Retirees, university students, scientists and workers are like ghosts that swarm around Javier Milei, a year after his arrival at the Casa Rosada. While the far-right president of Argentina celebrates closing 2024 with a fiscal surplus and slowing inflation, the majority of Argentines have seen their income reduced amid the recession and the increase in rates for essential services. Those who also celebrate are the great businessmen who have multiplied their profits.
Milei targeted the workers since he took office on December 10. The megadevaluation of 54.3% that month – which triggered inflation in the first months of the year – and the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) with which it attempted to repeal laws and remove labor rights to deregulate the economy, were the first weapons of the political outsider. The DNU had some judicial setbacks, but essentially it moved forward. Then the controversial Base Law would arrive, which would pave the way for applying the chainsaw to public spending and privatizations.
“Abuse of the decree and the presidential veto”
Pablo Alabarces, doctor in Sociology, researcher at Conicet and professor at the University of Buenos Aires, tells elDiario.es that it is a year of democratic regression. “Milei governs without respecting the separation of powers, since he legislates through the abuse of the decree and the presidential veto. The first measure he took was an unconstitutional decree, then he vetoed the increase laws for retirees and public universities, which sought to alleviate the effects of his economic policies that destroy popular income.”
The “largest adjustment in the history of humanity,” as Milei promised, which the “political caste” would pay for, fell on the elderly. Last October, a minimum retirement was 21% less in real terms than in September 2023. In addition, the State cut medication coverage. According to the National Institution of Statistics and Censuses (Indec), 30% of retirees have poverty income.
“Jubilicide”
“The fight against caste is the fight against retirees,” Miguel Ponce, former undersecretary of Industry and Commerce during the government of Raúl Alfonsín (radical center-left), told Diario.es. “Retirees are suffering the greatest ‘retirement’ since the pension system existed in Argentina and to this we must add the loss of purchasing power of the vast majority of the popular sectors, particularly young people and children.”
According to the Indec report for the first half of 2024, 52.9% of Argentines are below the poverty line, which represents an increase of 12.8 percentage points compared to the same period in 2023.
The Argentine Social Debt Observatory of the Argentine Catholic University (UCA) revealed that the level of poverty in the last quarter of the year reached 49.9% of the population, that is, around 23 million people. The figure is more significant among minors. 65.5% of children live in vulnerable situations.
Falling wages, reducing inflation
The hit to salaries and the recession are the other side of reducing inflation – around 3% per month – and controlling the dollar. According to the Cifra think tank, since Milei’s arrival to the Executive, the average real salaries of registered workers fell 6.8% between November 2023 and September 2024. Public sector employees, in particular, lost 16% .
Despite all this, industry and commerce performed even worse than during the pandemic. In the first 9 months of 2024, industry contracted by 12.4% and trade by 10.8%. Construction fell 19.5% this year, while 16,500 small and medium-sized businesses have closed so far.
Ponce breaks down the macroeconomic stability data shown by the Executive. “If we analyze the achievements that the Government displays, such as the brake on inflation and the fiscal surplus, we realize the way in which they were obtained: the use of manipulation of the exchange market and exchange rates as an anti-inflationary anchor, and the recessive process that has been experienced. We have returns on the famous carry trade of over 40% in these 11 months. My feeling is that there is a divorce between the celebration of the markets and the real economy that is becoming more evident every day.”
During this year, large economic groups saw their profitability multiply: energy, food, oil and financial companies benefited from market deregulation and exponential increases in rates for essential services such as electricity and water.
“The result I would say is the acceleration of our process of Latin Americanization of the economy with an impact, of course, on the Latin Americanization of our society. In a process of economic concentration that is visible,” adds Ponce.
Milei’s government closed ministries such as Women, Gender and Diversity and cut funds in science and research, while maintaining a struggle not to increase the budget of public universities.
Days ago Milei, star speaker at the CPAC summit in Buenos Aires, said: “If you take the third quarter of the year, the economy expanded by 3.4%. We lowered inflation, which was 54% monthly, to 1-2. The level of activity today is above what we inherited in December (…) it is worth doing things well.” Alabarces contradicts the triumphalist story. “Inflation went down, yes, but consumption and production fell. Its economic success is debatable. You cannot occupy the street. He maintained that 60 thousand people attended the second university march and that is false (it is estimated that there were about 400 thousand). In the first demonstration he arrested 37 people, accusing them of being terrorists and coup plotters; some were detained for two months. It is a course towards fascism. The way in which Milei intervenes publicly is undemocratic: he insults, he talks about ‘shitty lefties’, he is convinced that he has to have his opponents erased.”
The question of the cultural battle is part of the balance and would provide some answer about the passivity of a part of Argentine society to support the adjustment, as well as the approval of the government of the Libertad Avanza leader. The average of the surveys agree that half of the people approve of Milei’s management, so the idea that we must sacrifice today for a better tomorrow would have penetrated.
Alabarces relativizes the conclusions of the opinion consultants. “Popular support is a label that conceals much more than it reveals. Milei does not have more than 50% support, and it is not the same in every place in Argentina, in Mendoza, Córdoba, or the province of Buenos Aires. Except for its hard core of militants, no one else believes in this agenda against feminism, abortion, the woke. And the core of their cultural battle is in that program.”
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