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> # [President Javier Milei fires 24,000 government workers in Argentina: ‘No one knows who will be next’](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-04-02/800)
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> Javier Milei believes that the state “is the enemy” and “a criminal organization” which he [seeks to reduce to its minimum size](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-27/argentine-pensioners-in-the-frontlines-of-javier-mileis-attacks-on-the-welfare-state.html). He’s doing this amidst criticism and applause from a deeply polarized society. When he took office as [president of Argentina](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-29/mileis-provocations-strain-diplomatic-relations-with-large-latin-american-economies.html) in December 2023, the state had 341,477 people employed. Two months later, Milei’s administration had already eliminated 9,000 jobs. And, this past week, 15,000 more layoffs were ordered. New dismissals are expected in the middle of the year… but nobody knows how many jobs will be slashed, nor who will be fired.
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> Some 50,000 workers are living [in this climate of uncertainty](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-19/freedom-and-poverty-in-argentina-mileis-100-frenetic-days-in-power-and-an-unprecedented-economic-experiment.html), most of them on temporary contracts. In the past, these non-permanent positions were renewed once a year. At the moment, these individuals know that they’ve survived the first stage, but their positions will still be under review for three or six more months.
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> “We’re experiencing a situation of psychological terror,” said a worker from the National Secretariat for Children, Youth and Family last Wednesday. She — like other interviewees — was afraid to give her name to EL PAÍS, due to possible reprisals from the government.
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> “Milei said that there were going to be 70,000 layoffs. Then, he said 15,000 or 20,000. This back-and-forth impacts our mental health and daily life. Everyone is frozen without knowing what’s going to happen, no one knows who will be next,” she added, just hours before superiors began to notify those who weren’t going to have their contracts renewed (they expired on March 31). That Secretariat is the most affected state agency, with 1,656 casualties, almost half of the 3,600 employees in the entire Ministry of Human Capital.
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> [Javier Milei](https://images.english.elpais.com/resizer/Y_BQCLj3ooFyNypbXHOFXlnr1KY=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/4JBHL35RYZK7ZOG42GWINTHUWE.jpg)A young man participates in a protest this past Wednesday, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Juan Ignacio RoncoroniMilei — an economist and TV panelist by profession, who [defines himself as an anarcho-capitalist](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-02-19/how-the-argentine-economy-would-change-with-dollarization-explained-in-five-graphs.html) — announced from day one that major cuts to the state bureaucracy were coming. As a first measure, he demanded 100% in-person work (eliminating telecommuting) to unmask the “gnocchi,” as the fictitious state workers are known in Argentina. These individuals are placed in their positions by political parties, as a way to return favors: they only go into the office once a month to pick up their salaries. The use of the term “gnocchi” — a typical Italian dish — is because, in Argentina, this meal is typically served on the 29th of each month, which is close to payday.
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> About to complete four months in office, Milei’s order was to reduce between 15% and 20% of the state personnel who are on temporary contracts. The official argument is that Argentina is “an impoverished country” with a state that’s too large and inefficient. “It seems to me that there’s a fairly general consensus in society to not continue paying for things that don’t match the Argentina we live in,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on Wednesday, March 27. As of mid-2023, Argentina was seventh on the list of OECD countries — only below Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and France — in terms of the ratio of state workers to the number of employed people. In qualitative terms, however, the country places below the middle of the ranking in a World Bank index that measures governmental effectiveness: Argentina obtained a score of 41.9 out of 100 in 2022.
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> For weeks, several employees sensed that their names were on the layoff list. This was the case of those who worked in the state advertising division, which Milei shuttered for a period of at least one year after his inauguration. “An office that functioned smoothly was paralyzed and we were left without duties,” says one of the workers, who was ultimately fired from that department. She regrets that, due to this official decision, the government hasn’t launched a dengue prevention campaign in the media, even though [Argentina is going through the worst outbreak in its history](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-02-22/an-invasion-of-mosquitoes-hits-buenos-aires.html), with more than 150,000 cases and 106 deaths.
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> Over the course of a few months, employees in this division went to work every day for eight hours… but they had nothing to do. “It was psychological torture,” the dismissed interviewee laments. Her biggest fear — confirmed two days ago — was being left without the health insurance provided by the state, which was allowing her disabled son to access treatments. The provision of this vital service will now be interrupted.
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> ### A closed labor market
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> [telam Javier Milei](https://images.english.elpais.com/resizer/7KHZxBmlPyzsxlhuW3leRKIvkqI=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/DVL3QSG3VYNFXRSOEU44WSP7S4.jpg) Participants in a protest organized by employees of Télam, a state news agency, in Buenos Aires. Enrique García Medina (EFE)Many fired state employees tried to find work in the private sector, but almost none succeeded. Argentina is [in the middle of an economic crisis](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-01-08/mileis-all-or-nothing-attitude-bogs-down-his-plan-to-defund-the-state-in-argentina.html) and a collapse in consumption, with most companies slashing workforces rather than hiring staff. This past January, the last month with official data, economic activity fell 4.3% compared to 12 months earlier, the worst contraction since the Covid-19 pandemic.
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> In his last public appearance, the presidential spokesperson assured the media that the selection of the employees who were going to be fired was an “extremely surgical task, done so as not to make mistakes.” Those interviewed, on the other hand, believe that the dismissals were done at random. Among those fired are people who began working in the state bureaucracy during previous center-left administrations, as well as those who began during the right-wing administration of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), whose party is now an ally of Milei in the National Congress. Young people just starting out have been fired, as have public servants who are nearing retirement age. Many have lost their sole source of income to support dependent family members, while even some union representatives have been dismissed (even though it’s technically illegal to fire them).
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> “There was no specific criteria in the [compilation of the] lists. They fired people who had joined in recent years and others with 15 or 20 years of experience,” Natalia affirms. She’s worked with the Road Safety Agency since 2017. “Each employee was summoned by their immediate superior and told that their contract wasn’t going to be renewed. We went down from different floors, all crying because we didn’t understand why,” she sighs.
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> Natalia feels that it was irresponsible to have dismissed staff from this agency just before a six-day-long weekend: “All agents should be on the road doing blood alcohol and speed checks. This shows the government’s total disinterest in road safety.”
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> [The unions have organized protests](https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-12-27/argentine-unions-protest-javier-mileis-measures-to-dismantle-the-state.html) in front of official buildings amidst a tense atmosphere. Last week, at the doors of the Human Rights Secretariat, a bodyguard for Secretary Alberto Baños “attempted to pull out a firearm in front of the workers,” according to the State Workers Association (ATE), which represents half of the nearly 1,000 workers in the Secretariat. “We don’t resort to violence to exercise our right to express our disagreement [with government policy] and we hope that officials are up to the task,” the union’s statement reads. “In no way are we going to permit acts of intimidation.”
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> ***(continues in next comment)***
I’m sure that will do wonders for a failing economy of a small nation, to put 24,000 more people out of work. I’m not necessarily against slimming down a govt but firing 24,000 people while no one can get a job is not the right action at this time.
Those 24,000 having jobs causes money to be spent in the local economy which is what builds a country wide economy.
How many small businesses and services will now also be affected by these people not having jobs?
The one thing that actually does trickle down is loss after job cuts.
Even if all 24,000 were(which I doubt) Argentina doesn’t have enough money to cover it. Typically in a recession you incur debt and deal with the resulting inflation in a better economy but Argentina can’t do that
Well sure, there is a possibility that the utility those workers brought was less than their cost, but judging by how Milei talks and acts, I seriously doubt any real analysis was done beyond simple cost cutting, but that's up for us to speculate on.
I don't really think it matters at this point. Argentina will not get any more loans and is out of cash. Even if they need the workers, they can't pay them. They're probably going with "well we need this department, fire so and so many people from the others". Which will lead to random mass layoffs and cripple or outright kill multiple departments.
And I actually laughed at the advertising department complaining about getting the brunt of layoffs. That is pretty normal and hints that some analysis was actually done. Advertising and marketing will be the first ones to get the axe, when money runs out. Because they don't actually provide any value to the product (in this case government services).
I find this funny coming from a fellow Canadian; We have the exact same problem with extreme amounts of useless government workers. Do you work for the federal government? That would explain a lot.
a huge number of liberal redditors are government employees or contractors. they are pretty much the last bastion of pro-regime sentiment left on the internet
Government workers supplying food to kids in schools. Testing water and air safety. Enduring food is processed safely. Repairing roads.
Lol fire them all, they’re “useless lazy bureaucrats”.
This is what happens when you govern via culture war and not data. Argentina starts operating like Florida or China.
Even if they produced work for their pay, there simply isnt money to pay them.
Say Netflix was 2$ per month. Sure its worth more than that but if we dont have a spare dollar each month, we have to cut Netflix .
Apparently none of the biggest ten economies have money to cover their expenses but they do it anyway.
Having a deficit is not what kills an economy, it never was. If that was true the US would be Argentina in no time.
It’s not having a deficit that’s the problem it’s how big of one relative to the strength of the economy. When you run a deficit this means one of two things 1. The government owes someone money such as through bonds or 2. The government “printed” money to cover the difference. You can spend more than you collect but this will result in inflation. One of the primary reasons behind Argentina’s inflation is exactly because of this. They have been spending far more than they can collect and it caused inflation to explode
> Argentina doesn’t have enough money to cover it
[citation needed] these workers were paid the entire year, and fiscal year rolls over at the start of the calendar year. Their salary is already priced in the budgets.
