Obviously, for neoliberals starving their own population to increase the imaginary numbers of foreign imperialist rentiers is more than acceptable, it is essential
And in other news: Argentina’s poverty rate jumped from almost 42% to 53% during the first six months of Javier Milei’s presidency (https://apnews.com/article/argentina-milei-budget-congress-economy-inflation-c83178217097093d476fab94429768a4)
Appeasing the market needs humans sacrifice! Once the rich get their fill, the poor will… anyway who cares about the poor.
Yes, because of austerity. You have to sacrifice spending somewhere to cool the economy and reduce the deficit.
The other way to go about it is to jack up interest rates sky-high, but that doesn’t fix the deficit.
You’re defending increasing the poverty rate because of a budget deficit. Are you aware that you’re trying to justify human suffering?
How well do you think the population would fare if the government goes bankrupt?
Are you honestly suggesting that Milei’s solution to that is the only possible solution? Libertarian austerity or nothing?
I mean, that is how the libertarians argue since time immemorial, isn’t it? “Cut the welfare state or the EcOnOMy never improves”
Freezing investment into the country and nuclear grade austerity will always bring inflation to an almost stand still. You’re literally tossing liquid nitrogen on your economy, it’s absolutely going to freeze.
The IMF does not expect the Argentine economy to grow this year, but rather to decline by 3.5%, while it should start growing next year.
And this is the key aspect that usually makes people who consider this pause for a second. Because freezing your economy might solve the right now problem, it also has the ability to ice economic activity completely, triggering an economic depression. This is the “balance” so to say. The harder your freeze, the more you’ll need to rewarm the markets to get your economy going again.
President Milei and the government hope that the new laws, which offer investors decades of tax and customs relief, will quickly attract capital and curb the recession.
This has always been the super tricky part of the weapons grade austerity. The what comes after part. So Milei has done it, he’s cooled the markets and supply has nearly cratered in the country. The next steps is to get production back and start pesos in the country to start flowing again.
I’ve always been a bit irresolute about Milei’s approach on the economy. I’m not against it, it’s just a strategy that’s playing with fire in a gun powder factory. First and foremost, I hope that the people in Argentina find economic stability, because boy do they deserve it. So to that end I hope WHOEVER succeeds in getting that done. And second, I really hope this is something that can be long lasting. Hyper austerity has a history of bad boomerang effects. It can work, it’s just takes a ton of work, more than most governments are willing to invest. And so there’s a big chance that we could start to see some positive only to then watch it completely crumble once again.
If I was a leader, this isn’t exactly a strategy I would pick. There’s just a ton of places where it can go all wrong. But I hope the guy gets it fixed once and for all. But dang, I don’t know how dude is smiling in that photo because if I was going down this road I wouldn’t be able to sleep properly.
Could you give some examples of where this has worked in the past?
I thought he was another right wing populist demagogue but apparently there is method to his madness. I hope he pulls off this stunt perfectly and is able to land the plane.
The method to his madness is “fuck the poor.”
It’s a lot easier to win the fight against inflation when you don’t give a shit who suffers because of it.
Seems a bit early to tell if this will have much of a lasting effect. So-called economic “shock therapies” have a long history of working for a year or so, and then unraveling later. And especially for Argentina, the cycle of decades of growth followed by decades of recession has been going on for a while now. I’ll be genuinely impressed if he manages to actually fix the economy long-term, but that still remains to be seen.
Do you have examples of previous failed shock therapy attempts at economy?
General Pinochet’s rule in Chile is a good example:
In fact, when Milton Friedman—one of the principal architects of the so-called Chicago School of economics—traveled to Chile in 1975, it was still not clear whether Pinochet would fully embrace the Chicago School’s economic program. It was only after Friedman met personally with the dictator that Pinochet was persuaded to fight inflation with “shock treatment”—that is, steep budget cuts that would cause high unemployment but, Friedman promised, would also put the country on a more secure economic path.
But the people are unemployed and in poverty.
They would be either way. For the moment there is some hope and evidence things are getting better instead of just endlessly sliding worse and worse.
The evidence is it’s getting worse, not better. Poverty is increasing significantly.
How is there hope?
It’s why inflation sucks soo much.
The only realistic way to make it so you can keep affording to buy something is to make it so alot of people can’t afford anything for now.
Or we could perpetually redistribute the excess wealth of the rich so everyone can have proportional spending power again.
Ir we could tie min wage to inflation.
There’s better ways of fixing income inequality than making everyone unemployed and homeless, but i guess it’s time humanity learn this economic lesson AGAIN instead of making correct decisions.
There is not enough wealth in Argentina to distribute to all the poor people. You need to grow the economy first. But if you print a lot of money and spend it, you get inflation.
So Milei is first getting spending and inflation in order which is cratering the economy. But at least it solves the budget and inflation problem.
…at the cost of human lives. Why does that not concern you?
*at the cost of widespread unemployment
They are siphoning all the money into corporations and then using the success of corporations (GDP) to evaluate their success.
Well they sure did make the GDP go up and now everyone is unemployed.
GDP is down
