An Amazing Interview: President Javier Milei

Today, we recommend to you an amazing interview - Javier Milei, President of Argentina, by Lex Fridman.  Freedom, Economics, and Corruption (Lex Fridman Podcast #453)

In it, President Milei recounts the mind-blowing economic conditions existing when he came to office - massive national deficit, rampant corruption & 17,000% inflation (an economy in the final throws of seizing up, one breath away from death, Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe) - and the reforms he and his government undertook to successfully revive it.

“By restoring utility rates to the right levels”, the government “eliminated the need for economic subsidies” and drove down the poverty rate.

The government also eliminated “what are known as ‘poverty managers’. That is intermediaries.” President Milei later describes these people as “parasites”, who demanded payment from the people they were supposed to be serving, before they would deliver the subsidy payments the government was already paying them to deliver, and “took away half of the money. So by removing that payoff, they stopped extorting [the people], stopped stealing their money, and with the same amount of money, [the people] received double the resources.”

“We return to the people 13 and a half points of GDP because the real tax burden is the size of the state.”  And when middlemen and price-fixing are eliminated, the size and cost of the state are reduced. “In other words, all those resources that the national government used to take are now back in [private hands].”  13 ½ points of GDP worth. Argentina’s economic engine was restarted.

Argentina “began to achieve fiscal balance and no longer needed [its Central Bank] to [print] money to finance ourselves.”

One year after taking office, “The latest consumer inflation rate was 2.7%”

At a much earlier date and on a much smaller scale, we at The Thinking Man’s Union addressed a version of these same conditions by taking the very same actions. We got rid of middlemen, which allowed us to take our healthcare plan premium down to its real price. And this more than doubled the money businesses and their employees get to keep for themselves.

Elon Musk posted this entire interview on his X page.

You can also watch it on YouTube.