Chile votes for new constitution

Referendum vote has resulted in Chile’s decision to draft an entirely new constitution, which will be written by popular-vote delegates.

“If it were not for the brave young people who fought for us, no one would have gone out on to the streets. I had wanted this to happen for a long time and it happened and thanks to them, today we have won.” -Pablo Naranjo

So, you’re glad that lives, businesses, and homes have been burned to the ground because that’s the change we can believe in. Asshole.

“I want there to be a written record of our basic rights, which for me are education, healthcare, housing.” – Mario Bustos Mansilla

No, they are not rights. All those things are privileges, and commodities. Rights simply exist. Commodities must be produced and paid for. So who will pay for this? Chileans are notoriously cheap and most with money are smart enough to keep it where the socialists cannot reach. This is the case with any latin-american country. So when tax hikes happen, the poor ALWAYS and without exception always end up shafting themselves with the bill. It’s not that I don’t feel sorry for them– it would be great to help. But you can’t help them all. And the only REAL solution to poverty is to teach people how to be less poor (ie: capitalism and entrepreneurship).

Everyone talks about how Chile has the greatest economy but the greatest wealth disparity in latin america. Well, that may be true BUT… there are a lot of people in Chile who live profitable subsistence lifestyles in the farflung off-grid corners of the global frontier, where they couldn’t even spend money if they had it. There, boats are better transport than cars. The roads are not paved for hundreds of miles. Rivers and forests and impassable mountains block paths. There, sheep are wealth. Land is wealth. Solar panels are wealth. You can’t eat pesos. Much easier to trade eggs and wool and hard commodities. There, the people want for little and need nothing.

BUT because they don’t actually make any definable taxable income, they are considered to be in poverty.

It is these people who tilt the statistics, and it is the politicians who abuse those statistics. Those people don’t need help. It reminds me of the “poor” trash sorters in Uruguay for whom the government set up an entire welfare program to assist, and found out that most of them did not qualify because they all earned more than the minimum wage.

Chile does not need wealth redistribution. It needs to be left the fuck alone.

I see a few possible outcomes from the new constitution:

1. The new constitution is just a carbon copy of the old one. Because let’s face it, it worked just fine. People continue to riot and destroy their own neighborhoods.
2. Marxist tripe ruins a perfectly good country and we get Chilezuela. People continue to riot and destroy their own neighborhoods.
3. Enough fancy words go down on paper to make everyone happy so they all pat each other on the back and sing koombaya. People continue to riot and destroy their own neighborhoods.
4. Pinochet 2.0. Lots of dead communists. Peace and prosperity for decades.

More insight on why Chile is fucked

I was awakened by the shouting of more crowds of protesters. Fortunately they are not burning and wrecking shit. Yet. The day is young.

There exists a clear and present danger ingrained in Chilean people, and that is the lack of, and avoidance of, a sense of personal responsibility. When caught in an error, lapse in judgment, or outright red-handed doing something purposely wrong, they will deny everything and attempt to turn the tables on the accuser, “how dare you insult my dignity!?”

Which I find entirely fitting for the laughable name they have given to the bombed-out wasteland they changed from Plaza Italia to Plaza de Dignidad. Let me tell you, there is no dignity there. Not even the sidewalks remain; the rioters smashed them in order to have ammunition to throw at the police. Every storefront near there is smashed or burned, barricaded with steel plates, every surface painted over three times in graffiti calling for dead cops. Metro station Baquedano, underneath it all, was so badly wrecked that it remains closed even to transfers between rail lines. It would make the perfect set for an apocalypse movie.

So, instead of admitting any sort of wrongdoing, they try and convince themselves that the environment is wrong. And they just keep committing the same mistakes expecting different results (the definition of insanity). Thus, when the protests get rowdy enough, and the cops show up to try and disperse them, the rioters get even more violent and then express grand surprise that people get hurt, run over, shot in the face with pepper gas, sprayed with burning chemical agents, etc. Like, what the everloving fuck did you expect?

Then, of course, according to the protesters, it’s all the cops’ fault. Granted I am no fan of cops in general but in this situation my heart goes out to them. Anyone else viewing this stuff can see the remarkable amount of restraint the cops show here. In any other country, there would be a lot of dead rioters with bullets in them. 10,000 people rioting in a square throw a fit when they rip a cop off his motorcycle, throw it in the riverbed, and light it on fire. He escapes, barely, and the vehicles helping him get out manage to crush a pedestrian or two. The crowd, with the help of the media, post his photo and identity on the internet, further endangering his life and those of his family. Wash, rinse, repeat. There is no end in sight, because the people are rebels without a cause.

