Pinochet-era economic gains were concentrated in a small upper-class minority.

Evidence

The claim that the economy was ‘doing very well’ at the time of the plebiscite tells us more about the class politics of this US-based human rights organisation than about Chile’s economy. Gallup polls prior to the plebiscite showed very high levels of satisfaction with Pinochet’s regime among the upper class, 58.8 per cent of whom (as against only 33.2 per cent of the middle class) described the worst possible outcome of a no vote as a ‘return to the year 1973’. In 1980, real wages were still only 88.5 per cent of their 1970 level, and unemployment and inequality had both spiralled. Those for whom the economy was ‘doing very well’ were a small, wealthy minority. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 367

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to human-rights organizations as class-filtered interpreters of economic conditions — parallels the reader’s interest in how human-rights discourse absorbs market ideology.