A relatively unknown economist until about five years ago, [Javier] Milei rose to fame in Argentina as a TV commentator criticizing then-President Mauricio Macri for not being pro-market. His hot-tempered style and profanity made him popular among young people, and he quickly became the country's preeminent libertarian voice, calling for the elimination of the central bank and quoting intellectuals like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek on prime time.Donald Trump did demonstrate that insulting other politicians (low energy, crooked) had some purchase, while Hillary Clinton showed what insulting the voters could get you.
When Macri failed to stabilize Argentina's economy and lost his reelection bid in 2019, Milei jumped into politics in a controversial alliance with national conservatives that he has maintained until today. When he ran for Congress in 2021, he received 17 percent of the vote in the city of Buenos Aires, enough to win a spot in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies.
During the 2023 presidential campaign, Milei's main proposal has been to eradicate inflation by dollarizing the economy—that is, by treating the U.S. dollar as the national currency. He also favors deregulating industries, privatizing state-owned companies, and bringing an end to budget deficits.
Milei's social agenda, in turn, mixes libertarian and conservative elements. Unlike any other candidate, he advocates for private gun ownership to counter crime, but he opposes abortion. It is gay marriage, though, where the ideological complexity of his candidacy becomes clear: While he has said government should not regulate any marriages at all, his Catholic running mate has publicly opposed it. Both abortion and same-sex marriage are currently legal in Argentina, though.
Political commentators expected Milei's constant insults against other politicians to hurt him. But blaming his rivals for Argentina's problems seems to have been a successful strategy. It's unclear whether his ideas or his temper did more to earn him 30 percent of the vote, but his support is still substantial.
That essay concluded, "The system is afraid." American Thinker contributor Monica Showalter likes what's scaring the Establishment.(No, I don't know why she renders "Milei" as "Mifei.")
Mifei wants to kill inflation dead with dollarization, which forces governments to live within their means whether they like it or not, because they cannot print money. That kills inflation dead on the spot, and automatically reduces the size and scope of government. Once that's done, a nation become surprisingly stable, as the example of longtime dollarized Panama demonstrates. Even Ecuador, which is subject to banana-republic political dynamics, has never gone off the edge entirely, as Venezuela has done, because of its relatively recent history of having a dollarized economy, That has enraged the left.A dollar standard, unfortunately, is only as good as the ability of the United States to keep its dollar sound, which is not how Dementia Joe's big spenders roll.
He wants gun ownership, an end to wokester education in schools, around the promotion of the LGBTQ agenda, an end to climate hysteria, and no more greenie garbage. Most terrifying to the left, he admires President Trump.
What's happened here was that Argentines were utterly fed up with the monster inflation rate that destroyed their savings and knew that the ordinary right was not going to cut it. They went for the radical now, electing Mifei, and don't think for one minute that other fed-up nations -- looking at you, Chile and Colombia, won't follow suit. Perhaps even Ecuador, now that a conservative-leaning candidate was assassinated last week and there's an even more conservativee one waiting in the wings. Perhaps even Brazil, given that the ruling leftists have succeeded in barring Brazil's version of Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, from running for president again for eight years. Some are fearful of an assassination now, given the left's rage. But most, especially in the beleaguered cities outside Buenos Aires -- Rosario, Santa Cruz, Cordoba, San Juan, are cheering wildly.
This is the great reaction to unfettered, unchecked leftism, which has left these countries in ruins. That the Argentines have the gumption to swing back instead of just vote for more of it, the way San Francisco's voters do, tells us a lot about how angry they were, and Argentines can get very angry indeed on politics, having been there, and how ready they were for change.
Sr Mileti's win, though, has the right sort of quivering leftists quivering.
As The New York Times reported Sunday, Milei "has pitched himself as the radical change that the collapsing Argentine economy needs, and he could be a shock to the system if elected." Milei has proposed abolishing Argentina's central bank and replacing the peso with the U.S. dollar as the nation's currency.You can count on the Associated Press, a regime media outlet, to phrase its reporting so as to support the Prevailing Narrative. I'm not surprised that the candidate, an economist, might see the value in a market for organ transplants. Such a market is in the class of "repugnant markets," to use Alvin Roth's, a Harvard Nobelist, terminology. Transplantable organs are a scarce resource, and contracting on markets strikes me as less repugnant than going the Chinese execution route. "In the absence of price incentives to donate, the supply is likely smaller, and recipients, who do not get to bid for their transplants, have to provide some other case for their worthiness." No doubt they'd also object to closing the equivalents of the Great Society Cabinet departments that sometimes appear on Republican populist hit lists. I'd be more comfortable if he supported carbon markets rather than dismissing all climate policy as a lie.
"Besides his ideas about the currency and the central bank, he has proposed drastically lowering taxes and cutting public spending, including by charging people to use the public healthcare system; closing or privatizing all state-owned enterprises; and eliminating the health, education, and environment ministries," the Times noted.
Milei also "thinks climate change is a lie, characterizes sex education as a ploy to destroy the family, believes the sale of human organs should be legal, and wants to make it easier to own handguns," the Associated Press reported.
The ultimate outcome of Argentina's election is not yet known, and a fall run-off might be in the works.
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