Episode 82: We Talk Capitalism with Special Guest, Daniel Pennington

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Paige: You are listening to “Coffee with Gringos.” I'm Paige Sutherland.

Ian: And I'm Ian Kennedy.

Paige: Today we have a special guest, another Dynamic teacher who is here with us—Daniel Pennington. So, since you are new to the podcast, introduce yourself. Tell us where you're from, what you’re into…

Daniel: Hi, so yeah, like you said, my name is Daniel. I'm from the United States, I was raised in Orlando, Florida. So, Disney World. So, everybody recognizes Orlando if they're, like, “No, never been there.” I say “Disney World” and they say, “Oh yes, Disney World.” I've been in Chile since 2018.

Paige: I have to ask since I've actually never met anyone from Orlando. How many times have you gone to Disney World?

Daniel: Well, if you have a family member, which my mom worked for Disney for thirty-one years, family’s free. So, I went almost every month. And I had to research prices when someone asked me, “How much is Disney World?”  I said, “I don't know, I have to look it up for you.”

Ian: That’s a nice Floridian perk.

Daniel: Yes. And for us, in Orlando, if you say you work for Disney World, that's quite common because they employ about 40,000 people—just Disney World itself. You can run into somebody whether they are a college student, or they have a career in Disney, like my mom does, or did. Excuse me. It's very common to find someone who, “Hey, want to go to Disney World?” “Sure. Let me get my main gig pass or let me get a ticket from my mom or my cousin.” But that's very common.

Paige:  Wow, I didn't know 40,000 people work there. Okay, so today we are talking about a very special theme. It's very topical now—capitalism. So, given the social uprising here in Chile, we thought it was relevant to, kind of, talk about our views, given we're all from the US and our experience with it back home as well as our views here now that we're living here. So, Daniel, you said that this is a topic that comes up a lot with a lot of your students. Tell me a little bit about what you guys talk about.

Daniel: So, majority of the time the students ask, “How is it different in the United States compared to Chile?” since I have been here for almost two years. And I say, the first thing that I say to my students is that everything is broken down into smaller groups. And they ask me, “What do you mean?” Well, here it's a little more centralized, but in the USA, while the White House does, or the government does, have some policy say over companies, it's not in our constitution. So, they don't make any official laws. The official laws come from the smaller states because each business is governed by the state they exist in. And the look of surprise on their faces leads to a very long discussion sometimes.

Paige: That's very true. I mean, it's tough to explain that the US is basically fifty little countries, more or less. Yeah, I think, you know, given what's going on today with the movement, I think it's important to talk about how the capitalist society that's here in Chile is actually from the US, with the “Chicago Boys.” So, Ian talk a little bit about that system and how it got to Chile.

Ian: Sure. So, to really explain what's happening here now we have to meet to go back to the 70s whenever the military coup happened here. So, previous to Pinochet taking power, there was, Chile was in a big social problem, big economic problem. The peso had bottomed out—things were doing really terrible for the whole country. And this was kind of the impetus for the military coup, getting in this more conservative administration and with that, more conservative and economic policies. So, when this happened, we heard about, you know, the “Chicago Boys.” So, Chile sponsored some young economic students to go study at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, a very renowned economist. And what they did is they learned these American neoliberal economic policies and adopted them and brought them back to Chile to implement to the system. And at this point, we've started seeing economic growth within the country and things were doing well for a while. But this is almost a case of neoliberalism gone too far. To the point where this growth was really benefiting the people at the top—privatizing business, privatizing sectors that normally might belong to all of the people. They were really being owned by just this small group of people. So now we see this big gap, growing and growing and growing among the classes and we see the boiling point that we're reaching today. So, you have to go back and look at that history of adopting these American economic policies and bringing them back down here. So, in a sense, we’re a little bit a little bit culpable for what's happening down here.

Paige: Unfortunately, that's something that I didn't know about, honestly, until the movement started. I had no idea that it came from the US and it was kind of like, “Oops. Americans fault again…” Kind of same story. What's interesting about today when you look at the capitalist system is Chile is a much smaller country than the US. So, the families at the top that own it are very small—there's, like, a couple of families that run the country that have all the wealth, that are in politics, that are running the businesses, that own the businesses. Where in the US, we have that but it's such a big country. There's a lot more of it. So, we have, like, you know, the top, 10%, but it's hundreds of families—it's not five. So, I feel like here, it's just much more of a “boys’ club”, and it's so obvious because it's a lot smaller.

Ian: And just a quick reminder, if you are interested in taking private classes with Dynamic English, go ahead and check out our website at dynamicenglish.cl. And there you can sign up for private classes in your apartment, in your house, in your office. You can even now take classes online. Sitting on your couch, you can log on and practice English. It's very easy. So, if you're interested, check us out also on social media through Facebook or Instagram.

Daniel: A little bit about Milton Friedman, because you know he is the teacher. He was the mentor for the Chicago Boys. Well, something unique about Friedman, is that he's not just an economist, he's a philosopher. And a lot of the ideas that he would teach his students, because I've watched a few of his lectures, is that he teaches about capitalism, he teaches about how it affects an economy, but he also tries to teach the students about its personal relevance. Like, it is your moral responsibility to not take advantage of the people around you. My opinion is that this man was very influential, not just because he was an outstanding economist, but he would support his economist ideas. But he also tried to really teach his students, “Hey look. Yes, here's capitalism, but you cannot let it get out of control.”

