Historian and economist, Niall Ferguson, takes an interesting and entertaining look at what President Milei has achieved economically to date in Argentina:

After less than 20 months, Milei has eliminated the fiscal deficit, cutting it from 5 percent of GDP to zero. He has reduced the number of government ministries from 18 to 8…. monthly inflation down from 13 percent to 2 percent. The economy is now growing at an annual rate of 7 percent. Investors no longer shun Argentine bonds and stocks—indeed, they were among the best investments you could have made over the past two years. After a brief upward jump, the poverty rate has fallen from 42 percent, when Milei was elected, to 31 percent. 

But he also takes a deep dive into the history of the nation and points out that the forces to slowly destroyed Argentina’s economy over the last century, while badly dented by Milei, are far from defeated:

[T]he Peronist opposition is managing to rally support in Congress behind several spending initiatives. This has provided a reminder that Milei’s party is far short of a parliamentary majority. Earlier this month, Congress approved an increase in pensions that would cost around 0.7 percent of GDP. Other legislative proposals that could unbalance Milei’s budget include increased funding for universities and hospitals and a greater share of tax revenues going directly to the provinces.

You would think that the century of failure of such approaches – unending inflation for decades, including several bouts of hyper-inflation, national defaults on loans, a frozen or shrinking economy (GDP per person was the same in 1990 as it was in 1967), and rising, widespread poverty – would have cured those idiots of their beliefs, but no. To paraphrase Adam Smith, there’s a lot of ruin in an ideology.

Milei ultimately could still lose this war.

Nevertheless Ferguson contrasts the progress Milei has made in cutting government with that of the DOGE unit in the US, whose cost cutting is still largely analysis and will require the GOP-led Congress to implement to have real effect as the Blob fights back. The GOP has failed on that many times before, always frightened by the Democrat-MSM complex’s threats that cutting government spending hurts voters. Even the recent rescission package cut a mere $9 billion from the Federal Budget, a cut of 0.13% that barely made it over the line, in the face of much Democrat-MSM screaming.

Similarly, it took even Margaret Thatcher a decade to cut the deficit by the amount Milei has in two years.

In addition to that deep history is the more sobering news from very recent times:

Such an economic “regime change” is precisely what Milei is achieving. It is what his predecessor but one, Mauricio Macri, failed to do. By attempting a gradual approach to reform, Macri ended up with yet another economic crisis on the eve of an election, which—inevitably—he lost.

As I look around New Zealand’s economic conditions after two years of a National-led government I see echos of that; things are not good, despite the strength in the farming sector. Moreover the polls reflect that – with a still hopeless, incompetent Labour Party, the legacy that saw them turfed in 2023 still hanging around their neck, and almost certain to be reliant on two Far Left parties for future government (one of which is outright racist), nevertheless on level pegging with National, and similarly for the whole Left-Wing v Right-Wing block.

We’re not in a crisis. Yet. But it wouldn’t take much to tip us that way.

Paradoxically it was the Macri crisis that has enabled Milei’s reforms, much as the Muldoon economics of the early 1980’s paved the way for Roger Douglas.

But does it always have to be like this?