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01 / 05
Why Javier Milei Won the Presidency in Argentina

Blog Post | Economic Freedom

Why Javier Milei Won the Presidency in Argentina

Argentina has been flatlining for over 40 years.

Gale L. Pooley —

Photo by Haim Zach. Image courtesy of the Spokesperson unit of the President of Israel. CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED.

Summary: Once one of the world’s wealthiest nations, Argentina has suffered economic decline since the early 20th century. Argentina’s inflation and economic stagnation have led to higher time prices for basic commodities. The election of President Milei brings hope for economic revival by encouraging entrepreneurship and reducing state control, potentially restoring Argentina’s former economic power.

It’s hard to find a country that is worse off today than it was in 1980. But Argentina makes the list. Argentina was one of the richest countries on Earth in the early 1900s. Then the Peronists gained control of the government. Free markets and entrepreneurs were suffocated by bureaucrats and taxes. When politicians maxed out on taxes, they started printing money. The results were predictable. Capital and talent fled along with growth in abundance. Not only has Argentina suffered massive inflation, but its ability to create wealth has also stagnated.

Measuring Abundance with Time

Economic growth can be measured with time. A time price denotes the time it takes to earn the money to buy a product. If you are earning $20 an hour and a pizza costs $20, the time price is one hour, or 60 minutes. If your income goes up to $25 an hour and the pizza price stays the same, the time price is now 0.8 hours, or 48 minutes. For the time it took to earn one pizza, you now get 1.25 pizzas. Your personal pizza abundance has increased by 25 percent. As long as hourly wages increase faster than prices, time prices decrease, which means personal abundance increases.

As we catalog in our book Superabundance, this has been the case for most products in most countries for the last four decades. Except for Argentina.

We compared the time prices of 50 basic commodities from 1980 to 2023 for Argentina and eight other countries. The average time prices had fallen significantly in eight of the nine countries. Argentina was the exception. Time prices are actually higher in Argentina today than they were in 1980.

Longer term trends in Personal Resource Abundance all show positive change, except in Argentina.

The trend lines indicate that markets experience temporary ups and downs, but the longer-term trends are all positive. Except for Argentina.

Percentage Change in Personal Resource Abundance, 1980–2023

Percentage change in personal resource abundance for Argentina is in a negative trend.

Note: Capitalism replaced Marxism in China in the early 1980s. The results were astonishing.

When compared to China, the differences in personal resource abundance change is very significant.

Enter Javier Gerardo Milei. With the election of Milei as the new president last year, maybe Argentina now has a chance to restore its former position as an economic power. In 12 months, the Argentina stock market index (AR: SPMERVAL) has grown 366.05 percent, while the US Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) has only increased 19.18 percent. It looks like entrepreneurs are welcome back in Buenos Aires.

Since Milei has become president Argentina's stock market index has shown significant growth.

A great new book on the importance of entrepreneurship from the Chinese economics professor Weiying Zhang, Re-Understanding Entrepreneurship: What It Is and Why It Matters, could dramatically help Argentina reactivate its entrepreneurs and innovators and inspire the world. All innovation is the product of entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurs cannot exist under state control, government ownership, and excessive bureaucracy. Entrepreneurs attempt to maximize value creation. Bureaucrats, on the other hand, tend to maximize the costs of entrepreneurship. Unlike entrepreneurs, bureaucrats bear little of the costs of making mistakes.

Milei understands that capitalism activates entrepreneurs. The future is really a choice between entrepreneurs and free markets versus bureaucrats and politics. Argentina once again has the opportunity to stop flatlining and prosper. How many Elon Musks, Steve Jobses, and Jensen Huangs in Argentina are waiting to blossom and flourish under a new birth of freedom? Milei won because he was able to articulate what had caused Argentina’s demise and a vision for how it can be revitalized. Words and chainsaws and courage. Buena suerte to our friends in Buenos Aires.

Wall Street Journal | Housing

California Ditches Environmental Law to Tackle Housing Crisis

“California lawmakers on Monday night rolled back one of the most stringent environmental laws in the country, after Gov. Gavin Newsom muscled through the effort in a dramatic move to combat the state’s affordability crisis.

The Democratic governor—widely viewed as a 2028 presidential contender—made passage of two bills addressing an acute housing shortage a condition of his signing the 2025-2026 budget. A cornerstone of the legislation reins in the California Environmental Quality Act, which for more than a half-century has been used by opponents to block almost any kind of development project…

The California Environmental Quality Act was signed into law in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, at a time when Republicans were at the forefront of the nation’s burgeoning green movement. President Richard Nixon also signed groundbreaking protections, including the Endangered Species Act.

CEQA, as it is known, requires state and local agencies to review environmental impacts of planned projects and to take action to avoid or lower any negative effects. Opponents of projects have used the law to delay them by years.”

From Wall Street Journal.

Axios | Infrastructure

NC Bill to Eliminate Parking Minimums Passes House

“The North Carolina House passed a bill unanimously Wednesday [6/26/25] that would block local governments from forcing developers to build parking.

Why it matters: An issue that has been controversial in Charlotte received bipartisan support in Raleigh.

The big picture: With a starting price tag of about $5,000 per space, parking mandates add to the rising costs of new construction. Those expenses are then passed on to residents and businesses as higher rent.”

From Axios.

The Atlantic | Human Freedom

America’s Incarceration Rate Is About to Fall off a Cliff

“For more than 40 years, the United States—a nation that putatively cherishes freedom—has had one of the largest prison systems in the world. Mass incarceration has been so persistent and pervasive that reform groups dedicated to reducing the prison population by half have often been derided as made up of fantasists. But the next decade could see this goal met and exceeded: After peaking at just more than 1.6 million Americans in 2009, the prison population was just more than 1.2 million at the end of 2023 (the most recent year for which data are available), and is on track to fall to about 600,000—a decline of roughly 60 percent.”

From The Atlantic.

New York Times | Energy Production

World Bank Ends Its Ban on Funding Nuclear Power Projects

“The world’s largest and most influential development bank said on Wednesday it would lift its longstanding ban on funding nuclear power projects.

The decision by the board of the World Bank could have profound implications for the ability of developing countries to industrialize without burning planet-warming fuels such as coal and oil.

The ban has been formally in place since 2013, but the last time the bank funded a nuclear power project was 1959 in Italy. In the decades since, a few of the bank’s major funders, particularly Germany, have opposed its involvement in nuclear energy, on the grounds that the risk of catastrophic accidents in poor countries with less expertise in nuclear technology was unacceptably high.

The bank’s policy shift, described in an email to employees late on Wednesday, comes as nuclear power is experiencing a global surge in support.

Casting nuclear power as an essential replacement for fossil fuels, more than 20 countries — including the United States, Canada, France and Ghana — signed a pledge to triple nuclear power by 2050 at the United Nations’ flagship climate conference two years ago.”

From New York Times.