Daniel:  So, it seems like, kind of, Ian mentioned this as well, that the system that the Chicago boys brought back, they kind of implemented it too much to the extreme, as you hear a lot in the protests. “It's not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years.” That they've been under the system for three decades, and all the wealth is just accumulated at the top. And it's interesting coming from the US, we have this capitalism model but we've adjusted it. We don't have the Chicago Boys model; we have social programs. We still have accumulation at the top but I feel like we have more of a middle class in the US. Where here, I don't even know if it exists. So, we've all been here about two years was there anything about the model that really surprised you that was different from the US.

Ian: I think me, personally, I was just surprised, to understand how much is privatized here, much more privatized than most countries that exist.  To the point where Chile, and again, somebody could fact check me on this, but I’ve heard that Chile is the only country that has privatized its water, which is something I never even knew countries did. So, I'd say the amount of privatization that's happened has been surprising for me.

Daniel: I guess I could fact check you, so you know we're friends. Actually, I don't know if you know, but the utilities in USA are privatized also. But the difference is, is that the state government steps in and says “You cannot charge this much.”

Paige: Like you both were saying, I think the privatization here was really shocking because I think in the US, we do privatize a lot of things, but we also have a lot of public things and a lot of our public things are good. I mean, I went to a public high school and it was a good high school. None of my friends went to private high schools. Where here, you have to go to a private high school if you want to get into college and the colleges here are very, very expensive. Where in the US, we have a lot of state schools that are good schools that you can go to a university level, our healthcare “Obamacare”, you can go to any hospital and use it. Where here, you have different sectors where if you're on public insurance, you have to only go to this hospital and you're not allowed into this clinic. So, I think that is the difference I've seen is that, yes, things are privatized, like in the US, but here it's a lot more segregated. If you are using public benefits, you have to go over there and use the worst services. I think it's important also to mention that, I mean, it had to be now, like, almost eight years ago, the “Occupy Wall Street.” We had not quite a similar movement because I don't think we had as much energy as we're seeing here in Chile, but we had a lot of frustration with our capitalist society where the wealth was accumulated at the top and it wasn't trickling down. So, we had massive protests across the country where people were just fed up with this capitalist society. And sadly, I don't think a lot changed, right? Yeah, but hopefully things will be different here in Chile. We've seen that, at least, people in power are listening and hopefully some action will be done. But, I think, the difference is in the US, like we talked about before, there is a lot of accumulation at the top but there is the kind of saying that, you know, if you work really hard and, like, seek all the opportunities you can, like, you can make it. Where here I feel like you're, kind of, born into your future. You know, “You have that last name. Oh, you're not gonna get into that school” or “Oh, like, you come from that neighborhood. Oh, you're not gonna be able to get into university.” Where, I feel like, in the US, you can come from a bad neighborhood, work really hard and still go to Harvard. I don't think that story, sadly, exists here.

Ian:  No, I agree. I mean, just based off of what I see it seems like the barriers of entry into a higher social class, a better job, a better situation, it's more difficult here than it would be in the US.

Daniel: You know, there's a lot of factors that I've heard, in my opinion, just from observing and listening, it's really hard to, like, to move.

Paige: I think we could probably talk all day about capitalism. It clearly impacts all our lives and all sectors. But Daniel, thanks for being here. It was quite an interesting topic; we appreciate you being on the show.

Daniel: Thank you for having me.

Paige: Listeners, as you all know, if you get lost, go online and check out that audio transcript and vocabulary guide. Thanks for listening.

Ian: We'll see you next time.

Paige: “Coffee with Gringos” was brought to you by Dynamic English, where you can learn English simply by using it. If you’re interested in taking classes or just want to learn more, go to our website at dynamicenglish.cl. Thanks for listening.

Key Vocabulary, Phrases and Slang:

1.     perk (noun): benefit of a job or situation.

• One of the great perks of my company is working from home.

2.     social uprising (noun): an organized rebellion against an authority or government.

• The social uprising is causing many problems in the country.

3.     military coup (noun): sudden, violent and illegal seizure of government power..

• There have been many military coups in the last century.

4.     bottom out (phrasal verb): to reach the lowest or worst point of something.

• The economic situation in Venezuela has bottomed out in previous years.

5.     impetus (noun): force that makes something happen or advance.

• The economic depression was the impetus for government change.

6.     to sponsor (adjective): provide funds for a project or activity.

• The football team is sponsored by an auto company.

7.     renowned (adjective): well known, famous.

• He is the most renowned chef in all of Paris.

8.     boiling point (noun): the point when anger turns into violence.

• The boy reached a boiling point when he was bullied by the other kids.

9.     culpable (adjective): guilty, deserving of blame, responsible.

• The oil company is culpable for the massive oil spill in the ocean.

10.  to accumulate (verb): gather together or increase together.

• The company accumulated enough money to hire more workers.

11.  segregated (adjective): isolated, separated.

• The groups were segregated because of their differences.

12.  trickle down (phrasal verb): to help or benefit poor or lower-class people with the increasing wealth of the rich or upper-class people.

• Ronald Reagan believed in a trickle-down economic policy as president.

13.  fed up (adjective): to be unhappy, annoyed or bored with something.

• I’m so fed up with the way we are being treated.  

14.  to seek (verb): search, find.

• We need to seek a solution to our problem.