What Milei said about the “caste”

Politics, what I would call the party of the State, for a long time tried to blame entrepreneurs, supposed oligarchs, and landowners. But we know that the blame lay with the politics itself, which, in its tax collection zeal, demonized those who work and produce to more easily reach into their pockets.

Because it is not enough to have resources, but coherent rules of the game are needed to make them flourish. Prosperity is the result of institutions and the free play of individuals, not of a nature prior to human action. And if anything has been proven in recent decades, it is that Argentine politicians have been unable to provide coherent rules of the game.

And as could not be otherwise, this generates that people get angry at entrepreneurs in general, taking the part for the whole, and, to make matters worse, politicians deliberately confuse genuine entrepreneurs with the nepotistic ones to hide that the latter are the partners. That’s why, for decades, genuine entrepreneurs were vilified. They were dressed in Satan's suit as if they were enemies to be exiled and money, the tool of their perversion. The entrepreneur was treated like a criminal who had to be punished, and the wealth they earned honestly was said to be redistributed in the name of social justice. I mean, a nice way to justify theft.

And I clearly say, Jesus presents this in rhetorical terms and openly when he says: 'For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?' What a question and reflection, huh?

Traditional politics works in a similar way: it offers people a well-being that is almost always transitory and apparent in exchange for breaking with their values. They promise welfare in exchange for turning a blind eye while the rules that protect us all degrade. That is the great trap of politics and that is the principle opposed to the morality as State policy. Years and years of this type of promise have resulted in a century of decadence. During this period, politics focused on accumulating power, promising heaven on Earth, leaving in its wake moral corruption and material misery. This is the legacy we have come to reverse once and for all.

However, the question is very simple: does anyone want to continue with a impoverishing model where only corrupt politicians and businesspeople who are friends of those in power profit at the expense of good Argentines? I understand that for a handful of corrupt individuals the answer is yes. It goes without saying that for this Government the answer is no.

If we were to think in terms of political utilitarianism, the answer is clear, since benefiting a handful of people while harming almost 48 million Argentines should be a clear calculation. That is why the fiery defense of the populists in favor of protecting the subsidized national industry is surprising, which clearly indicates that they are complicit in robbing Argentines. Many politicians, when publicly insulting some industrialists, did so to negotiate a higher bribe, not to reject it.

As politics and institutions are the backbone of growth, we must reform them to support the weight of this future. For too long, politics has been used to weave a kind of mafia, united by a predatory solidarity with the common purpose of living off the producer. That is what you do. It is called social justice, living off the labor of others.

This includes everything from the media to public officials, through businesses and even soccer. Politics, for us, must be put back to the service of society. That is why we need to comprehensively reform our electoral system so that representatives are accountable to their constituents. And this also implies reforming how political parties are financed, to provide transparency to the relationships between business and politics.

However, it is not in the individual interest of politicians to respect these principles because it is precisely in the enlargement of the state, at the cost of the liberties of citizens, where politicians gain power. Thus, for politicians, it will always be profitable to sacrifice the future on the altar of the present because consuming accumulated capital generates momentary well-being and that momentary well-being generates votes. But in return, they are sacrificing a future of greater growth, making the accumulated wealth increasingly lesser over time.

The greatest manifestation of this is those countries that show an orgy of increased public expenditure since the State does not create wealth; rather, it robs it and destroys it. In this scheme, politicians gain power in a double way, they are democratically legitimized and obtain more resources to spend. That is to say, politicians have a double incentive to promote this intergenerational betrayal because, while in the future everyone loses, in the present they gain more than anyone else.

And why have all our attempts to move forward failed? The answer is simple: because we have always started from an incorrect diagnosis. No one ever questioned the axis on which the carousel turned: the black hand of the omnipresent State. All the false dichotomies of our history, countryside or industry, cheap or expensive dollar, Peronism or anti-Peronism, concealed behind them the same constant; and politics has always defended the State with nails and teeth, seeing public administration as a booty to be conquered. That is the true model of the caste.

On the other hand, we need to regain the supremacy of equality before the law, by ending this system of quotas of different types that impose from whom to hire to whom to vote. We have reached the point where there are quotas even for hiring people in media or for programming artists at a festival. With the supposed justification of protecting certain groups perceived as oppressed, we have unjustly harmed others, violating the equality before the law that our Constitution enshrines.

