Although this morning’s Washington Post editorial on the death of Augusto Pinochet gave proper credit to Chile’s economy as “leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired,” it did not specifically mention one of the biggest, if not THE biggest contributors, to that success: its privatization of what had been a Social Security-like retirement system....

make[s] you wonder why Chile listened to the late Milton Friedman, and we haven’t...There’s still a window of opportunity to make this kind of increase in benefit levels possible for retirees 20 years or so from now by taking action quickly. Or we could dither for 5-10 years, and turn into Germany, where the situation is about as intractable as it can get.