We’ve written several times about the tragedy of Chile. In the 1970s, Chilean students of Milton Friedman were running the show and created a vibrant economy, thanks to private property rights, privatization, a low flat tax, and personally owned pension plans.

Those reforms led to a quadrupling of Chile’s per capita income over thirty years.

Then in  2021, former student radical Gabriel Boric won the presidency and formed a government that included the Communist Party. The free market reforms were flushed, and so was the Chilean economy.

In this year’s presidential race, term limits bar Boric from running, and last month his coalition nominated Jeannette Jara, of the Communist Party.  An election in November will see one of two conservatives, Jose Antonio Kast or Evelyn Matthei, win the right to oppose Jara in a December runoff.

Here’s hoping that we see a return to the free-market principles that made Chile the jewel of South America.