Haiti lies in ruins.  I don't blame the earthquake; it was in ruins to begin with.  Meanwhile down in Chile this past weekend they had basically a Huge Momma of an earthquake, much bigger than the one in Haiti that killed six figures of people.  After the tsunami threat turned out to be much ado about nothing, (thank God), the 24 hour cable news networks tried to stretch a full day of programming into the earthquake.  The problem was that though the event itself was worse than Haiti, the damage wasn't even close.  Why?

Well, the news channels got it partly right but of course missed the real story.  They said that Chile had much stricter building codes as a result of the worst earthquake in recorded history that took place there in 1960.  That is true.  And it is also true that when President Obama called President Bachelet of Chile to offer assistance he was warmly thanked for his concern but told that Chile had things well in hand with thousands of prepared emergency teams already fanning out into the countryside to help those displaced by this disaster.

Here is what they missed: Chile is one of the freest economies in the world thanks to the reforms put in place and left there to this day that were the result of the reign of Augusto Pinochet. Yes, that's right; it took a dictator to enact the free economic reforms that make Chile today the richest country by far in Latin America and the envy of a lot of countries, including ours, around the world.  Free economies do things like have building codes and lots of money to help people in a disaster as opposed to Haiti which has no free economics and as a result wallows in continuing misery.  And all that aid to that poor nation will in the end be eaten up by fraud and corruption as opposed to doing a thing to alleviate the poverty and misery that are the real problems there.

Meanwhile Chile will roll on and continue to grow because not only does it have a free economy but it also has no massive Entitlement State i.e. Social Security debt like we do.  30 years ago they privatized their national pension plan telling their citizens to save 10% of their income in private accounts made up of stocks and bonds.  Those accounts, even with global economic stagnation, have averaged over 9% per year since and have left Chile with none of the staggering and un-payable debt we shoulder here.  A free economy that serves its population without profligate spending, copes well with the unpredictable crises that always happen from time to time.

We should take a lesson.