Utopia Talk / Politics / Argentine poverty soars under Milei

murder Member	Fri Sep 27 19:07:09 Argentina’s poverty rate spikes in first 6 months of President Milei’s shock therapy BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina’s poverty rate jumped from almost 42% to 53% during the first six months of Javier Milei’ s presidency, the statistics agency reported Thursday, a steep rise reflecting the pain of the country’s most intense austerity program in recent memory. The government’s finding that Argentina’s half-year poverty rate in 2024 had surged to its highest level since 2003, when the country was reeling from a catastrophic foreign debt default and currency devaluation, marks a setback for the far-right economist. So far, foreign investors and the International Monetary Fund — to which Argentina owes $43 billion — have cheered his controversial fiscal shock therapy that has succeeded in pulling down the country’s monthly inflation from 25.5% last December to 4.2% in recent months. Argentina’s inflation, now running at more than 230% annually, is among the worst in the world. Bracing for negative news hours before the poverty report’s release, Milei’s spokesperson sought to deflect the blow in a lengthy press conference. “The government inherited a disastrous situation,” Manuel Adorni told reporters, lambasting the decades of unbridled spending under Milei’s left-leaning Peronist predecessors that generated chronic inflation. “They left us on the brink of being a country with essentially all of its inhabitants poor.” Unlike previous populist governments that kept consumer spending high at the cost of a massive budget deficit, Milei dismantled price controls, cut subsidies on energy and transport and devalued the peso by 54% in December after taking office. The austerity measures and deregulation have marked a brutal contraction in spending power and dragged the economy deep into recession. A political outsider who made fighting Argentina’s dizzying inflation his flagship campaign promise, Milei is betting that if his government can keep prices falling, growth will return and fuel a miraculous recovery. Milei’s austerity measures have helped drive down the yearly inflation rate from a peak of almost 300% in April. His government’s budget proposal expects annual inflation to drop to 122.9% by the end of the year. But the months ahead will be tricky, economists say. After its initial decline, monthly inflation has been stuck around 4% since July. Milei’s 2025 budget proposal aims for a fiscal surplus of over 1.3% of the country’s annual economic output. That would require further spending cuts as calls to restart frozen public works and boost pensions and wages grow louder. A thinning safety net Of the millions who can’t clear Argentina’s official poverty level of about $950 a month in local currency for a family of four, even more have tumbled into destitution. Thursday’s poverty report showed that Argentina’s extreme poverty rate had shot up to 18.1% during Milei’s first six months as president from 11.9% in the last half of 2023. Among those affected is 32-year-old Rocío Costa, who said the rapidly rising prices have sapped her family’s meager income of just over $400 a month. Comforts like hair-dye, soft drinks and pizza had long been out of reach, but in July she realized she didn’t have enough money to both buy diapers for her four-month-old and put dinner on the table for her family of five. “There wasn’t even a package of noodles, there was nothing,” Costa said from her home in the capital of Buenos Aires. “The Milei government is killing me.” Desperate, Costa turned to friends and volunteers and eventually secured diapers at a social assistance center and $1 second-hand sneakers for her daughter at a local parish. “We are plugging the holes,” she said. A jobs crisis The runaway inflation — shocking even for Argentines who lived through years of annual inflation averaging above 50% — has forced middle-class Argentines to cut back on spending and drain their savings. The economy has contracted 3% so far this year. Government surveys reveal that both Argentina’s vast informal jobs market and formal workforce have hemorrhaged hundreds of thousands of jobs since Milei took office. That has put more of Argentina’s once-robust middle class in danger of sliding into poverty. “I’m part of Argentina’s lost middle class,” said 48-year-old Leonardo Constantino. Before he lost his job six years ago, he had a regular paycheck working in restaurants and played padel, the popular racket sport, with friends whenever he could. Finding a new job has never been harder. “It kept getting worse,” he said. Now a weekend bouncer earning just $155 a month, he said he couldn’t afford basic