Keanu Reeves Rolex stolen from his LA home, found when police arrested a thief in Chile. If every country in the world had to be summed up by their most prevalent illegal talent, Feargle is correct, theft is a Chilean art.
Better than homicides, drugs, children bringing guns to school and killing other children or mass shooters killing random strangers en masse.
What criminal art would you use to describe other countries?
That would be México. The US can’t hold a candle to Mexican homicidal violence, children killing other children, and all that. Almost six times the homicide rate of the US. And extrajudicial lynching. I was in Taxco not long ago, just after the locals had interrupted their religious procession to lynch a couple of local people, while police and media looked on. And then finding bodies hanging from bridges, along the roads in big black garbage bags. You know, family values, business as usual.
After living in México, the US is downright placid.
---- Meanwhile, in California: a DA friend of mine says that the Chilean tourist burglars (courtesy of Visa Exempt silliness) have developed the means to deactivate the electronic surveillance systems.
confirmed.
the carabineros are castrated by the courts.
The article states that 23,000-odd articles “disappeared” from their shelves during the first 9 months of last year.
Meanwhile, the Swedish home improvement brand says it is taking legal measures to mitigate the impact of the alleged theft, along with improving its security, all while waiting for the highest penalties to be established, along with the payment of compensation for damages.
Hmm, another incomer with no idea of how pervasive certain Chilean customs are, like taking stuff from shops without paying for it.
They clearly aren’t catching the thieves, so how can they be penalized?
As for receiving “compensation” for losses, dream on - or do what all the other stores do; pass the losses on to the honest customers in the form of higher prices.
Hands down, the largest robo in Chile has got to be their own government.
The establishment right Chile Fuimos along with the nearly always left leaning center together with the far left Fraude Amplio/PS/PC totally transformed the Chilean pension system in a matter of days to a centrally controlled welfare system where individual AFP funds are now in danger of confiscation.
The lack of interest in this by individual Chileans (who will be impacted directly along with businesses) took my faith down another notch that there is hope of a turnaround.
Since someone has broached the subject of pension reform, I wonder if a bit of English language review might be in order. For the following I’ve borrowed from local media sources. I of course invite corrections to errors and amplifications for this brief collection.
As of the end of January 2025: The CL Congress approved the pension reform which is expected to generate considerable changes affecting workers, pensioners, and employers, as well as creating inflationary pressures. If approved by the “Constitutional Court” the reform measure goes into effect in March this year, though some provisions would come gradually.
Right now most “salaried workers” contribute 10% of their pay to their selected pension fund, something widely viewed as unpopular and unfair to workers. The reform means another 7% will be added, but it is a tax to be paid by already burdened employers. Oh, and this “contribution” is in addition to the 1.5% already paid to the Disability and Survivorship Insurance which means employers would pay a total extra tax of 8.5% of gross worker salary, making the taking on of additional employees to be discouraged. However, this rate is to be applied gradually over a period of several years. Part of this deduction payment goes to the worker’s individual savings account (4.5%), and the other 4% to “Seguro Social”. But while all of this is supposed to cover such things as disability, there are some that suggest that the new reform has gone “woke” as they say in the US, and is expected to have gender-based funding increases in line with the Boric government feminist coven.
In that worker’s Seguro Social deduction, 1.5% will be considered as a “loan” workers pay to the system to accumulate in bonds, to be paid back when the person retires. This is a dubious feature in part because the government plans to use those withholdings to fund more immediate pension spending objectives. Supposedly, for the 1.5% which does not go directly to the worker’s individual account and is used in Social Security, “small bonds” (government expression) are issued in the name of each worker, which are then grouped into a “macro bond” to be controlled of course by the central government. That bond gets changed when a worker retires and he/she/it can sell it or keep it as an investment item. It’s unclear if the results will be taxable.
As some Discussers know, Chile has a universal guaranteed pension, which some have described as retirement income for drug dealers who never paid into any pension system. Of course it covers more than drug traffickers but the point is that even if you never paid into this “social security” you still get paid in your retirement years. Until the new reform, the universal guaranteed pension - PGU for “Pensión Garantizada Universal” didn’t pay a great deal. But with the reform it will go up to 250,000 CLP monthly. No word on cost of living or link to UF adjustments. The gradual implementation means that persons over 82 years should start to receive increases within 6 months. Certain persons who supported the Marxist Allende government and had their wrists later slapped will evidently get some special treatment under this adjustment, and there is widespread criticism of that sop for the criminals of the far Left.
The current dreaded AFP varying risk multifunds (A,B, C., etc) are to go away with this pension reform, to be replaced with so-called generational funds, where investment would be automatically adjusted according to the age of the worker: young people will assume more risk to seek higher returns, while people close to retirement will have theoretically safer investments that might damp large fluctuations in their savings. You don’t get to choose. The nanny state decides what risk level bond you can have.
The dreaded AFPs get some competitive reworking. Every two years, 10% of the affiliates will be randomly reassigned to the AFP that charges the lowest commission, which might, in theory, help reduce the current excessive costs for workers. Administrators with less than 25% of the system’s affiliates will be able to participate in this bidding process. This is a bone thrown to the critics of the AFP practices and it remains to be seen what benefit, if any, may accrue.
It’s unclear how much of an inflationary effect this will have, and how it all might be adjusted to future costs of living and CLP devaluation.
No idea if anyone is even interested in this stuff. And there is a lot more to it than the thin version I summarized here.
and:
Las bandas de ladrones chilenos en Estados Unidos (EE.UU) nuevamente se encuentran en el foco de la atención. Ahora un experto con amplía trayectoria en departamentos de investigación policial, incluyendo el FBI, alertó sobre el peligro que representan estos antisociales a la sociedad estadounidense, llamando a armarse para protegerse: “No son tipos normales” y “vienen de un país sin ley ni orden”.
So much for the ingleses de sudamerica, as they used to call Chileans.
Not just in the US, of course, but these little and not so little bands have been showing up in many parts of the world. And the clever little bastards have discovered how to defeat many of the electronic security systems.
Chilean thief squads are getting quite the reputation. Targeting NBA and NFL players homes while they are throwing the ball of air around.
Here in the States right now with wife to take advantage of the remaining days of Chile’s participation in the US Visa Waiver Program…
