Nothing seems to agitate The New York Times more than the idea that people in the world are prepared to reject the neo-liberal economic model that is devastating the livelihoods of workers throughout the world. In today’s article about the ascent of the new Bolivian president, Evo Morales, The Times frets:

TIWANAKU, Bolivia, Jan. 21 – When Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and former head of the Bolivian coca growers union, is sworn in as president on Sunday, it may be the hardest turn yet in South America’s persistent left-leaning tilt, with the potential for big reverberations far beyond the borders of this landlocked Andean nation.

Of course, another way to look at this is far more positive. After years, (and in some cases, decades), of being forced to march in lock step to an economic policy that has exacerbated the divide between rich and poor and impoverished millions of people, voters have thrown out the governments that brought them economic misery in the name of so-called “free trade.”

To some extent, the political change in South America may foreshadow would could happen in the U.S. Certainly, a far bigger segment of people here still do not live in the kind of poverty that gripped a number of South American countries like Bolivia. But, if you project out perhaps a decade or more–falling wages, staggering personal debt, no health care, the loss of pensions (even at profitable companies like IBM)–the conditions are being set here for a similar rejection of economic policies that are no friend to the working person.