REPORT 2024

WHY IS YOUR INCOME NOT ENOUGH?

What hegemonic progressivism calls “the far-right” celebrates Donald Trump's victory. And the celebration is justified, as it is a clear defeat of hegemonic progressivism. But to interpret the U.S. election more properly, it has to be placed in its longer timeline.

But this report gets to the bottom line: REASONS WHY YOUR INCOME IS NOT ENOUGH, whoever is president of the U.S., or of your country. It's worth it, even if you find it a bit long.

In Latin America, and in general throughout the West, we are about to pass the first quarter of the 21st century, without solving the new problems that accompanied it when it arrived, because we still have not solved the old big problem, inherited from the 20th century: statism (big government).

The unsolved problem: statism

Until the 19th century, the classical liberal idea of “limited government” was maintained to only defense and security functions, administration of justice, and public physical infrastructure works, nothing more. Therefore, a government also “limited” in powers and financial resources to fulfill them. Thus, markets were free from government intrusion, and ownership was mostly private, not “public”. The West followed Adam Smith's wise advice about “the invisible hand” and the wealth of nations, with free international trade and the classical gold standard. Thus, there was rapid economic growth never seen before!

But in the 20th century the whole world turned to the left, after other unwise advice, from Karl Marx in the “Communist Manifesto” of 1848, reprinted in the two Socialist Internationals, I and II, from 1864 to the present day. And at the same time came the obstacles to international trade, and wars, which began with tariffs, but soon escalated to battlefields, death, and blood.

The anti-liberal governments, both of the left and of the bad-right (estatism), took more and more control over labor, industry and commerce, agriculture and livestock, transportation, money, banking and credit, education and health, and the other spheres, by nature private, of economic and social life.

ONU Agencies and others, such as the European Union, made treaties and agreements promoting statism worldwide. Governments grew in power, competences, attributions and wealth, and increased bureaucracy, “public” spending and taxes, printing of unbacked bills, indebtedness, unfulfilled promises, and the naïve trust of gullible people. Trade between nations became unfriendly, and was only allowed to be “regulated” and chained by restrictive trade treaties that are “free” in name only. And now, even Donald Trump, the enemy of international trade, whether free or regulated by treaties, does not want it that way!

“Social Pact” was called the anti-liberal alliance of the classical left with the mercantilist right (crony capitalism of the governments). They passed two kinds of bad laws: “social laws”, regulations and taxes, which make the national product more expensive, and at the same time “protectionist” laws, which prevent or make the entry of foreigners more expensive. That's why your income is never enough!

Neither you nor your country have “economic problems”; they have terrible economic consequences derived from unresolved or poorly resolved political problems.

And the stumbling blocks are aggravated by the vicious circle: when inflation and unemployment, lack of savings and disinvestment, poverty and indigence, and other bad results arrive, the leftists shout “it's capitalism's fault!”, and set up rural and urban guerrillas, or strikes and boycotts, block streets and highways, and invent “social plans” and subsidies, adding fuel to the fire: other bad (and worse) laws.

The solution to make your income grow

Today we have enough empirical evidence of 50 cases of transition from statism to liberal and democratic capitalism, in about 40 countries, in the last 5 decades. There is an interdisciplinary space that investigates them in Social Sciences: “Transitology”. In the Latin American Liberal Forum we studied these 50 processes very carefully because not all of them have been successful. This is the conclusion:

To make ends meet, you have to lower prices, and that is by reducing unjustified costs, repealing all bad laws in order to open up broad freedoms. This is achieved by applying these three public policies: 1) massive privatization; 2) profound deregulation; 3) opening markets to competition, both domestic and international, in order to break monopolies. And in all five areas or spaces of social life: government, economy, education, health, and pension plans. That is our Five Reforms project, three policies in five areas, and that is why we summarize it in the formula “3 x 5 = 15”.

And the key to success is a solid reformist political party, which is opposition before government, and thus from Parliament promotes the issue of bad laws and prepares society.

In this way, your income will not only be enough for your consumption, but also for savings. And you will even be able to make your investments: national investments. The “poor people's mentality” tells us to wait for “foreign investors” to come from abroad to invest. Because the system and the laws we suffer from not only prevent us from having even an acceptable level of consumption, but also make saving a luxury, and prevent us from investing the majority of the nationals.

