(New York Post) South America is doing the world a favor at the moment, but you have to tune in to reap the benefits.
Just as South and North Korea and West and East Germany became perfect Cold War laboratory experiments contrasting the blessings of democracy and capitalism with the destructive drudgery of communism, the reformist government in Argentina and the Marxist-led ones in Colombia and Brazil are inviting us to compare and contrast.
Hint: You won’t have to do much research to see which system is still the best.
Argentina’s new free-market President Javier Milei is lapping Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and Brazil’s Inacio Lula da Silva in terms of economic achievement and the ability of people to live in freedom.
Milei is also an ardent supporter of Israel’s right to exist and defend itself — while the Marxists have sided with the Hamas terrorists who massacred 1,200 Jews on Oct. 7 and now hide behind Gaza’s civilian population.
Of course, Argentines, Colombians and Brazilians are not quite the same people, unlike the Germans and the Koreans.
Yet the results so far among these close neighbors with Iberian roots show that free markets and freedom will beat central planning every day of the week.
So far Milei has achieved, well, the unachievable.
Argentina — yes, the country that was until recently South America’s economic basket case — now has a primary fiscal surplus, the first in more than a decade and a half.
March was the fourth straight month with more government revenues than non-interest spending: In other words Milei, who was inaugurated in December, has produced a government budget surplus every month since taking over.
This surplus is partly because Milei has also delivered on another of his promises: paring back Argentina’s gargantuan state.
He has halved the number of federal agencies, from 18 to nine, slashing public spending by up to 30%.
Best of all, Milei is also making inroads against Argentina’s biggest bugbear for decades, inflation.
Monthly inflation in May cooled for the fifth straight month — again, marking the entire Milei presidency so far — and now sits at 4.2%, compared to over 25% in December when Milei’s term began.
