Argentina's president roasts high taxes at Davos
A great day for free trade.
Hello Financial Healers,
Javier Milei continues to dominate the news cycle. Ever since his meteoric rise, his opinions have been inspiring and… entertaining.
In his latest appearance, Milei appeared at Davos to promote capitalism and free enterprise. His goal was to sound alarm bells, saying, “The Western world is in danger…”
It was an inspiring speech that denounced the failures of collectivism, elitism, and high taxes. You can watch his full speech here. Here are just a few highlights from his monologue:
“We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world… rather they are the root cause. Do believe me, no one better place than us Argentines to testify to these two points. When we adopted the model of freedom back in 1860, in 35 years we became a leading world power, and when we embraced collectivism over the course of the last 100 years, we saw how our citizens started to become systematically impoverished, and we dropped to spot number 140 globally.”
“When you look at per capita GDP since the year 1800 and until today, what you will see is that after the industrial revolution, global per capita GDP multiplied by over 15 times, which meant a boom in growth that lifted 90% of the global population out of poverty, which you’ll remember that by the year 1800, about 95% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, and that figure dropped to 5% by the year 2020 prior to the pandemic. The conclusion is obvious, far from being the cause of our problems, free trade capitalism as an economic system is the only instrument we have to end hunger, poverty, and extreme poverty across our planet. The empirical evidence is unquestionable.”
“… the state is financed through tax. And taxes are collected coercively. Or can any one of us say that they voluntarily pay taxes? Which means that the state is financed through coercion, and that the higher the tax burden, the higher the coercion and the lower the freedom.”
As I mentioned before, Milei has some massive obstacles ahead to saving Argentina’s economy. Theoretically, his country can turn it around, but the question is, “Will voters be able to stick out the painful process of reviving a dead economy?”
Embracing free enterprise,
Cory De Silva
About: Cory De Silva is an American poet, singer/songwriter, screenwriter, actor, and filmmaker. He has released two studio albums, acted in three films, and published a small book of poetry. He is a graduate of CSU Long Beach, and lives in Northern California with his wife, Colleen, and their son, Bryght.
Again thank you, Cory, for this encouraging update. This man obviously has been paying attention to what's going on around him and this world. Argentina just might make it to a better state after all.