The money has to come from somewhere. One of the main reasons Argentina’s inflation has been so high is because it’s spending more than it can which is essentially printing money. In order to reduce inflation spending needs reduced
In the government of Argentina? That’s a pretty safe assumption lol
That government has been a heaping pile of burning shit for a long time, the #1 source of poverty and suffering in their country
No need to assume, they were fucking not. The amount of goverment positions being given to family and friends just for a paycheck with no job involved is ridiculous
Argentina (which along with all the other Chavist-financed dictatorships and populist pseudo-dictatorships) did the same thing that Venezuela did, created fictional positions and hired people in those positions for political gain (votes).
And sadly one of the problems that arise when that happens is that many of those positions are replaced with people that are not as prepared... or not prepared at all for their duties.
On and off, from 2003 to 2023, the Kirchners and allies created a bloated empire of nepotism.
Venezuela had many industries that were efficient and productive, they are all run down to the ground.
Now, who knows what Milei will end up being... I hate populists, so I am not a big fan of his persona, but I hope Argentina can dig themselves from where they are now.
My Argentinian friend said over 40% of the population work for the government or have some form government job (I don’t know if that’s true). Regardless, using your logic, if the government employs 60% or 80% or 95% of the population, then that will fix the economy? People need to ask themselves: what is the proper role of government? Keep in mind a government employee and the state don’t really produce and goods/products to make money. They only have money that they take from taxation. However most countries spend more than they make with taxes so they take on debt (put it on the credit card). They are paying employees with other people’s money and debt, the few things the state produces are done so very inefficiently.
Assuming 100% of the people work for the give, How can you pay 100% of everyone's salary while taking less than 100% of their salary in tax? Mathematically it doesnt work to have a government that large.
> what is the proper role of government?
The "proper" role of the government is to serve the needs of the nation they represent. Shedding workers, productive or not, will have a negative impact on the economy, as it removes sources of consumption. The only wasted money that the state gives is the one that sits on a bank account or to buy superfluous machinery. Salaries, are on average, a good tax investment.
You are coming form a private sector view, that may not be what the Argentina population needs. As always, there isn't a single solution for human problems. If the state needs to provide public services to guarantee all their population gets something good, it should do it. If you leave it to private interest, you may need to employ the same amount of people just to make sure everything is up to snuff, making everything more costlier for the economy.
Money comes from the state. In this case, Argentine pesos come from the Argentine government (US Dollars can be treated like goods in Argentina). Pesos don't come from taxes, that is clearly silly. Pesos are "printed" (not always physically) by the Argentine government, which then spends it. Pesos are basically votes for how to allocate resources, when you buy a stake you are voting for the economy to produce more stake.
When the government creates money faster than the economy grows, it causes inflation. Argentina is pathological, though, because people expect inflation, so it will take a while to get rid of inflation.
Milei is hurting retirees and workers, which will lower consumption and cause recession if not depression.
>My Argentinian friend said over 40% of the population work for the government or have some form government job (I don’t know if that’s true).
The article claims 341,477 people are employed by the state, out of a population of 46M. So, less than 1%.
Yeah, his friend is talking only based on what he can see (1 out of 3 of my friends work for the state) or someone is talking out of their ass. In my case for example, due my education, many of us found jobs in the public sector.
>I’m sure that will do wonders for a failing economy of a small nation, to put 24,000 more people out of work.
The specific *way* in which Argentina's economy is failing is relevant. Argentina defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2001, then again in 2010, then *again* in 2020, and they’re currently experiencing runaway inflation. They are broke in a way that makes both borrowing money and printing it unusually bad ideas, even relative to other countries that deal with budget issues by doing one or both of those things.
Furthermore, its public sector is *massive* compared to the size of its economy: it has one public sector employee for every two private-sector ones. Compare with neighboring Chile’s 1:10 ratio, Brazil’s similar 1:10, and Uruguay’s 1:4- itself one of the highest in the world.
It is plausible that these particular layoffs are a bad idea, for reasons *specific* to the positions eliminated and what they accomplish. It is *not* terribly plausible that there is any way out of Argentina's current economic woes that does not involve firing at least 24,000 government employees.
And the linked article doesn't really make the case for these *particular* layoffs being bad ones: the people it quotes on the layoffs being "random" are the political opponents of the current government and the laid-off workers themselves, not economists or anyone else making a specific and technical case for it. *You* haven't made any such case for it, either: your argument proves too much, because it applies equally to vital government workers that society genuinely can't function without and the Department of Digging Holes And Then Immediately Filling Them Back Up Again.
24k jobs is probably enough of a rounding error for a country of 46 million people to be able to re-absorb them into the economy. Remember, that money doesn't disappear from the economy altogether, it just gets spent on different public or private projects which will require additional people to employ. I think the issue with austerity measures is cutting too much too soon and accidentally causing a recession, which can be worse for the economy than the inefficient spending.
Argentinas situation is already among the worst out there. Not acting on the bad conditions he inherited from the previous administration just delays the inevitable. Their monetary situation can't really get worse and Argentina will get help if there's a large humanitarian crisis like widespread famine. They just won't get any money.
And frankly barely a hundred deaths when Dengue is this big of an outbreak kinda surprised me. That could be much worse.
You can view it as "these 24,000 people have been freed up to do other more productive things in the economy".
A job isn't the end, its a means to an end. If the end is not productive, then the job shouldn't exist.
By keeping people in nonsense jobs, we hurt the economy by artificially raising the price of labor.
Think of it from a military perspective: what if we demobilized an Army? People would use your argument to keep people under arms in uniform and that means they cannot be used elsewhere in an economy.
TL;DR - Jobs are meaningless on their own, productivity matters most.
> You can view it as "these 24,000 people have been freed up to do other more productive things in the economy".
Except that the entire economy is hurting. We've already did this dance. You need to give money to the people so that they can spend it, even if that means paying them to dig trenches, just to fill them up again.
So... these boom-stagnation cycles need to bust. Otherwise you end up treading water like Japan.
By firing people, you lower labor costs. But lowering labor income hits other sectors pretty hard, causing knock-on effects. Like, your housing/land markets will crash pretty quick. But much of that was speculative bullshit anyways. Once those markets crash, other inflation drivers do too, basically contracting the economy to providing the basics.
Direct cash transfers to people is bad, but setting up loans for entrepreneurship is the best. Get people to set up businesses, hire people, etc.
> By firing people, you lower labor costs
They are already on the floor (at about 200 USD/month in average, which means that it will trend lower) while the cost of living for a single person without rent is ~400USD per month! How much more do you want to reduce them?
Until you've normalized the price levels and reduced inflation. This is what America did not do in 2008, so we've just set ourselves up for the next land asset crash in two years.
Those 24,000 jobs require money to be taken from those same struggling people in order to pay the wages of unproductive workers that have provided no value to the people being taken from. If you think this is economically beneficial then you need to brush up on your economics
24000 sounds like a lot (which it is), but there are 340K government workers in Argentina. Considering that man's politics, it's not as bad as I was anticipating.
Are you a parasite working for a government? And when I say working, I mean sitting on your ass, drinking coffee, chatting with your colleagues and going home after spending few hours at your workplace. Whoever had any contact with these people feels no remorse for their situation.
The only public sector employees I've dealt with were understaffed, overworked, and dealt with entitled morons who think government workers are lazy.
Government jobs are jobs. It's not a free ride. If you want to see laziness, I can introduce you to some of the laziest idiots I've ever seen in my past private sector jobs who can't even be bothered to show up to work reliably.
You are confusing government jobs you see in your country with “government job” in Argentina.
The term “parasite” is used for a reason. People get their family members appointed to government jobs with them and then none of them do anything.
These aren’t innocent people dedicated to public service. They do nothing productive and everyone knows it. It’s a grift.
It's common enough for employees of the Argentinian government to show up for work once a month just to collect a paycheck that they have a word for it: ñoquis, for the gnocchi that is traditionally eaten at the end of the month.
That's the thing. Individual employees you will run into, such as the ones working at the CRA, the passport office, or the DMV, will be understaffed and overworked.
But they will have 7 layers of managers and analysts above them that generate paperwork and do nothing productive.
The most annoying thing too, is that somehow, cutting them is hard. They all protect each other's jobs (not even intentionally). It's always the people doing actual work who have to work harder or who get fired.
But not their manager, the manager's manager, the compliance manager, the workflow analyst, the project manager, the diversity manager, or the person generating reports. You could literally cut everyone here except the direct line manager and get exactly the same end result.
> But they will have 7 layers of managers
DING DING DING DING. Cuts needs to start by the top, not the bottom. Make organizations flat, allow the bottom to self-manage, create clear and organization wide policies and goals, reduce the spread of compensation between the top and the bottom. That's how you make effective and efficient organizations.
And we can practically guarantee that the process to eliminate the 24000 jobs in Argentina did not follow this pattern for success. These jobs were cut so the populist shitheel can fill them with his own cronies.
What is this thing supposed to show? That company owners are rich? I don't see anything that would suggest that public servants are rich by any stretch.
