Socialism is present in many South American countries. Americans need to know the results of socialism. We need to understand how it has become imbedded. It is important to deal with the facts of a political system that has known and profound consequences. Let’s start with Argentina.
Socialist Policy Results
In the 1970’s inflation in Argentina got so bad taxi drivers were issued a chart each morning so they could adjust the meter reading using the chart to convert the reading to the current rate of the day. Argentina had meatless days because too little beef was produced to meet the needs of the local market, this in a country which had been one of the world’s leading beef exporters. Argentina was also importing wheat, this again in a country which had been one of the world’s leading wheat exporters.
Hyperinflation exploded in 1989. It was the final stage of a process characterized by industrial protectionism, redistribution of income based on increased wages, and growing state intervention in the economy.
Debt Shifts the Consequences to Future Generations
The Argentinian government’s practice of printing money to pay off its public debts had crushed the economy. Inflation hit 3,000%. It was reminiscent of the Weimar Republic in post WWI Germany. Food riots were rampant, stores were looted, the country descended into chaos.
By 1994 Argentina’s public pensions, their equivalent of our Social Security, had imploded. Payroll tax had grown from 5% to 26%, but that still was not enough to pay for the promises. In addition Argentina added a value added tax (VAT), new income taxes, a personal tax on wealth, additional revenues based on the sales of public enterprises, taxes that crushed the private sector further damaging the economy. A government controlled privatization effort to save seniors pensions was attempted.
By 2001 those funds too had been raided by the government. The monies were replaced with the Argentine government’s defaulted bonds. By 2002 government fiscal irresponsibility had induced a national economic crisis as severe as America’s “Great Depression”. In 1902 Argentina was one of the world’s richest countries. A hundred years later it is poverty stricken, struggling to meet its obligations in the midst of a draught.
A Lesson for America
If you want America destroyed economically was Argentina, like Venezuela today, vote democrat. Your children, your grandchildren and their grandchildren will work 30 years to pay for your E.R. visits, abortions, tattoo removals, smoking cessation, and breast implants. You are trading your benefits today for their freedom for decades.
The Democrat’s policies for the U.S. cannot work. We quite simply cannot afford them. Everything the government touches it bankrupts. Politicians cannot stop promising what they have no way to pay for. They use the promises of free stuff to buy votes and to create mob rule. History teaches us that unfunded entitlement programs turn into complete economic disaster.
The Democrat Party is more than stupid. They are knowingly making economic slaves of your future generations. They are ensuring poverty and misery is America’s heritage. We have a choice to make. We can either pay as we go for out benefits or we pass the responsibility for repayment to future generations. Either way, the piper has to be paid. That is economic reality.