household items without help from the Buenos Aires municipality. Some months ago, he gave up his favorite hobby. The $6 padel court fee had become too much. Sky-high bills For decades low-paid Argentines have navigated their upside-down economy by padding their meager incomes with government cash transfers and generous subsidies that reduced the cost of utilities, food and transport. But utilities bills jumped over 200% for many after Milei scrapped the subsidies to trim the deficit. For Sofia Gonzalez Figueroa, a 36-year-old single mother who last year paid $10 a month for electricity, the pain of Milei’s austerity was instantaneous. Her utilities bill skyrocketed by 830%. Gonzalez Figueroa barters clothes for shampoo and other essentials, and uses the government’s family welfare program to buy groceries. “It is not much, but it helps me,” she said. Those who don’t qualify for assistance have increasingly turned to side hustles to pay utilities bills. Emilce Correa, who works 42 hours a week as a lab technician at a public hospital, picks up all extra shifts she can at far-flung medical centers. “By the middle of the month, I already have nothing,” she said. Others have joined the growing legions of workers offering to wash car windows at red lights and mining dumpsters for sustenance. Hungry but patient Débora Galluccio, a 48-year-old legal expert who lost her job in Congress during the previous administration, went from dining in restaurants to soup kitchens in less than a year. “It’s hard, but we manage as best we can,” Galluccio said, sipping stew provided by a local nonprofit. She said she feels lucky to live in an apartment that her partner inherited. Milei’s move to relax rent-control regulations has priced most working-class Argentines out of the real estate market. Despite it all, Galluccio — like many Argentines — seems to have accepted that the immediate pain of Milei’s economic reforms is an inevitable step toward prosperity. Fed up with generations of crises under left-wing populists, Galluccio is giving the chainsaw-wielding radical a shot. “In eight months he can’t fix the mess they made in 20 years,” she said. http://apn...66deb9302aa4ddde1bb9ae26aaf7af
obaminated Member	Fri Sep 27 20:37:20 Doing hard work is.... hard.
murder Member	Sat Sep 28 13:56:59 It's certainly hard for the poor.
obaminated Member	Sat Sep 28 14:02:24 State your position murder. Should Argentina have continued on its path or is milei doing what needs to be done?
murder Member	Sat Sep 28 14:09:09 I'm not familiar enough with the situation in Argentina to have an opinion on what needs doing. But job #1 in any nation should always be to make sure that the poor can get by. If not out of the goodness of your heart, then so they won't revolt and install a communist dictator.
obaminated Member	Sat Sep 28 14:12:17 Same about not knowing. But if inflation is going up 300%. You have to take drastic actions to fix it. Hang the people who were in charge for the past say... 20 years? Who led you into this position.
Rugian Member	Sat Sep 28 16:15:32 Fun fact: in 1905, Argentina's GDP per capita was 80% of the United States' Today, it's 15%. Incompetent economic policies can absolutely destroy a once-prosperous country. You can't coast of the wealth accumulated by previous generations and assume that it will continue to prop you up no matter what you do.
jergul large member	Sat Sep 28 18:17:12 Ruggy How about debt? Can you coast by on debt accumulated by previous generations and assume even more debt will continue to prop you up no matter what you do? Are you ultimately sure that Argentina will not regain its 1905 gdp ratio in your lifetime? What makes you so sure of that?
Rugian Member	Sat Sep 28 18:51:25 jergul If our debt ever becomes so serious an issue as that, we're taking down the rest of the global economy with us. So you'd better not hope for that.
Rugian Member	Sat Sep 28 18:55:03 But yes, our national debt is a problem and there's no solution in sight. I've been saying as much for the last two decades. The global economic system that's currently in place is unsustainable in the long run. It relies on ever-expanding demand fueled by population growth and easy money; the first of those is going to be replaced by population decline thanks to leftists encouraging women to not have children, and the second is possible only until we finally hit whatever limit there is on how much we can increase our debt to GDP. I have no idea when it's going to happen, but prepare for global stagnation on a level not seen in our lifetimes.
Dukhat Member	Sun Sep 29 03:16:20 *yawn* The real problem is sad incels who adopt narratives that benefit a narrow class of super rich instead of working towards solutions that actually work.