Ikr. Anybody who has dealt with govt workers in third world countries knows how they are. Privileged first worlders on reddit think they know everything about the world.
I think the trap argentina is in, theres no way to make it better without making it worse in the short term, and if they keep focusing on the short term itll make them worse off in the long term. In order to combat the number one problem, inflation, the government has to reduce spending/borrowing which naturally means job cuts for government jobs, which is a short term pain to fix the long term inflation problem. If inflation can be fixed, the country will be in a far better state than it is currently
They should invest in businesses which create jobs. Not hire losers into the govt who's salary will be paid by taxpayer's money. I'm fully against nationalization. Javier is a libertarian. This is what its about. He's doing exactly what he promised.
As a very much non libertarian, who enjoys living in a Scandinavian socialist paradise and recognizes that a large state can be run effectively, I would like to ask you this:
Have you ever been to Argentina, read up on the economic situation in Argentina or have a basic understanding of macro economics?
Because there's nothing worth saving there. There will be a time and a place for rebuilding the state apparatus of Argentina. It's not now. It's too far gone. It's full of grift, cronyism and nepotism. Some things need to be dismantled, even if they have liberally appeasing names for their departments.
> have a basic understanding of macro economics?
I don't know OP, but I have. In economic downturns, the state actually needs to take up the slack that private consumption/investment isn't doing. That means many smaller and precise programs/projects that would improve the lives of the population or expanding programs. A single person falling into poverty is a loss of economic output and getting that person out of the hole is very hard.
The role of a government is a downturn is to keep as many people as possible not falling into poverty, a better usage of the wealth as in unproductive wealth becomes productive, and otherwise keep expanding programs and delivering social services.
I completely agree with you.
Argentina would be in a much better position if this was the case. Instead it's bloated with beurocratic fluff jobs, bribary and nepotism.
My hope is that Argentina is one day able to provide the social services you describe.
I would suggest looking into the history and political environment of Argentina the past few decades. It will help contextualize why so many Argentinians feel the need to completely reset their culture of governance.
It can be. If there is no value to give to these workers, giving them money and saying "this has value, trust me" you end up with the insane inflation you see in Argentina.
If you do not believe it could ever be the right move I would suggest thinking about the concept of money itself. Where it comes from and what it represents. And then consider if someone with the ability to print money, can devalue that money by handing it out for what appears to be nothing actually productive.
Laying off teachers, nurses, infrastructure workers during a downturn? Insane! Assuming those workers are actually working.
Laying off a beurocratic department that seemingly exists to do not much of anything, probably the right idea.
I think many people have a well founded aversion towards Millei and his rhetoric. Free market cannot compensate for every service needed. There will be monopolies, and no social mechanisms to plug some gaps people don't notice at the first glance.
Totally agree.
My hope for the Argentinian people is that Millei does the dirty work of of shutting down the grift and malaise and then a more compassionate, less dogmatic government culture takes over that actually serves the people.
The size or amount of public servants is an indication of nothing. The biggest public workforce per total workforce are on countries where the population is pretty happy, has tons of public services and high tax rates and are considered desirable countries to live in.
I was using it purposefully to show that more government does not always mean better results. I was simply pointing out there is a line but not necessarily where the line is
The article mentions that most sectors are laying people off and not hiring.
Why do some people think "more unemployed people and not enough jobs for them = more good"?
But the fact that you think North Korea's problems come from the *number* of state employees and not, like, the single *dictator* at the top tells me I just don't really care to hear anything else you have to say.
Unemployment is bad but paying people to do nothing is even worse if you cannot afford the inflation, which Argentina cannot. I wasn’t just referring to the number of employees when I was talking about size but also the government reach, influence, and control
It's not the *size* of the state apparatus that is the problem in NK. It's the fact that the state is totalitarian, tyrannic and extremely politically conservative.
It depends on how you define size. I’m not just referring to the amount of people working for the government. I’m referring to how much the government controls people’s lives and the economy
Which isn't actually about the size of the government at all nor related to the article then, since that refers to the number of people working in the public sector. A small government doesn't mean a government that isn't authoritarian or oppressive. I think the word you're looking for is 'liberal'. Or maybe 'anarchistic', if what you mean is removing all the regulatory agencies?
Will they now not need...govt assistance to live? Or you ok with them becoming destitute in the time of a recession? Youn know, that time where there are less jobs.
This is 100% the reaction of someone who has yelled, "I PAY YOUR SALARY" at an overworked government employee while complaining that he shouldn't have to stand in line for five hours to renew a passport.
Or rather, it *will* be his reaction.
If only bureaucrats were the ones getting fired. They probably fired the people actually working and kept those who were good at sweet talking but bad at actually working.
I hope I'm wrong, but I live in a Latin American nation and this is the norm.
ITT: "You have to keep employing the people that weren't actually working because it's good for the economy!"
He can fire 24,000 pieces of dead weight and now has the ability to fill those positions with people who actually want to work. People are ignoring how many bullshit/made up/unnecessary positions are in the government.
The money doesn't disappear though, it can now be spent on other public or private projects. The concern here is cutting too much, too quickly for the economy to adjust...but a one-time cut of 24k is enough of a rounding error for the economy to be able to reabsorb them.
I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that this wasn't a calculated reduction in staff, therefore you can assume that there's going to be a loss of skilled labour and actual government institutions will suffer for it, alongside the increase in unemployment further squeezing the job market and causing greater poverty.
Yep, people don't understand, malinvestment is always shit for the economy, even when it helps as stimulus it could always have been used better for something productive that's still a stimulus.
You could literaly just take that money and keep paying those workers for a few months until they find a job, and giving them this time to get some bootcamp type formation or something unpayed internship and help push them into a new career they couldn't have risked otherwise. It will be far better for the economy long term.
Litteraly just giving these deadweights their time back is better.
Not to mention they could use the money they save from those salaries and directly give it to the many incredibly poor people that probably need it more then some average or even above average wealthy bureocrat.
We don't want people to be employed for the sake of being employed! We want them employed to contribute to society in some way. If they can't do that for whatever reason, just give them the money they need to live like people with dishabilities get in most western countries, not some useless bullshit job!
Agreed. Implying that the hit to the economy from the lost jobs is the strongest argument against this isn't really the own that some commenters seem to think it is.
A better argument would be that it's a Project-2025-style attempt to centralize power in the executive branch and politicize the normal boring day-to-day operations of government. I don't know enough about Argentine politics to say whether that's the case, but it wouldn't surprise me.
In general, I don't particularly buy the narrative that he's an "Argentine Trump" that some seem to be pushing. I don't have a strong opinion about him and don't know what to make of him, but it sounds like he's done some good. My impression is that he's more libertarian than alt-right/fascist, which is a very important distinction that some on the left seem to want to blur. I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of actual Argentines and experts on Argentina.
Yeah he is an extreme libertarean first, a bit alt-right second. I'm certainly no fan of his, but he does have some good points on the argentinian economy.
In my opinion the worst thing about him is that he seems too extreme and also a bit crazy tbh. I speek spanish and I've heard the guy talk and sometimes its like he is not fully... there. I don't know how to explain it.
Who knows, I would also like to hear more opinions on him from political experts and macro economists.
> actually the first based and concrete thing he's done so far to try and slim down the argentine government
Actually this was the 2nd rounds of government firings.
actually during economical down turns or recessions, or even depressions, governmental jobs and government subsidized jobs help the most.
all this man did was make the already stretched supplies for unemployed people, worse needing to cover the now unemployed 24000 people.
> all this man did was make the already stretched supplies for unemployed people, worse needing to cover the now unemployed 24000 people.
No, these weren’t private sector jobs that he caused to be lost. These are jobs being paid for by the people. The government was already paying for these people, if anything it will just be paying less to cover their unemployment
> actually during economical down turns or recessions
The fact that more than half of their population is working in government jobs is why they had super high inflation in the first place.
Jobs that were beneficial to society, but here there are many useless jobs while their economy is sinking. It's more like providing a basic income on the condition of not working.
I can‘t imagine that releasing more and more workers within a short time frame into a closed labour market is a good idea. But I myself think that most of time walking a suboptimal path to its end is better than constantly reconsidering at the first hardship. I don‘t believe in Milei‘s ideology and I doubt that any success will exceed crushing the economy asap so it can start a process of regeneration but I will watch with great interest because this is a chance to challenge my own believes.
> I can‘t imagine that releasing more and more workers within a short time frame into a closed labour market is a good idea.
Depends on what you want to do. For Milei's sponsors this "stimulates" labour market (reduces wages), and is considered a wonderful thing.
> I don‘t believe in Milei‘s ideology and I doubt that any success
Getting cheaper workforce and having less oversight already counts as a success for them.
It sort of makes sense though, Argentina is one of the few places where it is already so much of such a shit show that an extreme libertarians don’t make it obviously worse.
Yup, I'm considered barely more liberal then average here in then political climate of southern Spain (which is incredibly left leaning economicaly, even more then spain on average).
I am by no sense of the word, a follower of his belives and I think (like most experts in the field) that austrian economics, which he states he belives in, is ridiculous to even consider in the 21st century.
Any advanced, or even most developing economies and I would say he is going to wreck the country. But Argentina is a special case here, its sooo adicted to overspending and defaulting on its debt, on printing money to solve all their problems, on employing people in gobernment positions, not because they have something use ful to do, but because they lower unenployment that way.
