At night, when progressivism looks in the mirror, Milei is what it sees.

From an article about the rise to power in Argentina of economist, and now President, Javier Milei, comes this rather disturbing similarity in political and economic history between South American nations and New Zealand:

But speaking broadly, we can refer to an easy first decade of leftist rule in the region, fueled by a boom in exportable commodities and trade with the rising Chinese giant; and later, a more difficult and embattled second decade after the 2008 crisis, in which many left-wing governments began to find it much more difficult to sustain the levels of consumption and relative socioeconomic well-being achieved over the previous decade. 

The first half of that paragraph sounds very much like our 2000’s decade. The difference with the second half being the fact that our centre-right National Party took power after 2008 and kept it through most of the rest of the following decade.

But there’s no question that Key and company had a tougher economic ride of it than Clark-Cullen did, and it’s absolutely on the mark when you look at the Ardern government between 2017 and 2020 who also found it “much more difficult to sustain the levels of consumption and relative socioeconomic well-being”, compared to the 2000’s.

I think the Luxon National government will find the same difficulties, and for the same reasons that Ardern and Labour did (and even Key and National to a certain extent); the China trade flows not being as good for our export commodities; our increasingly decrepit systems of State education and healthcare; and our continuing rate of low productivity and thus anemic economic growth (especially when immigration is taken into account).

Of course South America continued on its Leftist path through the 2010’s (if you wanted to be cheeky you could ask how Left the Key National government was in comparison) and then really began to fall apart, especially in Argentina – and again, look at the similarities in the same time fame:

After the 2001 economic crash widely blamed on Menem’s economic heterodoxy, the Kirchners restored a more traditional Peronist politics and tried to bring together two previously separate agendas: the agenda of the traditional workers and the new poor created by the crash, and the progressive agenda of the urban middle sectors, linked to the defense of human rights, gender equality, and new political rights in general.

The synthesis held up during the commodity boom. But then the country was plunged into an escalating economic crisis: Since 2011, Argentina has seen low growth, sustained and dramatic inflation, and general deterioration of all socioeconomic variables. As a result, the class alliance that held up Kirchnerism began to crack up, and the gap between the two agendas widened. Cristina Kirchner’s new leadership went all-in on a culture war—inane pronoun proposals galore—while inaugurating a new and suffocating personality cult. A new woke Peronism was born…

A gap between the Working and Gentry Classes splitting the Left? A culture war, complete with lots of woke stances? A suffocating personality cult?

Her mouth is set in a straight line, her nostrils slightly flared – like a beast of prey testing the flavour of the air. Most striking of all are her eyes. Shrouded in shadow they absorb the detail of her surroundings without a trace of furtiveness or fear. This is the face of someone in control of both herself and her circumstances. The other quality conveyed in Burnell’s photograph is purposeful movement. Jacinda strides towards the camera like a person with no time to lose. The cell-phone gripped tightly in her right hand suggests that the irksome but necessary back-and-forth of collegial communication has come to an end. She is moving now, irresistibly, towards her rendezvous with destiny.

And then there’s this…

The failure of Mauricio Macri’s center-right government, which sought its political references in Barack Obama and Emmanuel Macron, closed the circle, convincing many voters that the cure must be as radical as the disease, 

… probably two thirds of the Key cabinet (and Nats generally) preferred Obama to the Republican contenders.

😂😂😂😂😂😂

The article argues that in the face of all this Milei was chosen less for his economics than by voters choosing to blow up a system that they had given up on. Not just a reaction to twenty years of Leftist economics and general government failure, but a revolution in and of itself.

The question then arises from the comparison: will such a revolution happen here, and if so, when?