My crystal ball tells me that the plebiscite vote does not matter, really. There is nothing truly awful with the constitution, barring some judicial reforms. My prediction is that the plebiscite will fail and things will continue as “normal.” And if it wins, the new constitution will likely be a paraphrased version of what already exists. Because, once again, the existing constitution is not terrible. I think the main reason people want to change it, other than to fix some judicial problems, is more because “it was Pinochet’s constitution and it’s got to go.” Change a few words and voila! Look it’s a new constitution!

If they really get into the guts of it, then nobody will agree on what to change. Hell, every single political party here is too busy infighting (and avoiding personal responsibility by throwing everyone they can under the bus) to even get any proper leadership sorted out. It’s a hilarious game of hot potato! So a fresh new draft of a constitution is doomed. In order to try pleasing everyone, they will please no one. Or they will just fight for years while more angry mobs burn what is left of Chile to the ground. Chile’s culture of responsibility-avoidance and lack of forethought is going to guarantee a disaster should the constitution be completely redrafted.

And if they keep the old one, their mobs will continue to terrorize, loot, amd destroy. They will continue to blame their problems on a constitution they have never read. Chile is stuck in an unfortunate downward spiral from which, in my opinion, it will not re-emerge any time soon. It is their culture that needs to change. A culture now driven by spoiled and impressionable youth raised in the counterswing of socialists taking full advantage of their post-Pinochet pity party. And these kids will never, ever admit that they are wrong.

I hope I’m wrong about all of this, I really do. How un-Chilean of me!

More WTF in Chile: an update

So, a little perspective on what’s going on in Chile.

Daily protests continue, albeit slightly less violent than before. Probably because downtown there is nothing left to smash and burn, and most commercial locations have literally welded plate steel over their storefronts.

Once in a while you still catch an underlying whiff of tear gas and that subtle background sizzling in your eye sockets.

Things have kinda calmed down. For now.

Overnight, an entire industry has popped up for private traffic directors. Folks don a brightly colored vest and collect coins from passers-by for the service of directing traffic, which is good considering that most of the traffic lights downtown were torn down, smashed, or spraypainted over by vandals.

Some of these people came under attack by the protestors– how dare they do something good, or constructive, or useful! How dare they try to help themselves or their families! Literally dragged from the intersections and beaten by angry crowds of bolsheviks.

It hasn’t stopped the others, though. And not everyone respects the “authority” of the traffic directors. When there is a protest going on, or rush hour happening, all bets are off since drivers want to GTFO ASAP.

So… what happened to get to this point?

There are several factions at play here:

1. Overtaxed minimum wage employees and pensionistas (retirees) who feel the pressure of increased electrical costs and commute fares.
2. Any and all workers (from poor to upper class) who see the future hopelessness of the AFP pension/social security system and believe, perhaps rightly, that their retirement savings will be worthless or completely unavailable when it comes time to retire.
3. People concerned with the state of health care (honestly I think they are ignorant– health care in Chile is excellent compared to literally everywhere else I have been)
4. Angry students who want “free” education.
5. Bolsheviks who want “free” everything.
6. Angry assholes who just want to wreck stuff.
7. Angry assholes who just want to steal stuff.

The whole thing really started kicking off when the subway fares went up. By 4 cents per trip. There were mass protests and people jumping turnstiles to show their dissatisfaction. BUT– most of the people doing this were students, who already pay a reduced fare (at a roughly 70% discount).

Some say that the subway fare increase is the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of social pressures in Chile. However, I disagree. My take on it: I think it was the subway and Carabineros’ general lack of ability to secure Santiago against the mass protest, which the people saw, and decided to take advantage of for their month-long drunken bonfire party. Hey, there’s nothing the government can do, we have free reign to do anything!

“Hey, I’ve always wanted to trash a hotel. And burn a subway station. And burn a church. And oh hey, look, dumpsters. What else can we burn? OOOOH A BUS! WITH PEOPLE! Wow, fire sure is fun to play with!”

And so they did.

What legitimate gripes people had (1, 2, 3) were quickly taken over and/or swept up in the bolshevik terror wave. And that’s exactly what it is. I’ve even heard that it was a planned attack– rumor has it that the PDI knew something was up– but since Chile has a bad history with intelligence organizations, Bachelet dismantled what remained of it during her tenure, and Piñera did not rebuild it (thinking it unnecessary), the threat was largely ignored or was not able to be dealt with properly. Some 80 subway stations were attacked or damaged simultaneously, 11 completely destroyed. Who knows if it was a conspiracy. Occam’s Razor says it’s just angry bolsheviks (4, 5, 6, 7).