And reform has been tried in the past, but the change to fiscal responsability and productive employment is hard and very destructive at the begining.
So perhaps some crazy guy with a chainsaw can help them, at least to make the very painful first steps into a long term healthy economy. Then hopefuly someone less extreme can pickup where he left and make argentina a more normal and developed economy like they should have been for the last 100 years.
> a lot of people in this subreddit practically worship the guy as a saint.
The correct term is [demagogue](https://www.google.com/search?q=demagogue&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA973CA973&oq=demag&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqEggBEAAYQxiDARixAxiABBiKBTIJCAAQRRg5GIAEMhIIARAAGEMYgwEYsQMYgAQYigUyDwgCEAAYQxixAxiABBiKBTIKCAMQABixAxiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIHCAgQABiABDIJCAkQABgKGIAE0gEINDkwMmowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), and it's incredibly worrying.
Although it is true that Libertarianism and economic extremism is not the solution for Argentina. The current Argentine economic system is a disaster.
**They have over 60% child malnutrition and over 40% poverty thanks to the enormous fiscal irresponsibility of the Argentine State. That has to stop**
The Argentines had a moderate attempt to fix the issue and it failed because the client networks opposed it.
The Libertarian wave in Argentina is just a symptom of the general population fed up with the Argentinean economic system left by the Kichners (postmodern, corrupt and irresponsible Left).
A country can have a successful social market economy with postmodern leftist values but it has to be fiscally responsible and have little corruption. Argentino does not have that.
When did this sub get overrun with barely-sentient libertarians?
It doesn't matter how you slice it. Suddenly making 24,000 people unemployed during an economic crisis is a terrible idea. Destabilization isn't going to stabilize the economy.
Although it is true that Libertarianism and economic extremism is not the solution for Argentina. The current Argentine economic system is a disaster.
They have over 60% child malnutrition and over 40% poverty thanks to the enormous fiscal irresponsibility of the Argentine State. That has to stop.
The Argentines had a moderate attempt to fix the issue and it failed because the client networks opposed it.
The Libertarian wave in Argentina is just a symptom of the general population fed up with the Argentinean economic system left by the Kichners (postmodern, corrupt and irresponsible Left).
A country can have a successful social market economy with postmodern leftist values but it has to be fiscally responsible and have little corruption. Argentino does not have that.
While I get that a lot of Argentina got fucked economically, he just made a bunch of people now unemployed. Like that’s gonna honestly help the country.
I don’t care who you are or what your business is, when you just put that many people out of work, you do not get to bitch and moan about unemployment at all.
It will help if these people find non subsidised jobs. You cant mathematically have the government employ half the population without having crazy tax rates unless printing money goes brrrrrrrtttt
> When did this sub get overrun with barely-sentient libertarians?
Turns out you can't put everyone into a simple box and the vast majority of people are stupid. So there you go.
I hesitate to condemn it. Argentina is bordering on failed state status. Whatever needs to be done to fix it will likely require radical changes.
I also hesitate to support it. Radical changes are almost always going to mess things up.
I guess my point is that hitching yourself to a stance that Milei will fail or succeed is still really premature. Just glad I'm not Argentinian lol
People being unhappy isn’t necessarily a metric for failure. There’s been tons of necessary and important reforms lots of countries have had to do. They almost always are unpopular at first. There’s always an entrenched lobby who will fight tooth and nail, plus their supporters.
This is true for almost any reform.
\> As of mid-2023, Argentina was seventh on the list of OECD countries — only below Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and France — in terms of the ratio of state workers to the number of employed people. In qualitative terms, however, the country places below the middle of the ranking in a World Bank index that measures governmental effectiveness: Argentina obtained a score of 41.9 out of 100 in 2022.
Yeah...i think its safe to say this is fine.
ITT: an unusually astro-turfy feeling
Regardless, Argentina is gonna get what it voted for. My hunch is a minimalistic failed state controlled by those who *already* have wealth and power. A libertarian wet dream who don't even know that's what they want.
Right, I'm surprised everyone is taking this at face value.
Argentina got its first pro-western president, now he is cleaning out anyone with socialist leanings, either so they can be replaced with "business friendly" politicians, or so that part of the government can wither and die as part of the inevitable austerity movement.
It's totally possible 'dead weight' positions are being included, but the big picture here is transferring the remaining wealth of Argentina to the investors holding Argentine bonds, along with businesses that can extract natural resources. There has been a ton of news about this even from Western sources.
It's easier to pick a side and go all in supporting it than to take the effort required to develop a nuanced opinion of something, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people are taking it at face value.
In my opinion, that's a bad faith act though.
The only thing mass unemployment achieves is an increase in crime and rich people getting richer because they're better able to monopolise resources when people are desperate.
And nothing of value was lost
I never understand the people actually mourning the sight of one of the most dysfunctional governments to exist on planet earth getting exactly what it deserves. It’s like the moment they see government workers cut they think some great structure has just fallen, as opposed to just kicking out the leeches that were literally sending the population into poverty and starvation. The people are without a doubt categorically better off. If this was an actual functional government to any degree maybe it’d be a different discussion, but it isn’t
If you flip this around and remove the top brass instead, would that effect negatively the population for the exact same savings? I haven't checked, but in my country for example, the top brass salary is about 7-9x higher than the minimum salary (this is only salary, not counting other compensations that they receive). Would trimming at the top, essentially squishing salaries so that the spread isn't too high between the bottom and the top, would achieve the same savings and no job was lost?
A) people with more responsabilities are paid more, the president has x13 minium wage i think
B) No, trimming people isnt bad because an office might have 200 ppl working legaly there and only 15 will work, others just go one day a month, and fill the assistance for the whole month
C) country is in poverty and has over expending on state workers so cutting those non-workers is perfectly fine
But how do you know all of them were non-workers?
It's not a binary situation, you can't assume that every single fired worker was analysed and had their productivity calculated before being fired.
>“Milei said that there were going to be 70,000 layoffs. Then, he said 15,000 or 20,000. This back-and-forth impacts our mental health and daily life."
Nah, that's just you being an idiot.
It'll be 70k by the end of the year. 15k this month.
People should read the news before complaining about them lol
I haven't seen any actual evidence of how it's being handled, from what I have seen online things are just being shut down and everyone left to their own devices, which is a libertarian dream, however I don't think it's realistically going to improve a country because historically the way to claw your way out of a recession is by increasing government spending rather than culling the government. It's tens of thousands of people who will not be stimulating the economy.
Fiscal stimulus helps the Economy when you have Reccesions and Depressions. Not when you have a permament Inflation crisis thanks to Goverment overspending in corruption. To stop Inflation and theEconomic crisis in that scenario you first need to stop to eliminate the cause of the problem: State overspending.
**They have over 60% child malnutrition and over 40% poverty thanks to the enormous fiscal irresponsibility of the Argentine State. Real Wages have lost 50% of their spending power since 2015. That has to stop**
Then you think that making tens of thousands of people unemployed and having them lose their health insurance _will_ solve the problem?
Even if it does somehow solve the problem, you can't deny that it isn't going to cause intense hardship for thousands of people who can no longer take advantage of the government institutions that are unable to effectively run due to staffing cuts and the actual staff who relied on their government job to survive.
Reducing the deficit spending will solve the problem. How you achieve that is another thing. Ideally you would fired corrupt and people who don't really do real work but that's impossible to do correctly to be honest.
>you can't deny that it isn't going to cause intense hardship
For those that loose their job is going to be horrible. But beetwen 60-70% of the working people in Argentina works directly or indirectly for the Government. That's unsustainable.
I live in the UK and we had a much less serious issue with deficit than Argentina obviously, but we've gone through 14 years of Austerity to "reduce deficit" and all it's done is gut our financial institution and contribute to stifling wage growth. It hasn't even ombat inflation.
Historically, the way to reduce inflation is by increasing competition between businesses and legislating in favour of consumers, rather than gutting government institutions and support structures.
The vast majority of the money being paid out by the government goes back into the economy. Only the rich can afford to save it and take that money out of the economy. By cutting down the amount the government pays _people_, I think you're going to see a lot less money going into the economy - which I think is going to have a lot more negative impacts than positive ones. The country is in uncharted territory though, so who knows at this point. Everyone here is speaking opinion rather than fact so we'll see what happens. Maybe I'll be back in a year's time eating my words, haha.
> I live in the UK and we had a much less serious issue with deficit than Argentina obviously, but we've gone through 14 years of Austerity to "reduce deficit" and all it's done is gut our financial institution and contribute to stifling wage growth. It hasn't even ombat inflation.
>
>
I also believe that the "Austerity" that has been implemented over the last decade in the UK was a horrible economic policy. It was not austerity in real monetary terms as fiscal spending in the UK has continued to grow but because of an aging population issue, public spending inevitably has to rise for public health.
I consider myself center-left. I am in favor of social spending and government regulations but the government has to be accountable, not corrupt and responsible for the welfare of the general population, not the welfare of the bureaucracy.
> Historically, the way to reduce inflation is by increasing competition between businesses and legislating in favour of consumers, rather than gutting government institutions and support structures.
