This week, I visited Buenos Aires, Argentina, to speak about free markets and socialism at the Conservative Political Action Conference. It was a fitting location: Argentina is now Ground Zero for the revitalization of capitalism in the West. In a time when the right often laments "late stage capitalism" in terms reminiscent of Noam Chomsky, while the Left laments the very existence of billionaires in the manner of Stalin targeting the kulaks, Argentina's experiment in liberty represents an audacious foray into the world of economic dynamism and innovation.
Argentina has been, for decades, a basket case. In the early 20th century, thanks to a plethora of natural resources and a burgeoning Western constitutional structure, Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries on earth on a per capita basis. But from the 1940s on, Argentina began to pursue a policy of nationalist socialism: interior redistributionism and external protectionism, along with corrupt expropriation of property.
The result was decades of stagnation.
Dictator Juan Peron declared himself in favor of a "social market, putting capital to the service of the economy and the well-being of the people" – pretty words that should sound familiar to economic populists of the Left and Right, and that should scare everyone, given that Peronism led to the complete economic meltdown of the country. In fact, between 1980 and 2023, Argentina was one of the few countries in the West that saw a relative decrease in living standard: The time it takes to work to buy basic goods actually increased during that period.
Finally, the Argentine people had enough. They elected as president Javier Milei, an audacious and magnetic Austrian school economist dedicated to free markets. "Viva la libertad, carajo!" he shouted while wielding a chainsaw – signifying proposed cuts to government spending – on the campaign trail. As Milei told the arrogant interventionists at Davos, "Economic freedom, limited government and unlimited respect for private property are essential elements for economic growth. The impoverishment produced by collectivism is not a fantasy, nor is it an inescapable fate. It's a reality that we Argentines know very well."
Milei has pursued his vision with alacrity.
And the results are nothing short of astonishing.
While shouting "afuera!" he has cut the number of ministries from 18 to eight, fired members of the bloated public sector en masse, and dumped the corrupt intermediaries in the welfare system. He has slashed the budget by 32%, brought a fiscal surplus for the first time in years, and brought inflation down from a month-on-month rate of 25% to 2%. The stock market has skyrocketed; investors are once again looking at Argentina as a target for their money.
That's because Javier Milei understands the power of liberty.
Now the rest of the West must follow.
For too long, the West has followed the fallacy-ridden economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes, who preached government interventionism and redistributionism as a corrective to the animal forces of free markets. And the result has been stagnation, unsustainable debt and, finally, radical inflation.
Javier Milei shows it doesn't have to be this way.
So do Argentines. Perhaps the most astonishing element of Milei's presidency is his continuing popularity. Tough economic measures often deliver short-term pain in favor of long-term health; that's what makes them so difficult to sustain in a democracy. But Argentines are clearly willing to take their medicine in order to ensure the possibility of a brighter future.
Now it's time for the rest of the West to follow suit.
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