Steve Cortes produced an outstanding documentary, found below, that focuses on how Javier Milei has helped turn around Argentina over the last few years.
Cortes describes his approach as populism, but he is fundamentally different than Trump. Argentina has seen massive spending cuts whereas we have not even attempted that here during recent years.
The country is interesting because it was once very prosperous; but statism coupled with corruption caused its decline. It has a distinctly western heritage despite its presence in South America. While there is some indigenous population reflected in its gene pool, there were MANY immigrants from various parts of Europe– Spain, Italy, Germany, Croatia and other parts also. The older architecture there has a distinctly European flavor; and the documentary shows how beautiful the country is:
“…statism coupled with corruption caused its decline.” You put is better than the interviewee (people with political science degrees are almost as superficial as those with degrees in sociology). Never do you have statism without corruption, but you still do well to state it that way. Cortes describes it as socialism, but it was/is the combination of socialism and fascism–heavy regulation, high tariffs, and subsidies as well as socialist redistribution.
Milei is extremely different from Trump. Milei has cut government and spending. Trump has done the opposite, growing government and strengthening the Swamp.
What is striking to me, and obviously critical for his success, is the EXTENT of Milei’s cuts, J. Sobran. Obviously, their situation was dire– and it still is, even though improved. But a 30 percent cut in the level of spending is enormous. I am not sure we have ever seen that here– even in the days of Reagan and Coolidge. Things seemed very hopeful during the early days of the 2nd Trump Administration with DOGE and the lay-offs of federal employees, but that quickly ended. In spite of all of that, we still have 2 trillion dollar deficits– with a Republican Congress, that initiates all spending, and a Republican president.