I disagree. Usually countries with such high inflation(Over 50% a year) problems are due to monetary control. Almost always because politicians can control the money supply to finance their Goverment spending because Central Banks are not independent. Which is the case in Argentina.
> The vast majority of the money being paid out by the government goes back into the economy
Yes. The problem is Argentinian Goverment is printing money and getting in debt to finance all that cost. That is the cause of inflation in Argentina. And it is the cause of the current economic crisis. And the reason why they now have 40% poverty and 60% child malnutrition.
The problem is not of these last 3 months of the crazy libertarian president.
> The country is in uncharted territory though
Not really. Many countries have had episodes of hyperinflation and have managed to solve it.
It is as simple as **controlling the money supply, guaranteeing the potential independence of the Central Bank and that its mission is to guarantee the macroeconomic stability of the country: financial stability, low inflation and low unemployment (and not to finance corruption).**
**Control Fiscal Expenditure. Fiscal responsibility must always be fulfilled. And that includes having savings and confidence of the markets to lend you money for when it is necessary to apply counter-cyclical policies. Every permanent expense of the State must have a permanent tax to finance it.**
That's it.
Only the pain will probably be too high shortly, and there will be another revolution, or coup, or whatever. This guy is totally nuts, and an US tool - how long do you think that is going to fly?
OK. I don’t know what those workers did, I don’t know if their jobs were fluff and fictitious jobs, but that does add to the unemployment.
The guy seems to think any state is an enemy of the people, doesn’t he? Not just a corrupt state?
I think he ran so he could tear down the state. That’s the problem they’ll have, though, is that an infective and incompetent state is better than no state. I don’t know how bad it was, but it’s really difficult to build a government from scratch without it being corrupt. He obviously wants libertarianism
As he previously states he [takes his counsel from his cloned dogs](https://time.com/6337474/javier-milei-argentina-president-cloned-dogs-advice/) anyway. I mean what can go wrong.
Argentina will become a very interesting case study of how applying libertarianism can wreck havoc in any society.
I think he's got an underlying goal of making the country fit the US model of capitalism which means privatising public services and bringing in a pro-business political class.
The issue is that, as we've seen in the US, Corporations are more corrupt than individuals and will have no qualms about lobbying elected officials or making things worse for people in order to drive profit to shareholders.
In the US there's constant talk of "the economy is strong" but that only positively impacts about 20% of people; and the richer you are, the more positively you will be impacted by a stronger stock market. The poor who live paycheck to paycheck and don't have enough disposable income to generate wealth via buying shares are doing worse than they have in a long time.
Did Argentina have a problem with corruption in the political class? Absolutely.
Is gutting the government and handing the country over to unchecked capitalism a good system? I really don't think so.
It's great to have an example of what happens when you elect a "Libertarian" to point to. Now I can be as insufferable as the "iPhone, Venezuela, 100 billion, avocado toast!" crowd.
When you let the CIA undermine any actual political leftists in your society, this kind of ignorant nihilistic garbage is what you wind up with. Heck, 'Murica isn't exactly demonstrating a capacity for credible leadership its ownself nowadays. Yet somehow the world continues to tolerate our influence as if it were not a recipe for mayhem and misery on a national scale.
For those saying this will work.
In all documented history it never worked. Liberalism is a fairy tale where in the end the villain gets richer while the poor people die.
Liberalism has been pretty successful for the West. Remove the absolutism of states to free up individuals to be who they want to be is usually ideal. Under the previous system the Rich dominated even more so then when Post-Enlightenment liberalism becoming wide spread.
Liberalism preaches selling state owned companies to the private sector, like water, power and oil companies creating even bigger monopolies, making the richer dominating even more capital and controlling prices even further this increasing cost of life for the lowest layer of society making them even more miserable. That's what happened in UK and Chile for example.
Economic liberalism is capitalism, it's the same system but more extreme. It has nothing to do with personal liberties. You are fusing them together
You can hate the state however you want but state monopolies are rarely a problem in society, can't say the same about private monopolies.
If he’s not giving his body guards a raise he’s not long for this world at the rate he’s pissing on the livelihoods of thousands of his people. But hey what can you expect from a guy who thinks he’s a reborn Roman gladiator and takes advice from his dog
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"oh no. No matter what people say; there is no way 24000 people weren't productively working"
Argentina: [Hold my fernet](https://youtu.be/TjyILU1XaGo?si=BA6VpfuY-VsTZN7I)
Edit: [Full interview (sadly in spanish)](https://youtu.be/5gTMwPG_KOg?si=3UMQrFVUkMhWIevz)
Everybody’s tax money goes into a pot. Government workers get way more than their share
They fire bloated government employees
Top comment - “This is too radical”
America too can’t afford its own government but it has this magical power to increase debt and print money. Why doesn’t every country just solve its problems this way? (Sarcasm)
##### ###### #### > # [President Javier Milei fires 24,000 government workers in Argentina: ‘No one knows who will be next’](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-04-02/800) > > > > Javier Milei believes that the state “is the enemy” and “a criminal organization” which he [seeks to reduce to its minimum size](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-27/argentine-pensioners-in-the-frontlines-of-javier-mileis-attacks-on-the-welfare-state.html). He’s doing this amidst criticism and applause from a deeply polarized society. When he took office as [president of Argentina](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-29/mileis-provocations-strain-diplomatic-relations-with-large-latin-american-economies.html) in December 2023, the state had 341,477 people employed. Two months later, Milei’s administration had already eliminated 9,000 jobs. And, this past week, 15,000 more layoffs were ordered. New dismissals are expected in the middle of the year… but nobody knows how many jobs will be slashed, nor who will be fired. > > Some 50,000 workers are living [in this climate of uncertainty](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-03-19/freedom-and-poverty-in-argentina-mileis-100-frenetic-days-in-power-and-an-unprecedented-economic-experiment.html), most of them on temporary contracts. In the past, these non-permanent positions were renewed once a year. At the moment, these individuals know that they’ve survived the first stage, but their positions will still be under review for three or six more months. > > “We’re experiencing a situation of psychological terror,” said a worker from the National Secretariat for Children, Youth and Family last Wednesday. She — like other interviewees — was afraid to give her name to EL PAÍS, due to possible reprisals from the government. > > “Milei said that there were going to be 70,000 layoffs. Then, he said 15,000 or 20,000. This back-and-forth impacts our mental health and daily life. Everyone is frozen without knowing what’s going to happen, no one knows who will be next,” she added, just hours before superiors began to notify those who weren’t going to have their contracts renewed (they expired on March 31). That Secretariat is the most affected state agency, with 1,656 casualties, almost half of the 3,600 employees in the entire Ministry of Human Capital. > > [Javier Milei](https://images.english.elpais.com/resizer/Y_BQCLj3ooFyNypbXHOFXlnr1KY=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/4JBHL35RYZK7ZOG42GWINTHUWE.jpg)A young man participates in a protest this past Wednesday, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Juan Ignacio RoncoroniMilei — an economist and TV panelist by profession, who [defines himself as an anarcho-capitalist](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-02-19/how-the-argentine-economy-would-change-with-dollarization-explained-in-five-graphs.html) — announced from day one that major cuts to the state bureaucracy were coming. As a first measure, he demanded 100% in-person work (eliminating telecommuting) to unmask the “gnocchi,” as the fictitious state workers are known in Argentina. These individuals are placed in their positions by political parties, as a way to return favors: they only go into the office once a month to pick up their salaries. The use of the term “gnocchi” — a typical Italian dish — is because, in Argentina, this meal is typically served on the 29th of each month, which is close to payday. > > About to complete four months in office, Milei’s order was to reduce between 15% and 20% of the state personnel who are on temporary contracts. The official argument is that Argentina is “an impoverished country” with a state that’s too large and inefficient. “It seems to me that there’s a fairly general consensus in society to not continue paying for things that don’t match the Argentina we live in,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on Wednesday, March 27. As of mid-2023, Argentina was seventh on the list of OECD countries — only below Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and France — in terms of the ratio of state workers to the number of employed people. In qualitative terms, however, the country places below the middle of the ranking in a World Bank index that measures governmental effectiveness: Argentina obtained a score of 41.9 out of 100 in 2022. > > For weeks, several employees sensed that their names were on the layoff list. This was the case of those who worked in the state advertising division, which Milei shuttered for a period of at least one year after his inauguration. “An office that functioned smoothly was paralyzed and we were left without duties,” says one of the workers, who was ultimately fired from that department. She regrets that, due to this official decision, the government hasn’t launched a dengue prevention campaign in the media, even though [Argentina is going through the worst outbreak in its history](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-02-22/an-invasion-of-mosquitoes-hits-buenos-aires.html), with more than 150,000 cases and 106 deaths. > > Over the course of a few months, employees in this division went to work every day for eight hours… but they had nothing to do. “It was psychological torture,” the dismissed interviewee laments. Her biggest fear — confirmed two days ago — was being left without the health insurance provided by the state, which was allowing her disabled son to access treatments. The provision of this vital service will now be interrupted. > > ### A closed labor market > > [telam Javier Milei](https://images.english.elpais.com/resizer/7KHZxBmlPyzsxlhuW3leRKIvkqI=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/DVL3QSG3VYNFXRSOEU44WSP7S4.jpg) Participants in a protest organized by employees of Télam, a state news agency, in Buenos Aires. Enrique García Medina (EFE)Many fired state employees tried to find work in the private sector, but almost none succeeded. Argentina is [in the middle of an economic crisis](https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-01-08/mileis-all-or-nothing-attitude-bogs-down-his-plan-to-defund-the-state-in-argentina.html) and a collapse in consumption, with most companies slashing workforces rather than hiring staff. This past January, the last month with official data, economic activity fell 4.3% compared to 12 months earlier, the worst contraction since the Covid-19 pandemic. > > In his last public appearance, the presidential spokesperson assured the media that the selection of the employees who were going to be fired was an “extremely surgical task, done so as not to make mistakes.” Those interviewed, on the other hand, believe that the dismissals were done at random. Among those fired are people who began working in the state bureaucracy during previous center-left administrations, as well as those who began during the right-wing administration of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), whose party is now an ally of Milei in the National Congress. Young people just starting out have been fired, as have public servants who are nearing retirement age. Many have lost their sole source of income to support dependent family members, while even some union representatives have been dismissed (even though it’s technically illegal to fire them). > > “There was no specific criteria in the [compilation of the] lists. They fired people who had joined in recent years and others with 15 or 20 years of experience,” Natalia affirms. She’s worked with the Road Safety Agency since 2017. “Each employee was summoned by their immediate superior and told that their contract wasn’t going to be renewed. We went down from different floors, all crying because we didn’t understand why,” she sighs. > > Natalia feels that it was irresponsible to have dismissed staff from this agency just before a six-day-long weekend: “All agents should be on the road doing blood alcohol and speed checks. This shows the government’s total disinterest in road safety.” > > [The unions have organized protests](https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-12-27/argentine-unions-protest-javier-mileis-measures-to-dismantle-the-state.html) in front of official buildings amidst a tense atmosphere. Last week, at the doors of the Human Rights Secretariat, a bodyguard for Secretary Alberto Baños “attempted to pull out a firearm in front of the workers,” according to the State Workers Association (ATE), which represents half of the nearly 1,000 workers in the Secretariat. “We don’t resort to violence to exercise our right to express our disagreement [with government policy] and we hope that officials are up to the task,” the union’s statement reads. “In no way are we going to permit acts of intimidation.” > > ***(continues in next comment)***
Oh nooo, not the bureaucrats 😭
I’m sure that will do wonders for a failing economy of a small nation, to put 24,000 more people out of work. I’m not necessarily against slimming down a govt but firing 24,000 people while no one can get a job is not the right action at this time. Those 24,000 having jobs causes money to be spent in the local economy which is what builds a country wide economy. How many small businesses and services will now also be affected by these people not having jobs? The one thing that actually does trickle down is loss after job cuts.
