Regarding Doug Casey’s linked article on Argentina: The Freest Place in the World. Seriously? That country does all the things we fear the US might do. Rampant inflation? Check. Confiscate retirement accounts? Check. Currency controls & dollar-sniffing dogs? Check. Crony socialism and capricious Diktat replacing rule of law? Check. Punitive taxes on the productive, such as farmer-exporters? Check. Hitler-style appeals to nationalism to justify seizure of assets (such as NPF, the largest oil company in the country) or to provoke rows with foreigners (Falklands). Check. Profound corruption? Check. Argentina is cheap for a reason. Refer to FerFAL (An Argentine who publishes information on prepping from first hand experience in Argentina) for more reasons as to why that is so. It’s a banana republic populated by physically attractive residents. And with Cretina (Oops, I mean Christina) Kirschner as an Evita Peron wannabe.
My spouse is from Chile. I grew up bilingual and fit in there quite well. Our kids will be dual citizens. Yeah, it costs more than Argentina. There is a price for the rule of law and stability. Chile offers more of that than any other Latin country. Good grief, the left-wing former finance minister (Andres Velasco) was so fiscally conservative that he squirreled away windfall money from the copper boom for a rainy day….which came with the earthquake in 2009. To the extent Chile had a “stimulus”, they paid cash. To repeat: That was from a left-winger. And when push came to shove, Pinochet forced freedom (yes, I see the irony). Notably, even the Left left-most of Pinochet’s free-market reforms unchanged. Were I to bug out overseas (a debate for another day, I tend to view a bad US as better than most alternatives), it would be to Chile. It is the most stable of the Latin countries. If I wanted a worst case glimpse of what the US could be, and perhaps shall be, I’d visit Argentina. Argentina is a mistress (popular concept in Latin America, my wife is violently closed minded about it), Chile is a wife. – J.H. in Ohio