Analysis
Milei is worse than COVID at increasing poverty in Argentina
About 53% of the population is below the poverty line, an 11% increase in six months. Over 5 million people can’t even afford the food they need.
What the Milei government has been the most successful at is increasing the number of poor people in Argentina.
According to the latest survey by INDEEC, the National Institute of Statistics, covering the first half of the year, 52.9 percent of the population is living below the poverty line, 11.2 percent more than in the previous six months, an increase more than two times higher than the one recorded during the pandemic.
Thus, not even COVID managed to have worse effects.
There are 29.6 million people for whom the products that make up the minimum consumption basket necessary for a decent life have become unaffordable; of these, 5.4 million can’t even afford the food they need (an increase from 11.9 percent to 18.1 percent of those living under the poverty line).
The situation of children under the age of 14 is even more dramatic: 66.1 percent are living in families below the poverty line (and one in four destitute families who cannot afford food).
It’s such a dramatic picture that the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child has joined the chorus of those who sounded the alarm about the “continuous and drastic decrease” in funding for children, including cutting investments in health and education.
However, even faced with the fact that it is pushing 29,000 more people into poverty every single day, the Milei government did not budge an inch, blaming the entire situation on the previous administrations: Milei’s spokesman Manuel Adorni went as far as to boast that if the president and his team had not “averted hyperinflation,” poverty would have risen “up to 95 percent.”
If some people are poor, “it’s because someone did some things wrong,” Adorni claimed, and definitely not because of the brutal adjustment program carried out by the current government, with last December's 50 percent devaluation of the peso against the dollar, the increase in the price of food and the cost of public services, the reduction in workers' real wages (by 29.5 percent compared to last year), the resulting collapse in purchasing power (by 48.6 percent compared to the first half of 2023), and the repeated waves of layoffs.
“Peronism” is the scapegoat of choice for the government: “It takes a second to tear down a building, rebuilding it takes much longer,” said the presidential spokesman, stressing the “disastrous legacy” Milei’s government had been handed, “among the worst in history.”
There are other numbers Milei likes to flaunt: for instance, he says inflation was at 17,000 percent at the start of his terms and now has dropped to 211.9 percent. He also claimed an 8.1 percent increase in pensions, which he vetoed, would have cost the treasury $370 billion, that is, eight times more the loan previously granted by the International Monetary Fund to Mauricio Macri's government – an inflated number contradicted by a decree he himself signed.
For pensioners, the torrent of numbers coming from Milei are irrelevant. They are continuing their protests every Wednesday in front of Congress, not intimidated by the deployment of police, military police and soldiers ordered each time by Minister Patricia Bullrich.
The professors and workers at national universities are also protesting to protect their salaries and the University Funding Act, which Milei has already announced he will veto in its entirety. They are joined on the warpath by the Association of State Employees (ATE): facing another deadline for the expiration of quarterly contracts, they fear a fourth ruinous wave of layoffs at the end of the month, after the one in June. “The social conflict is growing,” ATE Secretary General Rodolfo Aguiar says; however, ”the level of unity of the workers throughout the country is growing as well.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/tasso-di-poverta-in-argentina-milei-peggio-del-covid on 2024-09-28