The present emergency economic situation, with the bailout proposal, is frighteningly similar to the collapse of the Chilean economy under Pinochet, cogently described by Naomi Klein in “The Shock Doctrine.”

After simultaneously murdering thousands of innocent Chilean citizens (who were dangerous, because they could think and reason) while imposing a military coup with Gen. Pinochet as the president, the “Chicago Boys” – trained at the University of Chicago in Milton Friedman’s economic theory of “shock capitalism” – imposed their economic ideas on the Chilean population. The result: By 1988, 45 percent of the population lived below the poverty line while 10 percent increased their incomes by 85 percent.

Today, people in the United States are being asked to pay the $700 billion debt created by the gamblers on Wall Street. Driven by greed for huge profits, they have gambled on unsecured loans and the diehard concept of the unconstrained free market.

It has never worked.

In my lifetime, every time Republicans get hold of the administration they play their “top down” wealth card and leave this country, as now, in a huge debt.

People need to demand a thoughtful economic policy that caters to working people and seriously taxes those making millions with the public’s money and resources.

Jenny Orr, West Paris