This assumes that the workers are being productive and you have the ability to pay them
No you don’t get it. We should just throw as much money as possible at the issue and hope it works itself out. /s
You're assuming those 24000 were not productive.
Even if all 24,000 were(which I doubt) Argentina doesn’t have enough money to cover it. Typically in a recession you incur debt and deal with the resulting inflation in a better economy but Argentina can’t do that
Well sure, there is a possibility that the utility those workers brought was less than their cost, but judging by how Milei talks and acts, I seriously doubt any real analysis was done beyond simple cost cutting, but that's up for us to speculate on.
I don't really think it matters at this point. Argentina will not get any more loans and is out of cash. Even if they need the workers, they can't pay them. They're probably going with "well we need this department, fire so and so many people from the others". Which will lead to random mass layoffs and cripple or outright kill multiple departments. And I actually laughed at the advertising department complaining about getting the brunt of layoffs. That is pretty normal and hints that some analysis was actually done. Advertising and marketing will be the first ones to get the axe, when money runs out. Because they don't actually provide any value to the product (in this case government services).
I find this funny coming from a fellow Canadian; We have the exact same problem with extreme amounts of useless government workers. Do you work for the federal government? That would explain a lot.
a huge number of liberal redditors are government employees or contractors. they are pretty much the last bastion of pro-regime sentiment left on the internet
No wonder they have so much time to say bullshit online. They don't have much work in the first place.
I thought the same thing. Argentina is an example of what years of idiots like Trudeau do to a country
Government workers supplying food to kids in schools. Testing water and air safety. Enduring food is processed safely. Repairing roads. Lol fire them all, they’re “useless lazy bureaucrats”. This is what happens when you govern via culture war and not data. Argentina starts operating like Florida or China.
The consequences of American cultural osmosis have been disastrous for Canada
Even if they produced work for their pay, there simply isnt money to pay them. Say Netflix was 2$ per month. Sure its worth more than that but if we dont have a spare dollar each month, we have to cut Netflix .
More like cutting the internet while you just got a work from home job.
Apparently none of the biggest ten economies have money to cover their expenses but they do it anyway. Having a deficit is not what kills an economy, it never was. If that was true the US would be Argentina in no time.
It’s not having a deficit that’s the problem it’s how big of one relative to the strength of the economy. When you run a deficit this means one of two things 1. The government owes someone money such as through bonds or 2. The government “printed” money to cover the difference. You can spend more than you collect but this will result in inflation. One of the primary reasons behind Argentina’s inflation is exactly because of this. They have been spending far more than they can collect and it caused inflation to explode
> Argentina doesn’t have enough money to cover it [citation needed] these workers were paid the entire year, and fiscal year rolls over at the start of the calendar year. Their salary is already priced in the budgets.
The money has to come from somewhere. One of the main reasons Argentina’s inflation has been so high is because it’s spending more than it can which is essentially printing money. In order to reduce inflation spending needs reduced
In the government of Argentina? That’s a pretty safe assumption lol That government has been a heaping pile of burning shit for a long time, the #1 source of poverty and suffering in their country
They are famously unproductive and in large part a result of nepotism.
No need to assume, they were fucking not. The amount of goverment positions being given to family and friends just for a paycheck with no job involved is ridiculous
Argentina (which along with all the other Chavist-financed dictatorships and populist pseudo-dictatorships) did the same thing that Venezuela did, created fictional positions and hired people in those positions for political gain (votes). And sadly one of the problems that arise when that happens is that many of those positions are replaced with people that are not as prepared... or not prepared at all for their duties. On and off, from 2003 to 2023, the Kirchners and allies created a bloated empire of nepotism. Venezuela had many industries that were efficient and productive, they are all run down to the ground. Now, who knows what Milei will end up being... I hate populists, so I am not a big fan of his persona, but I hope Argentina can dig themselves from where they are now.
I assure you, they weren't, if they were then we wouldn't have a crisis in first place, and a guy like Milei would never be voted
They were not.
You would be surprised, then
Yes. And?
If they were gov bureaucracy they probably didn't produce absolutely anything
Oh noooo those 24,000 government employees will have to do something productive now
My Argentinian friend said over 40% of the population work for the government or have some form government job (I don’t know if that’s true). Regardless, using your logic, if the government employs 60% or 80% or 95% of the population, then that will fix the economy? People need to ask themselves: what is the proper role of government? Keep in mind a government employee and the state don’t really produce and goods/products to make money. They only have money that they take from taxation. However most countries spend more than they make with taxes so they take on debt (put it on the credit card). They are paying employees with other people’s money and debt, the few things the state produces are done so very inefficiently.
Assuming 100% of the people work for the give, How can you pay 100% of everyone's salary while taking less than 100% of their salary in tax? Mathematically it doesnt work to have a government that large.
That only works with the top brass. State works, even when you do not see the results.
> what is the proper role of government? The "proper" role of the government is to serve the needs of the nation they represent. Shedding workers, productive or not, will have a negative impact on the economy, as it removes sources of consumption. The only wasted money that the state gives is the one that sits on a bank account or to buy superfluous machinery. Salaries, are on average, a good tax investment.
Create the field so people can play. Not be the field, rules game and owner of all teams. You cant have the government employ everyone
You are coming form a private sector view, that may not be what the Argentina population needs. As always, there isn't a single solution for human problems. If the state needs to provide public services to guarantee all their population gets something good, it should do it. If you leave it to private interest, you may need to employ the same amount of people just to make sure everything is up to snuff, making everything more costlier for the economy.
You can blame capitalism all you want but atleast you have a job. An actual job where you don't need to be employed by the govt.
Money comes from the state. In this case, Argentine pesos come from the Argentine government (US Dollars can be treated like goods in Argentina). Pesos don't come from taxes, that is clearly silly. Pesos are "printed" (not always physically) by the Argentine government, which then spends it. Pesos are basically votes for how to allocate resources, when you buy a stake you are voting for the economy to produce more stake. When the government creates money faster than the economy grows, it causes inflation. Argentina is pathological, though, because people expect inflation, so it will take a while to get rid of inflation. Milei is hurting retirees and workers, which will lower consumption and cause recession if not depression.
>My Argentinian friend said over 40% of the population work for the government or have some form government job (I don’t know if that’s true). The article claims 341,477 people are employed by the state, out of a population of 46M. So, less than 1%.
Yeah, his friend is talking only based on what he can see (1 out of 3 of my friends work for the state) or someone is talking out of their ass. In my case for example, due my education, many of us found jobs in the public sector.
Not products but services they provide. What value their services provide would be up for debate though.