What use is it blocking roads and setting fire to private property and businesses if you want government change? You’re not hurting the government, you’re hurting yourselves. I’ve had this conversation so many times and so many people agree with me. The most typical response from the most moderate Chileans: “Yeah we have problems that need solving but we’re committing suicide to try and fix them”

Chileans, as a culture, have a bad habit of not thinking things through. They are a bit naive/immature in their methodology. That much is clear with their behavior lately. The way to get better pay is not to burn businesses and send all those people into the unemployed worker pool. The way to get them to work faster and more efficiently so they can earn more money is not accomplished by burning the subway, putting up roadblocks, and smashing traffic signals. The way to win the hearts and minds of your fellow man is not through inconveniencing him or destroying his neighborhood. The way to keep the purchasing power of your currency is not to cause so much social unrest that you crash its value.

 

WTF is going on in Chile?

According to international news, “Piñera has been having some problems with protests.”

In reality, criminal vandals have destroyed the metro system, looters have smashed and stripped clean countless places of business, and riots of arsonists have been rampaging through cities, setting fire to businesses, churches, and residences.

Police headquarters and personal homes have been attacked, army bases attacked, and roadblocks are set up by “vigilantes” who think it’s fun to force drivers to get out of their cars and dance for the mob. If they please the crowd, they are allowed to pass. If not, the mob smashes or burns their car.

It all started about a month ago because of a 10-cent hike in the public transit fees. People began protesting nonviolently at first by either boycotting the metro or jumping the gates. Then they decided to take it to a new stupid level by wrecking and setting fire to the metro stations.

Supposedly the driving force behind these protests is that the people want constitutional reform. However, of all the people I have asked, “what needs to be changed about the constitution?” not a single one could give me an answer.

Essentially, people are just looting and burning shit because they can. There is no reason to any of it. Every single night, the trash piles are dragged into the street and set on fire by arsonists. The dumpsters are long gone– they burned those the first day. The metro remains closed, and the storefronts that did not get looted or burned remain barricaded and closed. What businesses are open are shuttered up and you have to enter and exit through a tiny opening in the steel plate. Everything closes at 4pm so that people can get home in order to hide from the mobs.

I can’t keep my windows open because tear gas and the smoke from burning trash will waft through.

There is no mainstream media coverage of this at all. And I really don’t know why.

 

Self-employment tax break (Chile)

2017’s US taxes got borked and the IRS sent me back a notice that I owed them A LOT OF MONEY™ the reason for which THEY WILL NOT TELL YOU™ so you simply have to figure it out yourself and redo everything, paying interest penalties on money you never owed in the first place because it took them 9 months to get back to you because they are slow and they suck.

Anyways, in dealing with the fallout, I found a neat thing called the US/Chile Social Security Totalization Agreement which pretty much absolves you of the need to pay self-employment tax if applicable. 

There is no official tax treaty (yet) between the USA and Chile, but fortunately this agreement, in combination with the FEIE, should help eliminate a good deal of your tax burden if you are a self-employed vagabond in Chile.

Whatever happened to ExpatBob?

Long time since I have posted anything.

So many people have written in or told me how much they enjoyed my writing and how much they miss it. For which I am humbled. Unfortunately, it only came out when I was angry. And I’m just not angry anymore. Nothing in Chile has filled me with the pure, seething, all-consuming anger that seeps from every pore in the same way that Uruguay did.

I deal with anger, awkwardness, and general malaise by trying to bury/hide it in wit and sarcasm; maybe it’s age, maybe it’s environment, maybe it’s the fact that I have stopped watching the news. I’m just not a fission pile of daily rage anymore.

So, what’s been going on with me? Things have coasted along more or less smoothly bouncing back and forth between the USA and Chile over the past few years. I’ve gotten to the point where I am applying for Chilean citizenship. Still waiting on the t’s to be crossed and the i’s to be dotted regarding my Chilean tax situation, which got botched, but it’s nothing that cannot be corrected, and as soon as it’s rectified I can submit all the requisite poop to become an official Chileno.

The tax stuff came down to the SII (Chilean IRS) not having any idea what to do with my situation as a digital vagabond with so many different flags in so many different places. It took them a year to get back to me regarding just how to file, but here’s the cool thing: Unlike the US IRS, who is content to jail you for even a minor breach of rules they do not even understand and cannot (proven time and again) even supply consistent results for, Chile’s IRS will write you an official signed, stamped resolution about exactly how to file, with which you can show them if any issues arise. They just take their good sweet time doing it.

