Chile students' mass fare-dodging expands into city-wide protest

[sandensea]

Thousands of school and university students have joined a mass fare-dodging protest in Chile, flooding into metro stations in the country’s capital to vault turnstiles and vandalise equipment amid simmering unrest over the rising cost of living.

The campaign erupted when secondary school students began to jump barriers in groups following a fare rise on 6 October, which put Santiago’s metro among the most expensive in Latin America at 830 pesos ($1.17) during the rush hour - a considerable sum in a country where the median wage is around $4 hourly.

Bus prices also climbed as part of the changes.

The demonstrations have spread across the city, leading to violent clashes between protesters and police, who have used teargas to disperse crowds on concourses and platforms.

Protesters have vandalized barriers and electronic turnstiles, and pulled emergency brakes on trains, affecting the more than 2.5 million passengers who use the Santiago metro each day.

Police have made dozens of arrests and two officers were reportedly injured.

At: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/18/chile-students-mass-fare-dodging-expands-into-city-wide-protest

[Farmer-Rick]

1. Yeah, some of the current president's policies are very Pinochet and Miton Friedman

Destructive trade policy style. They chop up their middle class to feed to the filthy rich.

[sandensea]

2. But Pinera's a real puppy dog compared to Macri in neighboring Argentina

2000-3000% (20/30-fold) hike in public utility charges since 2016, plus an 85% central bank rate, have driven over 20,000 employers out of business - plus over 50,000 self-employed.

And even so, he added $113 billion to the public foreign debt. How? Mainly for financing the dollarization of assets (by banks and the elite - including his own family), which were then offshored.

This was easy to predict, because it's exactly what already happened during the last dictatorship in the early '80s. And Macri's very much of the same mindset.

It's as if the dollar were suddenly no longer the top global currency (God forbid), and Trump took on trillions in euro-denominated debt, to allow Wall Street and his friends to quickly convert all their assets to euros.

And left us all with the debt (many trillions).

No wonder he and Cheeto are such pals.