Throughout the world, Western societies face the same problem and the same enemy: a political class that extracts ever more resources from citizens through taxes, in order to implement a model of unlimited state expansion. A political class with a God complex that seeks to regulate every aspect of people's lives, honoring one of Benito Mussolini's maxims of fascism: 'Within the State, everything; outside the State, nothing; and nothing against the State.'

We have called this political class the 'party of the State,' an extensive caste whose members, beyond superficial differences, share the fundamental idea of the State's advance over society. They are all those who, out of economic interest, ideological conviction, or a certain naïve individualism, work for the interests of the State: traditional media, union oligarchs, patronage businessmen, non-elected permanent bureaucrats who are thus inherently irresponsible; the so-called non-governmental organizations that do the dirty work of politicians; academic institutions that provide the theoretical framework for state expansion; supranational organizations; and everyone who, in some way, belongs to the great sect of global collectivism.

In the political establishment of our donations, there existed a mentality, more or less explicit, that equated the advance of the State with the advance of democracy; that every conquest of the State implied an act of 'social justice' in the face of the supposed injustices of freedom; that the role of the State was to lead us to an egalitarian utopia by the systematic creation of new rights, which obviously had to be funded by taxpayers. It is precisely at the center of this scheme where politicians, the main beneficiaries of this model of unlimited state expansion, find themselves. Those who have made living off others by force a way of life, holders of powers and privileges that would be the envy of any monarch in history.

A new political class, sheltered by collectivist ideologies and taking advantage of moments of crisis, saw a perfect opportunity to accumulate power. All the wealth created by capitalism up to that moment and in the future would be redistributed under some scheme of centralized planning, where the initial kick-off began a process whose nefarious consequences we are suffering today. Promoting a socialist agenda, but insidiously operating within the liberal paradigm, this new political class distorted the values of liberalism.

And I am not referring to those who receive social assistance because they do not have enough to eat; I am talking about the privileged corporations, the bankers who were rescued during the subprime crisis, the majority of the media, the indoctrination centers disguised as universities, the state bureaucracy, labor unions, social organizations, state patronage companies, and all the sectors that live off taxes paid by those who work.

Today, something that must be made clear once and for all: there is nothing, absolutely nothing more impoverishing for ordinary Argentines than the fiscal deficit, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that enriches politicians more than the fiscal deficit. This is the sad role that public spending plays in the model of the caste. Politics has adorned this model with good intentions and grand theoretical frameworks. For years, we have heard them speak of social justice, which is not only not just but extremely violent, because social justice implies taking from some to give to others, based on an inconsistent principle that says that where there is a need, a right is born.

It seems they do not understand that social justice is always unjust because it implies theft, because it implies unequal treatment before the law, and that every attempt by politicians to act virtuous ends up harming wealth generation and consequently harming society as a whole. They also do not realize or do not seem to care that the cost of sustaining this well-intentioned pantomime of the progressives is subverting all the values that made Western civilization the spearhead of the history of human progress. Because, deep down, they are being guided by the lowest human passions, such as envy, hatred, and resentment, which cloud thought and blind them. Moreover, they are blinded to the point that they continually project their miseries onto others.

Where the corrupt caste is composed of thieving politicians who put their privileges above the well-being of Argentines, by prebendary businessmen who do business with corrupt politicians, by corrupt media that are very angry with us because we eliminated official advertising, also by union leaders who focus on their businesses against the people, and also by those professionals who are functional to the State's religion who live to defend these corrupt individuals.

Our coasts welcomed millions of immigrants who were escaping from a devastated Europe in search of a horizon of progress. Unfortunately, our leadership decided to abandon the model that made us rich and embraced the impoverishing ideas of collectivism.

For more than 100 years, politicians have insisted on defending a model that generates only poverty, stagnation, and misery. A model that considers that citizens exist to serve politics and not that politics exists to serve citizens; a model that sees the task of a politician as directing individuals' lives in all possible areas and spheres; a model that considers the State as a loot to be divided among friends. Ladies and gentlemen, that model has failed; it has failed all over the world, but especially it has failed in our country.