Chile GDP Growth at 15.2% a Year as of March 2011

"Chile has always been held out as a model for Latin America, but the reality is ... it's now a model for the U.S.," he said.

Corporate taxes are the second lowest in Latin America at 18%, behind Paraguay's 10%. The Latin average is 28%.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs' chief economist for Latin America, Alberto Ramos, says Chile has wisely fostered growth by reducing the size of government and not printing too much money.

In 2011, it cut government spending to 5% of GDP, or $700 million, more than its projected 5.5%. So GDP has room to grow 6.4%, rather than 6% as first estimated.

Those lessons could be duplicated here with the ideas found in the Ryan budget, the Tea Party's policy ideas or even from the Chamber of Commerce. _IBD

Chile is a long narrow country along the southernmost strip of the western seacoast of South America. It is one of the few Latin American countries to take capitalism and free markets seriously. Consequently, Chile is on a stronger economic footing than most of the rest of Spain and Portugal's former colonies of the western hemisphere.

A year ago, Chile lay in rubble, victim of the world's fifth most powerful earthquake. So Chile's 15.2% growth is a big bounce from a bad setback.

But it shouldn't be dismissed as an anomaly. It's a showy number, but not the only one.

The same day Chile released its data, Goldman Sachs raised its 2011 growth forecast for the country to 6.4% from 6%. In its annual regional business index, Latin Business Chronicle ranked Chile as having the best business climate in Latin America in 2011.

Such numbers are so alien to the U.S. in the economically debilitated Obama era, it makes sense to look at what Chile has done.

First, Chile's policies for long-term growth were put into effect in the 1980s by the group of Milton Friedman-inspired economists known as the Chicago Boys.

Under them, Chile's pension privatization cost nothing and left the country with no net debt. The private funds now hold assets worth 90% of GNP ($185 billion) — capital used to develop the country. Already, Chile's education and infrastructure are the best in Latin America as a result.

Second, there's free trade, of which Chile is a global champion, signing at least 58 treaties to gain access to 2 billion customers.

That's a big reason Chile is close to full employment and is scrambling to attract growth-hungry U.S. entrepreneurs — and getting them. _IBD

Obama has chosen to rudely yank the US in the opposite direction, toward larger and more expensive government, exploding debt, greater divisiveness in the political and social sphere, and a ruinous expansion of dependency on government handouts and paychecks. Obama's revolution sounds more like the prelude to a new dark ages and reactionary socialist quagmire.

If forced to choose between Obamanomics and Chilinomics, which would you choose? Who is John Galt?