Video Length: 01:06:01

Oscar Landerretche is an awesome economist from Chile. Below is an excerpt of his participation in a video forum with Brad DeLong on the Politics of Inequality in 2012. Since then he has become the President of the Board of Directors for Codelco, the largest copper producer in Chile. He is currently dealing with the problems in the copper industry. His views help us understand the growing inequality in the US.

Oscar Landerretche on inequality. (48 minute point of video)

“The context of this is that Chile has always been a very unequal society, which is a striking difference with the United States which has had historical periods of relative equality. So, let’s say that somebody came up with a magical policy formula and actually managed to improve our Gini coefficient by 15 points or something like that… which is what we would need to become something like a European country… the structure of the economy would be very very different, in every single sense… it would be extremely different from what we have today. You would have to have other economic sectors that do not exist right now. You would have to have a different political structure. You would have to have a different labor structure… “

Keep in mind that the Gini coefficient in the US has moved toward Chile’s. The structures of our politics and economy have become more like Chile’s. We have lost economic sectors.

“So it’s very hard to promise someone… “you know what?, We’re going to do these things that are going to make dramatic changes in our economy and you’re going to come up a winner.” It’s very hard to make that promise, because a lot of things we have to do is really answer questions. Like, What else are we going to produce besides commodities, food stuffs and copper?… and depending on what sectors are going to come up first, the structure of society and the economy are going to be very different.”