and of having to share with others.

Until the 1980s Argentine living standards were far above the rest of the region, and even above some European countries.

But a coup in 1976 ushered in a far-right dictatorship that, besides killing at least 22,000 dissidents (by their own admission), effected a massive trasnfer of income and wealth from the middle and working classes (most Argentines belonged to one or the other), to the proverbial 1%.

They and their friends in big business and banking took on colossal debts that they then offshored - leaving everyone else the tab and an economy stumbling under the weight of the debt.

Fast-forward 35 years, and it just happened again - by way of a right-wing carnival barker not unlike Trump (in fact they've been friends since the '80s).

It's the same thing Wall Street did with derivatives in the Dubya years - except that in our case, the Fed simply printed $20 trillion to paper over the losses. Argentina, of course, couldn't do that.

Thanks for posting this. Francis may be wrong on some issues (like abortion); but he has tremendous insights into socioeconomics.