Time smears Argentina's Madd Milei on its cover

The once great magazine wrote a biased and second-rate piece on the 'anarcho-capitalist' president of Argentina and what he was trying to do to save his country. So I wrote this email to the author.

Dear Vera --

Your Milei cover story was nicely written, but it failed to give readers any sense of how thoroughly "left-leaning" governments had ruined Argentina's economy -- for almost a century. 

Mad Milei was able to be elected because of the Argentine government's long history of stupid and irresponsible  socialist economic policies and the hyper-inflation they produced. 

You barely discussed the hellscape of what daily life is like under hyperinflation. (Here's a helpful hint from Germany for next time.)

You made sure to interview some victims of his severe downsizing of government. 

But you had no time to explain how tens of millions of  ordinary Argentines have been victimized and impoverished for decades by a ruling elite whose malpractice and corruption helped destroy a once-wealthy country.

You were more interested in stressing Melei's mad character, connecting him to Trump (of course) and global right-wingers and smearing his VP as a descendant of the bad right-wing guys of the 1970s than explaining the dire economic and fiscal problems Milei is facing and what (supposedly) radical things he is trying to do about them.

You'll hear some of this kind of criticism from Milei or his people, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, for your penance, please learn something about economics. 

You need to at least skim the works of some of the libertarian/classical liberal economics giants that Milei treats as his gods -- Hayek, Mises, Bastiat, Friedman, Rothbard et al.

They are names you've obviously never heard of and had zero interest in mentioning or learning about, but some of them are the generic 'economists' you tell us Milei named his dogs after.

I used to be a libertarian newspaper columnist who wrote a syndicated weekly column about what was in magazines. 

Time was always a reliable and easy target because of its liberal biases and 'subtle' hit pieces like the one you did on Milei. 

I wish I still had that column, but in quasi-retirement all I have left is email and substack.

(It might be of interest to readers if you or Time dared to publish the text of your interview with Milei. I hope he will.)

good luck

Bill Steigerwald