José Piñera Echenique (born 6 October 1948) is a Chilean economist, one of the famous Chicago Boys, who served as minister of Labor and Social Security, and of Mining, in the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Piñera entered the cabinet in December 1978 when Chile faced two serious external threats: a possible war with Argentina over the disputed Beagle Islands and a trade boycott by the American AFL-CIO labor confederation.
These allowed workers to opt out of the government-run pension system and instead put the former payroll tax (10% of wages) in a privately managed Personal Retirement Account (PRA).
[10] Some analysts and journalists have criticized the Chilean pension system, pointing out, for example, that it did not require the self-employed to contribute or arguing that it imposed excessive administrative costs.
[11] A report submitted in 2006 by a bipartisan, government-appointed, Commission[12] concluded that the system was working better than expected for the employed workers, that it was now technically possible and socially advisable to make the capitalisation system also compulsory for the self-employed, and that the fiscal savings arising from the transition process allowed for a strengthening and extension of the already existing safety net (consisting of a "pension asistencial" and a "pension minima", that will be combined into a "pensíon basica").
In the 1990s, the concession system introduced by the Mining Law was extended into the infrastructure sector – highways, ports and airports – which had traditionally been part of the so-called public works carried out by the State.
In December 1979, Piñera, while Secretary of Labor and Social Security, gave an important interview to the magazine Qué Pasa promoting his vision of a free and democratic Chile [2] Archived 2011-07-13 at the Wayback Machine.
In April 1981, Piñera, while Secretary of Mining, confronted General Pinochet in a cabinet meeting to prevent the leading trade union leader, Manuel Bustos, from being exiled.
On December 2, 1981, the day after approval of the Mining Law, Piñera resigned in order to restart his opinion magazine Economia y Sociedad, which was dedicated to fight for the transition to a democratic system and the consolidation of the free-market economy.
In 1992, in order to prove that the poor could understand free market solutions to their problems, he ran and was elected city councilman with the highest vote for one of Santiago's poorest neighborhoods, Conchalí.
In December 2009, Piñera shared a panel with the Polish trade union leader Lech Wałęsa in an International Conference in Zagreb dedicated to the theme of the prospects of democracy in Europe 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The conference was organized by Damian von Stauffenberg, member of the famed aristocratic family that opposed Hitler, and president of the Educational Initiative for Central and Eastern Europe (EICEE).
Diario Financiero of Chile published this note [4] and Ian Vasquez, Director of Cato's Institute for Global Liberty, wrote [5] that both Piñera and Lech Wałęsa "have done so much to increase human freedom: Wałęsa for leading a workers' movement that played a key role in the collapse of Soviet communism; and José Piñera for leading a revolution in private pensions that is turning workers into capitalists around the world."
In June 2007, the South African press published an article titled "Applying passion to break poverty" reporting on Piñera's conferences in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban.
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