However, the few attempts to reverse or even contain the statist course in our countries, by means of a complete turn of the helm, have been very timid and partial, and therefore unsuccessful. And even counterproductive, because their failures make liberalism look bad in the eyes of the public. For example, in the 1990s, the last decade of the 20th century, the “neoliberals” tried the insufficient “Washington Consensus”. They did too little, too late. Without success.

The response of the left, astutely, was to blame “neoliberalism”, accuse “the corrupt” and launch anti-corruption hysteria and “lawfare” to muddy the field and prevent the discussion of public policies, under the slogan, which is now Bukele doctrine: “the money (for statism) is enough if no one steals”.

The other, more astute response from the left: “Progressivism”

Already in this 21st century, and in order to silence discontent, and prevent discussion on economics that questions statism, the left became “progressive”, and the more radical the better!

Without rectifying any of its attacks against the economy in the 20th century (“conquests”), the left launched the fight for “new causes”: wild anti-male feminism and transsexuality; irrational environmentalism and anti-development, added to animalism; indigenism and anti-white racism; New Age and Postmodernism; protection in favor of the common criminal; biased and capricious historical revisionism, among others. These are the problems that came with the 21st century!

“Causes” that are nothing new, because in the making they are already seen in the youthful works of Marx, before 1848; and that is why they are called ‘cultural Marxism’. Policies that the left pushes hard against the dissenting majority, and not with democratic persuasion, but with force and violence, from the governments and the upper echelons of “globalism” (Agenda 2030/2045), censoring, crushing and humiliating the opponent with hatred and rage. And covering everything behind the smokescreen of relativism of “post-truth”, so as not to reason logically.

With good reason, the silenced majority is angry and fed up with the toxic “woke” progressivism. And they vote for candidates like Trump in the US, Orban in Hungary, Meloni in Italy or Abascal in Spain, and other anti-progressives, disqualified as “far-right” by the hegemonic media. Most of them are nationalists or “sovereigntists” and right-wing populists, against “globalism”, a perverse ideology that promotes “pan-statism”: dirigisme and absolute governmental control at the planetary level.

The anti-progressive “ultra-right” is not uniform

But Trump is an enemy of international trade, even with regulatory treaties, and goes against globalization, a beneficial, enriching, peaceful and civilizing process. Not only with tariffs but with diplomatic, economic, political and even military “sanctions”; against the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, basic for international coexistence and world peace. His political partner Mr. Elon Musk is a mercantilist, enriched through special benefits, favoritism and shady statist collusion with the private sector.

Bukele is not even from the right, but from the left. He is a militant of “punitive populism,” the belief that everything can be solved and fixed with jail. That is why he threatened merchants “who raise prices” with being put behind bars just like “gangsters”, shamelessly admitting resembling Hugo Chavez.

Milei is an “anarcho-capitalist”, and this is a guarantee of confusion and ignorance, and hatred of politics, institutions, democracy, and political parties. A solid political party is the key; but Milei ignores the empirical evidence of “Transitology”. That is why he has no party nor strength in Congress, and thus cannot repeal bad laws and make the big liberal reforms.

He heads a motley government, full of many statists of all colors, and the only thing he does is a macroeconomic “adjustment” without reforms, which is deadly for ordinary people. All liberals are concerned, because Milei's failure makes us look very bad, just as Bolsonaro's failure made us look bad, who did not make even one of the necessary major reforms; that is why welfare did not arrive, and what arrived immediately was the PT (labor party), with Lula Da Silva again.

But the solution is not to blame the other for everything bad that happens: the previous governments. Much less in lying! Mileist propaganda says that the Milei government is liberal, and it is successful, and it is innovative. Well, it is not. Beyond some rhetorical verbiage, his government is not liberal, as his not few liberal critics rightly and truthfully point out. And that is why it is not successful: only a privileged few are profitable. Nor is it novel, because we have already had similar experiences in Argentina, and all of them ended badly.

