Milei admits recent months have been ‘hard,’ asks Argentines for more patience - Buenos Aires Herald

like reverends who tell you your Heaven awaits in the afterlife if you behave and don't ask too many questions, while they build their own paradise right here on Earth

Mileis stance on reducing excessive govt subsidies and freebies was important for many developing countries who have had issues similar to argentina. While most of the western developed countries that were traditionally capitalists are moving towards stronger welfare and more of a social democracies due to people being fed up with excessive capitalism, many developing countries have seen the opposite extreme. Around the 50,60s many of the newly independant countries and poorer developing countries really took to socialist ideals some under democratic setups , some under communist. They had borne the brunt of western colonialism which was seen as the extension of capitalist exploitation. While socialist/communist ideas talked of a fair society. Of course over time we have seen that treating an economic theory be it capitalism or socialism as some kind of sacred ideology that must be followed is a very flawed approach. But in those times, with that context some terms like socialism, communism even authoritarianism were seen in different light. But many countries followed socialism in an unsustainable or flawed way - govt welfare policies that could not be sustainably financed, freebies used as political tools and people who wanted an equal society ended up with opressive govts. Many communist countries failed and transitioned to democracy while communist countries like Russia and China reformed themselves to focus on trade too along side socialism and many of the democracies of the developing world that were socialists also had to transition to more of market economies but saw the freebie culture persist especially for political gain where corrupt govts gave freebies to the poor and pocketed money meant for developement so the countries didnt progress as much as they should have. Milie addressing the unsustainable and draining excessive govt welfare headon was kinda unique. Atleast in India it started a conversation about our own freebie culture and whether a politician will have enough guts to address it ( and by it i mean some kind of freebies like ladli behan yojana and NOT genuine govt welfare) while also kind of being an eye opener of how damaging too many freebies can be seeing argentina go from a developed country to what it is today. It also resonated because many of those developing economies eventually had to work on their private sector for jobs and growth to avoid economic destitution

Only if Argentina opens the strait for him

Bro did say times were hard lol

I can't believe I'm reading someone with sense. 30% of Argentina still believe everything you just quote is real and we are going in the "right direction".

Things are actually quite bad here for most people, but most Arg. Listnookors tend to be well off so their perspectives are twisted.

> Who is supposed to believe this?  If you don't like the INDEC use any other source, even the UCA, that is mostly controlled by the UCR, a corrupt party ( [they were found cheating on their intern elections](https://tn.com.ar/politica/2024/10/10/elecciones-de-la-ucr-se-filtro-un-audio-en-donde-un-apoderado-de-la-lista-lousteau-pide-alterar-el-resultado/) ), that obeys the Peronistas, admits that poverty is going down from what was left by the previous government. And those guys REALLY changed the measure of poverty since Milei became President, they basically account for loss of acquisitive power twice. > They moved the needle for what counts as poverty or straight up cooked the numbers some other way. No, they did not. what they did was change the 2014 list of goods and services that are accounted for the common good baskets that marks the poverty line. And this change was made when the INDEC was directed by a Peronista who was put there by Alberto Fernandez's government. There are many privates that measure poverty as well, and they all show a decreasing tendency. > Hang on a moment, the resource sectors show decent growth and investment. But none of it is reflected in any manufacturing? Or anything else that might move base resources up the value chain? genesir "forgot" to mention that our third highest employer, the agrarian sector, is among the ones that grew the most. The unemployment is always gonna be higher than in 2022-2023 because Massa employed millions of people for the elections which caused a 15% deficit and 134 billion dollars in debt to pay in 2024. Unemployment is still lower than [pre covid](https://es.tradingeconomics.com/argentina/unemployment-rate). > This reads less like an economic plan and more like "We'd like to turn our Economy into Russia". The economy of this country hasn't really grew [since 2011](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NGDPRSAXDCARQ). It's the first time in a while our economy has grew for 4 years in a row.

“Two weeks” ad infinitum

They ended up only taking 2.5 billion in a credit swap and they have already payed that money back with interest.

Wasn't it actually $40b? I guess running a country through cryptoscams needs a consistant influx of foreign money to be financially stable.

Where do you draw the line? Argentina has had nothing but economic woes since 1930. Every leader since then could blame the guys before them.

You're not wrong - the issue is that you can't climb out of the hole with austerity alone. I don't know what the answer is when you're not part of something like the EU where there is willingness to work to a solution and countries can be pulled out of a death spiral. For Argentina though, any dollar not spend comes at the cost of a more expensive solution later. E.g. if you are saving money by not replacing bridges, eventually the bridge collapses and you have to buy a new one, but bridges will never be cheaper than today and 20 years from now they may cost twice as much. So if you aren't buying a bridge today, that money you're saving better be growing fast enough it can cover a double cost bridge when you need it. This holds true for all infrastructure, for subsidies to drive production, even for skill in the government, if you fire people today that would train the people over the next twenty years and you need those specialties again, you're paying consultants at 3x the wage who don't know any of the tacit legacy of any of it (which means they have to be paid to learn it, and will make costly mistakes because of it -  Canada's Phoenix payment system is a great example of what happens when you fire the people who know how it works and pay consultants who don't). So what, keep spending? Well there is a limit on that too - unfortunately spend or save, you have to increase productivity or increase export. It seems like Argentina is not doing either well enough for it to matter so death spiral it is unless they start cutting deals to be exploited - which obviously also has its downsides.