Or... why is reducing the size of government becoming a vote-winner?
If there was an iconic image of elections worldwide in 2023/24, it was the Argentinian president-to-be Javier Milei snarling at the crowds and brandishing his chainsaw.
There was no question that Argentina was in heaps of trouble, but there remained a legitimate question about whether its economic problems could be fixed by electing someone described as a right-wing populist libertarian rooted in anarcho-capitalism. The chainsaw was his symbol of determination to cut down the size of government, slice through red tape, and blast his way past what he labels derisively as “the parties of the state” (i.e., everyone other than himself!)
So, now we are a year down the line, and he has imploded, right?
Not so much.
When he came into office, it was assumed he would struggle to get much done since his ideas were too radical and inchoate, his character too irascible and frankly weird, and his coalition too fragile and inexperienced.
He has proved all the naysayers wrong. He has used executive power to slash public spending to deliver a primary fiscal surplus, inflation has come crashing down, and, perhaps the most incredible thing of all, the mass protests his opponents threatened never materialised.
He told the Financial Times that “the economic and social cataclysm they predicted never came. I have a 50 per cent approval rating after carrying out the biggest austerity programme in our history. It’s a miracle, isn’t it?”
It has to be said that economically, Argentina is not yet out of the woods; GDP declined by 3% last year. But confidence in the economy has nearly doubled, even though a little over half the population remains sceptical. The broadly measured poverty rate has increased by 11 percentage points over the year.
Yet, his popularity compared to his predecessor is unquestionable. He has won support, as you might expect, from the rich but, extraordinarily, he is also more popular among the poor and the middle classes, although to a lesser extent.
One of the weird things about Milei is that applied for and was granted Italian citizenship under jus sanguinis, the historical law of citizenship by descent, by the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. What head of state would ever do that?
And that brings us to Italy.
The continued popularity of Meloni is also a surprise for someone considered a “far-right fascist" and a muffled supporter of Italian autocrat Benito Mussolini. She too was considered incapable of managing the notoriously volatile politics of Italy, let alone getting anything done.
Yet, her popularity has held up; her positions are nuanced, and she has quietly pulled down Italy’s budget deficit from 7.2% of GDP to an anticipated 3% in 2026. Italy is proving economic resilience, attracting significant investments and maintaining market confidence. But like Argentina, the structural challenges and reducing public debt (sitting at an incredible 137% of GDP), remain critical and the only escape is sustained economic growth.
Compared to Milei, Meloni is turning out to be a fairly normal conservative politician. Her guiding reference is British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, rather than the string of libertarian philosophers after which Milei has named his five English Mastiffs, (bred through cloning in case you were wondering).
The oddest thing about Meloni is that before the US election of Donald Trump, she was regarded - in the words of the Financial Times - as a “fringe far-right politician, who ardently admired the US president but wielded little clout at home — let alone in Europe”.
“Now, European leaders are counting on Meloni — a “fantastic woman”, according to Trump — to persuade the US president to hold back on his threat to hit the EU with tariffs to force it to spend more on defence and American energy”.
Well, you know, good luck with that.
In the US, the comparator is oddly enough not Trump, who is too incoherent, volatile, and self-serving to have a definite political philosophy, but Trump’s bro-in-chief, Elon Musk. You can imagine Musk getting on perfectly well with Milei, as has been reported. They are both definitively odd and share a slightly messianic temperance. Musk acknowledges he has Asperger's Syndrome but that doesn’t quite seem right to me; he does have a hard time relating (it seems 12 of his 13 children were born from artificial insemination), but those on the spectrum often prefer repetitive behaviour patterns, which doesn’t fit with Musk’s wide and varied businesses and interests.
Anyway, it's obvious that Musk is taking a leaf out of Milei’s book: moving fast, breaking things (as tech bros are supposed to do), with the emphasis on breaking things. I love the story about Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (how Brave New World is that name, by the way?) sneaking in their finding that USAID was spending $50 million on condoms for Gaza into a White House briefing. They didn’t realise the Gaza in question was the Mozambican province of Gaza, rather than the strip. And it wasn't anything like $50-million, it was $6-million, and it wasn’t just for condoms.
Musk acknowledged the fault and said, “So, nobody’s going to bat a thousand. I mean – you know, we will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.” Actually, the administration didn’t act quickly, or at all in fact: Trump kept repeating the story and inflating the figure, saying the condoms were for Hamas, even after media outlets reported it was highly unlikely to be true, CNN reported.
To my mind, Musk and Milei display a slight undercurrent of remorselessness, verging on callousness. You worry slightly that they may actually turn out to be aliens. But here is the odd thing: Trump’s popularity is not only holding up, but it's strengthening, in the same as way the popularity of his right-wing compatriots in the triple-M entente (Milei, Meloni and Musk).
What is happening here? Right, a massive generalisation follows, but here goes: I suspect people all over the world are not only overlooking the bizarro looniness of the leaders of the triumvirate, they actually welcome it. Why would they do that?
I suspect it's because of what I would call the Bruce Springsteen “Growing Up” syndrome. When Springsteen introduces the song at concerts, he often talks about his wild childhood adventures with friends who were fearless, reckless, or just outright crazy. He describes one particular friend, probably the band's drummer, “Mad Dog” Vini Lopez, who was so crazy that no one dared to fight him because they thought he was so unpredictable.
The structural problem with decreasing the size of government is simply that every part of government expenditure does, usually, benefit someone or some group of people, effectively or not. Hence, at the very least, a vociferous small lobby might favour the continuation of the program (or sometimes a large vociferous lobby), even when there is general approval of decreasing spending. So what tends to happen is that the vociferous pro-lobby confronts the generalist and generic anti-lobby with heart-wrenching reasons for not scrapping the program.
The lobbies tend to be tactical, and negotiable, and generally smart. They will claim a project is aimed at solving a temporary but critical problem with a temporary piece of government intervention. And then it never goes away. It's amazing how many programs all over the world started off as short-term, emergency interventions that just carried on. Social security in the US, income tax in the US and Australia, the national health system in the UK, just to name a few: they were all, would you believe, temporary stop-gap measures.
And in SA, the schemes are just countless: The Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), the VAT increase in 2018, the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant (SRD). Even the fuel levy was introduced as a temporary measure during the Second World War.
Why does it happen that they just carry on (and on and on)? I suspect it is partly because the small group who benefit are better lobbyists than the critics, whose opposition tends to be generic and dispersed and impersonal. For decades now, the notion that social problems can and should be solved with government intervention has been rampant. Yet, obviously, the tide is turning: people are much less enamoured with the theory than, as it happens, their governments. And often rightly so.
In order to change this, what you need are slightly deranged mavericks and if they are just a trifle lacking in human tenderness and warmth, so much the better. There is a political battle going on here, but the mistake on the part the left is to believe this is a kind of accidental randomness - it is not. The governmental spending spree that was Covid-19 is now having its backlash, and it's throwing up stranger-than-fiction characters to lead the way.
Their projects are varied and often crazy.
But, alas, they are also popular .. and enduringly so.
Politicians around the world, beware. 💥
From the department of you are more likely to be attacked by DOGE
From the department of actually, Chicken Little, the sky is falling
From the department of the not entirely impossible to predict
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Till next time.
Tim
💥💥💥
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