Despite their differences, there are common traits in “anti-progressivism” that are not good: a lot of verbal incontinence; anti-corruption and lawfare hysteria; personalistic caudillismo and narcissistic megalomania; too many populist promises of simplistic but false “solutions”; authoritarian and sometimes somewhat fascist drifts (radical Zionism); trouble making and “hustling” style, with insults, disqualifications, and threats; “fake news” and lying stories.

These bad rightists thus contribute to the toxic climate of hatred and resentment created by the leftists, and encourage extreme emotional bipolarization, claiming to be in any case “the lesser evil”. And all this prevents us from reasoning dispassionately about public policies and impoverishing laws, which is the urgent thing to do!

Pro-life? Anti-communism?

They claim to be “pro-life and pro-family”. That is, they are against abortion and gender ideology. So are we: Conservatives. But they say almost nothing about the bad laws against the free market, which impoverish the majorities, and destroy the domestic economy, nothing less than the family home basket, without which marriage and family starve.

And beyond the economy, we are against state monopolies in education, health care, and pensions, the cause of bad “public” and expensive “private” services in these three vital areas. That is why we are pro-life and pro-family 100% and not by only half!

They claim to be “anti-communist”. We are also right-wing, since order, justice, and freedom are our values. We know that the left is the opposite: chaos, injustice and oppression; and that is why we fight it. But democratically, as a legitimate rival with the right to compete in elections, win them if they are in the majority, and be in government when it happens. Not so anti-progressivism, and that is why it tends to accuse fraud without evidence when it loses elections, as well as hatred, resentment and violence, and coup d'état.

To compete with the left, we have plenty of ideological, historical, scientific, political, factual, etc. arguments, including abundant biblical and theological arguments for those interested, many of us being Christians, Catholics and non-Catholics. Not so anti-progressivism, which apparently without solid arguments, resorts to fierce personal attacks, a field no longer of politics but of politicking.

We are not only against cultural Marxism, but also against classical Marxism, creator of statism, which lends its basis of sustenance, floor, and support: power. We look at the causes, at the root of evil. We learned Marxism very well, to remove socialism. In order to free ourselves from the chains that bind and enslave us, it is indispensable to know very well the nature and forms of these chains, and the ways and means by which they were imposed on us. Obviously, including our own mistakes and failures.

The anti-progressive right looks at consequences and not causes

Anti-progressivism speaks of a “cultural battle” against the “new” left. This is not so. The left, the same old left, is now in another stage. But consistent with the initial thesis of Marx and Engels, that the economy is the basis of society; and politics, law, culture and religion, are part of “the superstructure”. In the first stage, 20th century, it attacked the base, through statist laws, and thus took control of the nations. And in this 21st century, and already from power, it attacks “the superstructure”.

“Cultural battle” without changing the laws? Impossible! Because culture is society's response to the incentives, positive and negative (rewards and punishments), established in the laws. Therefore, to change a culture, it is necessary to change the laws, realigning the incentives. This is what all left-wing parties have been doing, unfortunately with success, for more than 100 years. It is up to us to do the same, but in reverse: to the right. The way out is none other than the same as the outward journey, but in the opposite direction, that is, in reverse. If we prefer in biblical terms, it is “to return from their evil ways”, II Chronicles 7:14; or also “to return to the old paths, to find rest”, Jeremiah 6:16.

Socialism did not fail: it is inscribed by fire in countless constitutions, laws, agreements and international treaties; and in the minds of the ruling elites, and millions of people who follow them. And the steps for such resounding success were four: 1) they created left-wing parties; 2) they endowed them with a program of political action: the 10 points of the Communist Manifesto chapter 2; 3) they forged an international socialist league or association; 4) they nominated and admitted parliamentarians to the Congresses of each country, with their projects of new laws to be enacted under their arms.

The steps we are trying to take are the same: 1) creating parties of the liberal right; 2) with a political action program: repeal the bad laws and promote the Five Reforms; 3) develop the Latin American Liberal Forum; 4) nominate and enter parliamentarians to the Congresses of each country, with the catalog of bad laws to be repealed under the arm.

If Trump fulfills his promise to DEPORT SEVERAL MILLIONS OF HISPANICS to their countries of origin, it would be a great opportunity to JOIN OUR PROJECT. “Operation Return”!

November 2024