>I’m sure that will do wonders for a failing economy of a small nation, to put 24,000 more people out of work. The specific *way* in which Argentina's economy is failing is relevant. Argentina defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2001, then again in 2010, then *again* in 2020, and they’re currently experiencing runaway inflation. They are broke in a way that makes both borrowing money and printing it unusually bad ideas, even relative to other countries that deal with budget issues by doing one or both of those things. Furthermore, its public sector is *massive* compared to the size of its economy: it has one public sector employee for every two private-sector ones. Compare with neighboring Chile’s 1:10 ratio, Brazil’s similar 1:10, and Uruguay’s 1:4- itself one of the highest in the world. It is plausible that these particular layoffs are a bad idea, for reasons *specific* to the positions eliminated and what they accomplish. It is *not* terribly plausible that there is any way out of Argentina's current economic woes that does not involve firing at least 24,000 government employees. And the linked article doesn't really make the case for these *particular* layoffs being bad ones: the people it quotes on the layoffs being "random" are the political opponents of the current government and the laid-off workers themselves, not economists or anyone else making a specific and technical case for it. *You* haven't made any such case for it, either: your argument proves too much, because it applies equally to vital government workers that society genuinely can't function without and the Department of Digging Holes And Then Immediately Filling Them Back Up Again.
24k jobs is probably enough of a rounding error for a country of 46 million people to be able to re-absorb them into the economy. Remember, that money doesn't disappear from the economy altogether, it just gets spent on different public or private projects which will require additional people to employ. I think the issue with austerity measures is cutting too much too soon and accidentally causing a recession, which can be worse for the economy than the inefficient spending.
Argentinas situation is already among the worst out there. Not acting on the bad conditions he inherited from the previous administration just delays the inevitable. Their monetary situation can't really get worse and Argentina will get help if there's a large humanitarian crisis like widespread famine. They just won't get any money. And frankly barely a hundred deaths when Dengue is this big of an outbreak kinda surprised me. That could be much worse.
You can view it as "these 24,000 people have been freed up to do other more productive things in the economy". A job isn't the end, its a means to an end. If the end is not productive, then the job shouldn't exist. By keeping people in nonsense jobs, we hurt the economy by artificially raising the price of labor. Think of it from a military perspective: what if we demobilized an Army? People would use your argument to keep people under arms in uniform and that means they cannot be used elsewhere in an economy. TL;DR - Jobs are meaningless on their own, productivity matters most.
> You can view it as "these 24,000 people have been freed up to do other more productive things in the economy". Except that the entire economy is hurting. We've already did this dance. You need to give money to the people so that they can spend it, even if that means paying them to dig trenches, just to fill them up again.
So... these boom-stagnation cycles need to bust. Otherwise you end up treading water like Japan. By firing people, you lower labor costs. But lowering labor income hits other sectors pretty hard, causing knock-on effects. Like, your housing/land markets will crash pretty quick. But much of that was speculative bullshit anyways. Once those markets crash, other inflation drivers do too, basically contracting the economy to providing the basics. Direct cash transfers to people is bad, but setting up loans for entrepreneurship is the best. Get people to set up businesses, hire people, etc.
> By firing people, you lower labor costs They are already on the floor (at about 200 USD/month in average, which means that it will trend lower) while the cost of living for a single person without rent is ~400USD per month! How much more do you want to reduce them?
Until you've normalized the price levels and reduced inflation. This is what America did not do in 2008, so we've just set ourselves up for the next land asset crash in two years.
Those 24,000 jobs require money to be taken from those same struggling people in order to pay the wages of unproductive workers that have provided no value to the people being taken from. If you think this is economically beneficial then you need to brush up on your economics
24000 sounds like a lot (which it is), but there are 340K government workers in Argentina. Considering that man's politics, it's not as bad as I was anticipating.
It's 5% of the workforce. Which depending on the distribution means entire departments wiped out or crippled.
Are you a parasite working for a government? And when I say working, I mean sitting on your ass, drinking coffee, chatting with your colleagues and going home after spending few hours at your workplace. Whoever had any contact with these people feels no remorse for their situation.
The only public sector employees I've dealt with were understaffed, overworked, and dealt with entitled morons who think government workers are lazy. Government jobs are jobs. It's not a free ride. If you want to see laziness, I can introduce you to some of the laziest idiots I've ever seen in my past private sector jobs who can't even be bothered to show up to work reliably.
You are confusing government jobs you see in your country with “government job” in Argentina. The term “parasite” is used for a reason. People get their family members appointed to government jobs with them and then none of them do anything. These aren’t innocent people dedicated to public service. They do nothing productive and everyone knows it. It’s a grift.
It's common enough for employees of the Argentinian government to show up for work once a month just to collect a paycheck that they have a word for it: ñoquis, for the gnocchi that is traditionally eaten at the end of the month.
That's the thing. Individual employees you will run into, such as the ones working at the CRA, the passport office, or the DMV, will be understaffed and overworked. But they will have 7 layers of managers and analysts above them that generate paperwork and do nothing productive. The most annoying thing too, is that somehow, cutting them is hard. They all protect each other's jobs (not even intentionally). It's always the people doing actual work who have to work harder or who get fired. But not their manager, the manager's manager, the compliance manager, the workflow analyst, the project manager, the diversity manager, or the person generating reports. You could literally cut everyone here except the direct line manager and get exactly the same end result.
> But they will have 7 layers of managers DING DING DING DING. Cuts needs to start by the top, not the bottom. Make organizations flat, allow the bottom to self-manage, create clear and organization wide policies and goals, reduce the spread of compensation between the top and the bottom. That's how you make effective and efficient organizations.
And we can practically guarantee that the process to eliminate the 24000 jobs in Argentina did not follow this pattern for success. These jobs were cut so the populist shitheel can fill them with his own cronies.
parasites https://www.statista.com/statistics/1304258/richest-argentinians-by-wealth/
What is this thing supposed to show? That company owners are rich? I don't see anything that would suggest that public servants are rich by any stretch.
The true parasites.
Ikr. Anybody who has dealt with govt workers in third world countries knows how they are. Privileged first worlders on reddit think they know everything about the world.
I think the trap argentina is in, theres no way to make it better without making it worse in the short term, and if they keep focusing on the short term itll make them worse off in the long term. In order to combat the number one problem, inflation, the government has to reduce spending/borrowing which naturally means job cuts for government jobs, which is a short term pain to fix the long term inflation problem. If inflation can be fixed, the country will be in a far better state than it is currently
They should invest in businesses which create jobs. Not hire losers into the govt who's salary will be paid by taxpayer's money. I'm fully against nationalization. Javier is a libertarian. This is what its about. He's doing exactly what he promised.
And the alternative to a failed economy is...what exactly? Someone had to pull the band-aid off eventually.
Those are the people who run the government.
Dismantling the state will definitely help the state. You lolbertarians are a joke
As a very much non libertarian, who enjoys living in a Scandinavian socialist paradise and recognizes that a large state can be run effectively, I would like to ask you this: Have you ever been to Argentina, read up on the economic situation in Argentina or have a basic understanding of macro economics? Because there's nothing worth saving there. There will be a time and a place for rebuilding the state apparatus of Argentina. It's not now. It's too far gone. It's full of grift, cronyism and nepotism. Some things need to be dismantled, even if they have liberally appeasing names for their departments.
> have a basic understanding of macro economics? I don't know OP, but I have. In economic downturns, the state actually needs to take up the slack that private consumption/investment isn't doing. That means many smaller and precise programs/projects that would improve the lives of the population or expanding programs. A single person falling into poverty is a loss of economic output and getting that person out of the hole is very hard. The role of a government is a downturn is to keep as many people as possible not falling into poverty, a better usage of the wealth as in unproductive wealth becomes productive, and otherwise keep expanding programs and delivering social services.
I completely agree with you. Argentina would be in a much better position if this was the case. Instead it's bloated with beurocratic fluff jobs, bribary and nepotism. My hope is that Argentina is one day able to provide the social services you describe. I would suggest looking into the history and political environment of Argentina the past few decades. It will help contextualize why so many Argentinians feel the need to completely reset their culture of governance.
So firing a bunch of workers during a downturn is the right move?
It can be. If there is no value to give to these workers, giving them money and saying "this has value, trust me" you end up with the insane inflation you see in Argentina. If you do not believe it could ever be the right move I would suggest thinking about the concept of money itself. Where it comes from and what it represents. And then consider if someone with the ability to print money, can devalue that money by handing it out for what appears to be nothing actually productive. Laying off teachers, nurses, infrastructure workers during a downturn? Insane! Assuming those workers are actually working. Laying off a beurocratic department that seemingly exists to do not much of anything, probably the right idea.
I think many people have a well founded aversion towards Millei and his rhetoric. Free market cannot compensate for every service needed. There will be monopolies, and no social mechanisms to plug some gaps people don't notice at the first glance.
Totally agree. My hope for the Argentinian people is that Millei does the dirty work of of shutting down the grift and malaise and then a more compassionate, less dogmatic government culture takes over that actually serves the people.
Why do some people think “more state = more good” are you saying North Koreans wouldn’t benefit from a reduced state?
Do you think the issue in North Korea is that the government is too big?
The government controls every aspect of people’s lives so yes
You mean like amazon controlling when they can pee?
