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El Ciudadano

Original article: Cortar la red en Las Condes: beneficio municipal, privilegio y discurso contra el Estado

By Ayelén Marimon Fuentes

Las Condes stands out as the municipality with the highest municipal resources per capita, offering nearly one million pesos per person. Like the other 345 municipalities in the country, it provides social benefits to its residents through official resolutions. This article examines two specific resolutions issued by this municipality in April 2017 and 2018, aimed at «supporting and facilitating the continuation of studies for academically gifted students from families facing economic difficulties.» Both documents list the names of the beneficiaries: each receiving five hundred thousand pesos, directed to the Deutsche Schule Santiago. For that school, this amount constitutes less than 7% of its annual tuition—barely a drop in the bucket.

Among the 2018 beneficiaries, Sara Mayer-Beckh Véliz’s name appears in ninth place, while her brother is twelfth. Both had already appeared in the previous year’s resolution.

It’s essential to clarify from the outset: in 2017, Mayer-Beckh was a minor, and these benefits are managed by guardians. The socio-economic declaration must be signed by an adult, and the evaluation is handled by a somewhat secretive municipal committee. However, those seeking evidence of fraud here will find none. Still, it is hard to understand how the children of the founding partner of a real estate brokerage that sells luxurious homes in Chile and the United States, and a director of the Prince of Wales Country Club, could be considered students facing «economic difficulties.» Anyway.

Today, that teenager whose family accessed benefits funded by municipal resources is an adult actively participating in public discourse, critiquing state spending and labeling certain social benefits as «nonsense.» Her views align with the National Libertarian Party’s arguments regarding the size of the state and the tax burden, with its parliamentarians supporting the massive tax reform spearheaded by Minister Quiroz. After all, it’s easy to consider social benefits excessive when one’s own experience with them was merely a marginal discount on a tuition of seven million pesos.

Five hundred thousand pesos may seem like «just another figure» in a municipal decree from a wealthy municipality. However, in a vulnerable municipality in the Metropolitan Region, it could cover enough construction materials to roof two rooms of a social housing unit, fifteen complete food boxes with bottled gas, an electric wheelchair, funding for a sanitation and rodent control operation, or the resources a school needs to address an urgent situation. Public money does not hold the same value when viewed from different perspectives.

In this context, the Chilean municipal financing system operates on a deeply unequal structure that simultaneously perpetuates that inequality. Simply put, each municipality collects based on its own tax base, incorporating property taxes paid by real estate owners as one of the primary sources of revenue. Of the funds collected through this tax, each municipality contributes to the Common Municipal Fund, which is then redistributed using solidarity criteria to assist municipalities with greater needs and lesser revenue capacity.

In other words, property taxes paid in municipalities with higher property values do not remain entirely there. A significant portion feeds the Common Municipal Fund, enabling financing for municipalities with far lower tax bases. This is neither charity nor an accident of design; it is one of the main redistributive mechanisms within the Chilean municipal system. However, this framework underwent a change on the morning of July 15 when a modification was approved, reducing the revenue derived from contributions paid by wealthier senior citizens. Estimates suggest that the amount involved is around US$200 million. This change is part of the massive tax reform spearheaded by Minister Quiroz, also backed by parliamentarians whose views on the size of the state align with those of Mayer-Beckh.

In a municipality like Las Condes, the impact of such a revenue drop can differ significantly compared to its effect in municipalities with lower collection capacity. This is why the reform is not neutral, even if presented as such: reducing territorial revenue could represent an uncomfortable adjustment for wealthier municipalities and a structural problem for those that rely more heavily on redistribution. Furthermore, those who enthusiastically defend it often live, work, and were educated on the side where only discomfort is produced.

This exposes the contradiction this column aims to highlight. The hypocrisy lies not in having received that scholarship, but in subsequently constructing a public critique of social benefits without acknowledging that one’s own family benefited from one. That same state, in its most generous and least justifiable form, subsidized part of the premium education accessed by only five out of every one hundred children in Chile.

Ultimately, this distinction separates those who debate the size of the state from behind a screen and those who argue it from the waiting list. For some, shrinking it is simply an idea. For others, it represents losing the one thing that ever sustained them. Those who have never depended on such support can afford to view the state as an excess; conversely, for others, that very state may be the only safety net available.

This is not ideological coherence. It is being in the safety net while demanding it be cut.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the editorial line of El Ciudadano

La entrada Municipal Benefits in Las Condes: Wealthy Families Accessing Public Funds and Discourse Against the State se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.