An increase in poverty will never be good news, even if it is a very moderate level of 2.5 percentage points between the first half of 2023 and the second half of 2023. In clearer terms, the problem is that at this rhythm We are already targeting 20 million people, including 5.7 million homeless peoplewho occupy the last step of the social pyramid and that the vast majority have been occupying it for a long time.
It is clear, at least here, that the responsibility does not lie with Javier Milei’s management nor does it derive directly from the super adjustment that has begun to sow layoffs in the national state. If you like, the question constitutes the anchoring point of an economy that has entered deep recession zone where there will be no shortage of opportunities to find work.
Reports from consultancy firms that put a magnifying glass on the evolution of production activities warn that the real economy is at levels similar to those of March 2021, i.e. at the end of the great pandemic. To top it off, in 2020 prior to that year, GDP had collapsed by 19.9% and inflation was already soaring.
Read more here or right here, a battalion of INDEC statistics says that in January 2024 compared to January 2023 industrial production fell by 11.3% and then 16.9% in construction, 8.% in wholesale and retail trade, 12.6% in the financial activity itself and 13.5% in fishing. The final budget says so 11 sectors in red and 5 in positive and represents a direct version of how some of the big job-generating sectors are doing.
Other strong keys of this painting are people’s income and from what we see in private studies that also goes towards poverty.
They say, for starters, that compared to the first half of 2023, the average household income has increased by 69%. Finally, a big blow in favor of wage earners, except for one detail: in the last twelve months inflation has risen by 276%.
Of the same type we now have the cost of the so-called total basic food basket, which includes foods considered essential and defines the poverty threshold: increased for the impressive case by 300% between February 2023 and February 2004.
No big blow in favor of employees. In the same comparison, registered workers, paid blankly and protected by equality and labor standards, i.e. those best positioned in this fight, lose by 95 points against prices even between February 23 and 24.
It’s clear, Inflation always rules. And if there is a process of stagflation, as specialists call the Argentine landscape, what there is in reality is a picture with a lot of inflation and growth very close to zero or below zero.
Still numbers, the INDEC data for 2023 close with an annual inflation of 211.4%, or 116 points more than the 94.8% of the previous year. More numbers and final to the next series: that 2023 caused a drop in GDP of 1.6% compared to 2022.
Given the complete picture, the need to move forward with a well-armed and targeted economic plan on multiple fronts seems obvious, starting with inflation and without neglecting growth. And it wouldn’t be bad, after all, to archive the tired litany of how to eliminate problems by blaming others, since it is known that problems disappear only when they are solved.
Source: Clarin
