut off the rattles and dried them out to give to the kids to play with.

On my to do list, is to finish the drive to the tip of South America.

My father in law use to tell stories of how the family would come south in summers on the two lane road, prior to the highway system, from Santiago in the summer. Only people that were sufficiently "rich" to own a car, and not need to work could do it. At that time coming south to say Pucon or really anywhere that was not hot was a big deal.

Thus, even today, the new middle class and new rich, still think Pucon is the meca to show you have financially and socially arrived; because, a generation earlier, only the super rich could afford to escape the heat in the central region. Unfortunately, most of the rich sold their properties and moved to vacationing somewhere more exclusive, about the time the "new rich" finally got cars, route 5 was built, and had sufficient resources and vacation time to make the trip.

I still occasionally see the look of shock on the new rich of Santiago faces when I tell them Pucon is an over priced dump. For about 2/3rd of the population of Santiago, they still think Pucon is something special. Many still think Pucon IS the south (hell, most of them think it is the Patagonia). The irony is, it was all the low class Santiago people that turned relatively nice small town in to a drug infested, crime ridden hole, with over priced crappy real estate scams everywhere.

That is changing however. Little by little they are starting to explore other parts of southern Chile, but Pucon is still about exactly a days drive from santiago. So, it has a bit of geographical protection.

[mem]

Thus, even today, the new middle class and new rich, still think Pucon is the meca to show you have financially and socially arrived; because, a generation earlier, only the super rich could afford to escape the heat in the central region.

So does this mean that the new middle class and new rich, think that if they can spend most of Jan and Feb in Pucon that they "have arrived"? Is it just a matter of them owning a vacation home or renting cabanas in Pucon that they can go to in the high season that they think they have "arrived"?

Or are we talking about them living there full time year around and having the means and employment feasibility to do so?

[nwdiver]

Pucon is a nice town, well situated.......except for most of the people......

[admin]

Thus, even today, the new middle class and new rich, still think Pucon is the meca to show you have financially and socially arrived; because, a generation earlier, only the super rich could afford to escape the heat in the central region.

So does this mean that the new middle class and new rich, think that if they can spend most of Jan and Feb in Pucon that they "have arrived"? Is it just a matter of them owning a vacation home or renting cabanas in Pucon that they can go to in the high season that they think they have "arrived"?

Or are we talking about them living there full time year around and having the means and employment feasibility to do so?

well it appears buying is popular. 13 new buildings to be built in the center of pucon:

https://www.df.cl/noticias/empresas/inf ... 30927.html

that is not the ultra rich 1% buying all those apartments, although they are likly the ones building them (thus, why they are ultra rich).

[admin]

i bitch about pucon, but realy i should chear for it. it keeps most of the new rich asses from santiago from showing up in frutillar. although we still have our fair share of them.

they have a reputation for treating everyone like shit, being ruid, etc, because they also think that is how you show you are rich.

[Space Cat]

They also like to trash the nature with their toys:
https://twitter.com/ianela/status/1093251150240014336

[Julito]

I think you´re a bit rough on Pucon Charles. It really is a mixed bag. It´s quite progressive in many ways possibly due to a significant ex-pat community. It´s an ongoing battle but no street dogs, free sterilisation and chipping, recycling, no more parking in the main street as of this summer and various on going public education programmes. Would I want to live there? No, it´s a bit too tourist contrived for my taste but many are moving to the area because they like the natural environment and lifestyle. In Australia we call them "Treechangers".
With all the development going on in Villarrica/Pucon both are changing rapidly. With Chile's first man made beach Villarrica and its new hotels and restuarants it´s now also a desirable destination. The population is growing rapidly. We know numerous ex Santiago professionals who´ve moved here permanently to escape the rat race.
There´s a new multi-storey hospital under construction which overlooks the lake. It´ll bring more professionals and their families because one of it´s roles is to negate the need to travel to Temuco to see medical specialists. There´s talk of a new Mall and cinema and we know for a fact there´s a new bypass road to be built to Pucon.