Free Markets

Steven Greenhut | 10.11.2024 9:15 AM

It should go without saying, but the United States became the world's most-prosperous large nation by generally allowing the market economy to work. By contrast, Argentina has remained a poor backwater thanks in part to its far-reaching price controls. So it's ironic that "free-market" America needs to learn a key economic lesson from down south, at least on the issue of rental housing.

Argentina's governments have since the 1940s reflected to some degree the Perón-ista worldview, named after Juan Domingo Perón and his authoritarian-populist government. Last November, however, the country's voters elected a flamboyant bushy-haired TV personality. The election was met with chagrin from most of the usual suspects.

"Javier Milei, a volatile far-right libertarian who has vowed to 'exterminate' inflation and take a chainsaw to the state, has been elected president of Argentina, catapulting South America's second-largest economy into an unpredictable and potentially turbulent future," reported Britain's left-wing Guardian. There's a lot of nonsense there to unpack.

For starters, Milei is a true market advocate and is nothing like the authoritarians to whom the newspaper compares him. But at least the Guardian noted a key reason for his........

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