End result is that because of a combination of me paying taxes to the Empire, and because of a neat new loophole I found, my tax burden in Chile is pretty well negligible. I will pay more in accountants’ fees than taxes. Which is fine by me.

What are my plans for the future?

I’ve got a thing in progress with Polish citizenship by ancestry which may or may not bear fruit; I’ve located the missing link, and I merely need to find a record of his birth in Poland. Therein lies the challenge, because Nazis. I have no plans to live in the EU but you can’t ever say no to an extra passport. Well, maybe summertime in Berlin would be nice…

Puerto Rico is the next destination of choice after my Chile chapter is done. For an American digital vagabond, the tax breaks simply can’t be beat, and you get so much more benefit to much less time put in. 6 months of exile per year, right next to home, without technically “having to leave home” in order to absolve you of your US tax burden, plus no more capital gains taxes— where do I sign and how much of my blood would you like? One mortal soul, coming right up.

 

The door narrows in Chile

A new change to the laws regarding acquisition of a temporary RUT number in Chile (for things like buying property and vehicles for non-residents or non-citizens) has been implemented. Now you must have a co-signer in Chile who is either a citizen or full permanent resident, in order that they may receive correspondence and legal notices to the RUT applicant.

I would guess that most lawyers and notarias will do this service for people, but it just adds an extra complicated step in the process and takes away something that was, before, a walk-in-walk-out process.

Chilean Permanent Residency approved

Just found out that my permanent residency application in Chile has been approved. It took them 7 months to get it processed.

Chilean food

I like Chile but their food sucks. Lots of people ask me what Chilean food is like, and I have never had an accurate explanation really until it hit me today: It is the expert addition of so much bread into anything so as to obscure its initial flavor by 99% or more. And not even good bread at that. I don’t know if it’s because they use coarser flour or do not knead or leaven the bread enough but it’s a tough, heavy, gritty bread that lacks finesse and dries the mouth. Surprising considering the German influences here; the Germans know their bread. The Chileans, sadly, do not. And yet they still put it in EVERYTHING.

El Buen Maestro

That’s what my downstairs neighbors called me after I went in and fixed the leaky pipes myself. Seeing as how the guy who installed them has probably fled Chile to avoid the torches and pitchforks, and the guy who I called to help me never showed up.

And so I learned how to solder copper pipes (because one of the first things I did during the teardown was to put the chisel straight through the gas line) and do Super-Duty Gringo jungle repairs on poorly-done Chilean PVC. And how to use plumber’s epoxy. And I actually did it right, because now there is no more feces raining down from anywhere but my own butt.

If this keeps on its current trajectory, in 6 more months I will have all the skills necessary to rebuild civilization from the stone age to the digital age after the zombie apocalypse wipes out humanity.

What had happened is that the “maestro” put a PVC pipe into an ancient iron one, and sealed it with nothing more than an entire tube of silicone. Said silicone was probably not meant for constant exposure to humidity and butt stuff, and so it fell apart 6 months later. And said pigiron shitty pipe was probably not meant for humidity and butt stuff either, because it had decomposed accordingly, and so I rerouted the other plastic pipes to another outlet, and epoxied the hell out of everything just to be sure.

Cutting the whole thing apart was a mess. It’s been done a hundred times; hero cuts into monster with chainsaw, getting sprayed with blood from head to toe, leaving a clean silhouette on the wall behind him. Only with me it was different in color and odor, as the reciprocating saw cut into the fermented sedimentary strata of poop in the bottom of the pipe… let me tell you there is no sensation quite like it. Last I felt this way was in Uruguay when I got a steaming shit shower from the backwards-built septic tank.

I knew better than to eat until I was done with this stuff, because I knew there would be gag moments. This was one of them.

I still don’t want to eat. I smell like a sewer. But it’s done!!!

Next I get to play with tile and cement, which is childs play for me at this point.

It’s funny, the whole situation, because I could have been finished with this crap a week ago had I just dove into it myself. Instead I kept waiting around for a guy I thought was reponsible to come and take care of it for me, because, well, I earn a lot more in the same amount of time for working my own job. It’s more efficient to do that and pay someone to do the repairs while I work, IF he fucking shows up to do said work. He said he would, and so I repeat the age-old mañanismo bullshit putting off my own stuff waiting on something that will never happen.

But hey, now it’s been fixed by a gringo, and con suerte it will endure for another century.

And now I am better than a Maestro Chileno. I am El Buen Maestro Gringo.