'The problem is that social justice is not just': Milei blasts socialism, lauds capitalism during World Economic Forum speech

Argentina President Javier Milei extolled capitalism while blasting socialism during a speech at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Switzerland.

Milei delivered the speech after being introduced by WEF founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab.

"The problem is that social justice is not just," Milei said, according to an English interpretation of his remarks. He said that "taxes are collected coercively," and "the higher the tax burden, the higher the coercion, and the lower the freedom."

The libertarian economist, who took office last month, declared that "collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world, rather they are the root cause." He said that "free enterprise capitalism is not just the only possible system to end world poverty, but also ... the only morally desireable system to achieve this."

Milei said that "socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon," which failed in every nation where it has been attempted. He said that socialism has failed "economically, socially, culturally. And it also murdered over a hundred million human beings."

He said that "states don't need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals," as they can engage in "printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls."

Milei described business people as "heroes."

"The state is not the solution, the state is the problem itself. You are the true protagonists of this story," he said.

In an interview with the Economist last year, Milei described himself as an "anarcho-capitalist."

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