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 06:04:16 Ruggy The 2008 spillover of what was a US meltdown indicates you are correct, though limited damage from decoupling we have seen in recent years suggest that lessons may have been learned. There is no lack of aggregate demand in the global economy. Indian peasants and whatnot. It is ultimately a question of why should rural hicks in Alabama have nice things, but not them? I can think of no reason beyond unsustainable and illogical imbalances in the global economy. A consumer is a consumer, not matter where he lives.
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 06:05:05 (the spillover incidentally that overturned 12.5 by 2020).
Rugian Member	Sun Sep 29 10:13:13 jergul You were never going to win on that 12.5 prediction. Enough. You're worse than Trump insisting he won in 2020. Are you confident that you have decoupled from the United States? 49.9% of your Oil Fund's holdings are right here in the land of the free. I'd say it's quite in your best interest to root for the United States' future success :)
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 10:25:08 Ruggy We have already accepted it likely that 50% of the oil fund with evaporate faster than you can say dot.com. Returns on what remains will see Norway through the storm I reckon. Trade surpluses + strong sovereign funds seem key to dealing with disruptions. I think there is a limit to how far you can leverage debt financed consumer spending. To the point where a significant snapback should be expected in your lifetime. Current ppp is 15% btw. Even without a major contraction in debt accumulation. It is amusing that you think I am wrong even as you know I am right :).
Sam Adams Member	Sun Sep 29 10:32:45 "It is ultimately a question of why should rural hicks in Alabama have nice things, but not them?" Why should the eu beurocrats not take away norways wealth and redistribute it to all the african refugees in france and italy?
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 10:32:53 http://en....ries_by_GDP_sector_composition US agriculture: 4.2% of global total US industry: 14.7% of global total US consumer spending: 30% of global total This in nominal.
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 10:34:26 Sammy Well, because Norway is not part of EU for one. But contributions to EU for members are per capita based for the most part in any event.
Sam Adams Member	Sun Sep 29 11:23:35 "Well, because Norway is not part of EU for one." Not yet. Alabama is likewise not part of india, which didnt stop you from making your assinine socialist comparison. By your own thinking, why do you deserve a nice life when we could redistribute your wealth to sudanese peasants?
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 11:32:00 Sammy What wealth exactly are you attributing that proverbial rural Alabaman hick?
Sam Adams Member	Sun Sep 29 12:24:57 Answer your own question jergul. Why should you have wealth when others do not?
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 13:10:27 Sammy I was not passing a moral judgement, but rather commenting on global inbalances that have favoured the West since the 18th century. There is no particular reason to think that the imbalances are not in the process of unwinding. Meaning essentially that we are trending towards a world where Alabaman and Indian hicks are equally valued.
murder Member	Sun Sep 29 14:49:24 Poor governance and instability account for most of the world's imbalances. Almost every nation could live pretty well if they got their shit together.
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 15:18:53 Well if you want to run with that, then better governance and more stability outside of the West is slowly correcting inbalances.
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 15:22:15 First country in the West is Ireland ranked 71 in growth % last year.
Paramount Member	Sun Sep 29 15:43:23 ” Argentine poverty soars under Milei” Well, they are in the process of being americanized.
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 15:51:37 New target: Hashem Safieddine
jergul large member	Sun Sep 29 15:55:21 Wrong thread, oh well.
Forwyn Member	Mon Sep 30 08:48:59 "The real problem is sad incels who adopt narratives that benefit a narrow class of super rich instead of working towards solutions that actually work." Lol Cuckhat. "The real problem is *a small subset of the online population* who adopt *ideologies I don't agree with* that *I blame for economic disparity* instead of *permanently electing neoliberal corporatist warhawks" You're right bro. Muhhhh incels keep billionaires propped up, not billionaire lobby groups and corporate collusion. #bluenomatterwho
jergul large member	Mon Sep 30 08:54:55 One way of viewing US debt accumulation is as a means of transferring public wealth to private entities. Re lobby groups and collusion. They too are likely expecting a 50% loss of asset value as they swim in the same pool as the head of our oil fund. Best then to do like the fund and take a 50% cut from as high a baseline as possible. Those that survive with capital will eventually recoup their losses through market aquirement post crisis.
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