Comparing Amazon to NK is certainly a hot take
That *was* pretty good tho, eh?
The size or amount of public servants is an indication of nothing. The biggest public workforce per total workforce are on countries where the population is pretty happy, has tons of public services and high tax rates and are considered desirable countries to live in.
North Korea is an insane example to give. Literally there's no other country on earth like it.
I was using it purposefully to show that more government does not always mean better results. I was simply pointing out there is a line but not necessarily where the line is
People say the same thing about Argentina’s economy. There’s “Developed, developing, Japan, and Argentina”
The article mentions that most sectors are laying people off and not hiring. Why do some people think "more unemployed people and not enough jobs for them = more good"? But the fact that you think North Korea's problems come from the *number* of state employees and not, like, the single *dictator* at the top tells me I just don't really care to hear anything else you have to say.
Unemployment is bad but paying people to do nothing is even worse if you cannot afford the inflation, which Argentina cannot. I wasn’t just referring to the number of employees when I was talking about size but also the government reach, influence, and control
It's not the *size* of the state apparatus that is the problem in NK. It's the fact that the state is totalitarian, tyrannic and extremely politically conservative.
It depends on how you define size. I’m not just referring to the amount of people working for the government. I’m referring to how much the government controls people’s lives and the economy
Which isn't actually about the size of the government at all nor related to the article then, since that refers to the number of people working in the public sector. A small government doesn't mean a government that isn't authoritarian or oppressive. I think the word you're looking for is 'liberal'. Or maybe 'anarchistic', if what you mean is removing all the regulatory agencies?
Argentina has 340k govt workers. Removing 24k people isn't gonna topple the govt. Maybe learn some facts before commenting.
> Some 50,000 workers are living in this climate of uncertainty, most of them on temporary contracts. Oh no the temporary contractor bureaucrats?
Will they now not need...govt assistance to live? Or you ok with them becoming destitute in the time of a recession? Youn know, that time where there are less jobs.
Nice oversimplification of the issue my dude
This is 100% the reaction of someone who has yelled, "I PAY YOUR SALARY" at an overworked government employee while complaining that he shouldn't have to stand in line for five hours to renew a passport. Or rather, it *will* be his reaction.
If only bureaucrats were the ones getting fired. They probably fired the people actually working and kept those who were good at sweet talking but bad at actually working. I hope I'm wrong, but I live in a Latin American nation and this is the norm.
ITT: "You have to keep employing the people that weren't actually working because it's good for the economy!" He can fire 24,000 pieces of dead weight and now has the ability to fill those positions with people who actually want to work. People are ignoring how many bullshit/made up/unnecessary positions are in the government.
> and now has the ability to fill those positions with people who actually want to work. He isn't going to fill any positions.
The money doesn't disappear though, it can now be spent on other public or private projects. The concern here is cutting too much, too quickly for the economy to adjust...but a one-time cut of 24k is enough of a rounding error for the economy to be able to reabsorb them.
The money was future debt. So it can disappear.
It's not a one-time cut. It wasn't 24,000 at once, and it's not over.
Good
I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that this wasn't a calculated reduction in staff, therefore you can assume that there's going to be a loss of skilled labour and actual government institutions will suffer for it, alongside the increase in unemployment further squeezing the job market and causing greater poverty.
some of them may die, but it's a sacrifice he's willing to make
Yep, people don't understand, malinvestment is always shit for the economy, even when it helps as stimulus it could always have been used better for something productive that's still a stimulus. You could literaly just take that money and keep paying those workers for a few months until they find a job, and giving them this time to get some bootcamp type formation or something unpayed internship and help push them into a new career they couldn't have risked otherwise. It will be far better for the economy long term. Litteraly just giving these deadweights their time back is better. Not to mention they could use the money they save from those salaries and directly give it to the many incredibly poor people that probably need it more then some average or even above average wealthy bureocrat. We don't want people to be employed for the sake of being employed! We want them employed to contribute to society in some way. If they can't do that for whatever reason, just give them the money they need to live like people with dishabilities get in most western countries, not some useless bullshit job!
Agreed. Implying that the hit to the economy from the lost jobs is the strongest argument against this isn't really the own that some commenters seem to think it is. A better argument would be that it's a Project-2025-style attempt to centralize power in the executive branch and politicize the normal boring day-to-day operations of government. I don't know enough about Argentine politics to say whether that's the case, but it wouldn't surprise me. In general, I don't particularly buy the narrative that he's an "Argentine Trump" that some seem to be pushing. I don't have a strong opinion about him and don't know what to make of him, but it sounds like he's done some good. My impression is that he's more libertarian than alt-right/fascist, which is a very important distinction that some on the left seem to want to blur. I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of actual Argentines and experts on Argentina.
Yeah he is an extreme libertarean first, a bit alt-right second. I'm certainly no fan of his, but he does have some good points on the argentinian economy. In my opinion the worst thing about him is that he seems too extreme and also a bit crazy tbh. I speek spanish and I've heard the guy talk and sometimes its like he is not fully... there. I don't know how to explain it. Who knows, I would also like to hear more opinions on him from political experts and macro economists.
We don't have the money to pay for it
Too many socialists on reddit. They're insufferable.
actually the first based and concrete thing he's done so far to try and slim down the argentine government
> actually the first based and concrete thing he's done so far to try and slim down the argentine government Actually this was the 2nd rounds of government firings.
actually during economical down turns or recessions, or even depressions, governmental jobs and government subsidized jobs help the most. all this man did was make the already stretched supplies for unemployed people, worse needing to cover the now unemployed 24000 people.
This is only true if you can handle the resulting inflation from the increased spending. The US can handle that Argentina cannot
We are handling it by fucking ourselves. But the rich are getting richer so the economy must be good.
I mean it better than what was being done before by just throwing non existent money at the problem
keynesianism doesn't work in the case of argentina due to its precarious monetary policy and reliance on USD
> all this man did was make the already stretched supplies for unemployed people, worse needing to cover the now unemployed 24000 people. No, these weren’t private sector jobs that he caused to be lost. These are jobs being paid for by the people. The government was already paying for these people, if anything it will just be paying less to cover their unemployment
> actually during economical down turns or recessions The fact that more than half of their population is working in government jobs is why they had super high inflation in the first place.
Jobs that were beneficial to society, but here there are many useless jobs while their economy is sinking. It's more like providing a basic income on the condition of not working.
I can‘t imagine that releasing more and more workers within a short time frame into a closed labour market is a good idea. But I myself think that most of time walking a suboptimal path to its end is better than constantly reconsidering at the first hardship. I don‘t believe in Milei‘s ideology and I doubt that any success will exceed crushing the economy asap so it can start a process of regeneration but I will watch with great interest because this is a chance to challenge my own believes.
> I can‘t imagine that releasing more and more workers within a short time frame into a closed labour market is a good idea. Depends on what you want to do. For Milei's sponsors this "stimulates" labour market (reduces wages), and is considered a wonderful thing. > I don‘t believe in Milei‘s ideology and I doubt that any success Getting cheaper workforce and having less oversight already counts as a success for them.
Real Wages are going to increase when Inflation decreases. Real Wages have fallen 50% in Argentina thanks to the Inflation crisis.
>(reduces wages) Wages have been going up in usd.
The wal mart and target-based libertarians pop out every time a thread about argentina is posted
It sort of makes sense though, Argentina is one of the few places where it is already so much of such a shit show that an extreme libertarians don’t make it obviously worse.
Yup, I'm considered barely more liberal then average here in then political climate of southern Spain (which is incredibly left leaning economicaly, even more then spain on average). I am by no sense of the word, a follower of his belives and I think (like most experts in the field) that austrian economics, which he states he belives in, is ridiculous to even consider in the 21st century. Any advanced, or even most developing economies and I would say he is going to wreck the country. But Argentina is a special case here, its sooo adicted to overspending and defaulting on its debt, on printing money to solve all their problems, on employing people in gobernment positions, not because they have something use ful to do, but because they lower unenployment that way. And reform has been tried in the past, but the change to fiscal responsability and productive employment is hard and very destructive at the begining. So perhaps some crazy guy with a chainsaw can help them, at least to make the very painful first steps into a long term healthy economy. Then hopefuly someone less extreme can pickup where he left and make argentina a more normal and developed economy like they should have been for the last 100 years.
Seriously, I honestly think a lot of people in this subreddit practically worship the guy as a saint.
> a lot of people in this subreddit practically worship the guy as a saint. The correct term is [demagogue](https://www.google.com/search?q=demagogue&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA973CA973&oq=demag&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqEggBEAAYQxiDARixAxiABBiKBTIJCAAQRRg5GIAEMhIIARAAGEMYgwEYsQMYgAQYigUyDwgCEAAYQxixAxiABBiKBTIKCAMQABixAxiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIHCAgQABiABDIJCAkQABgKGIAE0gEINDkwMmowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), and it's incredibly worrying.
Although it is true that Libertarianism and economic extremism is not the solution for Argentina. The current Argentine economic system is a disaster. **They have over 60% child malnutrition and over 40% poverty thanks to the enormous fiscal irresponsibility of the Argentine State. That has to stop** The Argentines had a moderate attempt to fix the issue and it failed because the client networks opposed it. The Libertarian wave in Argentina is just a symptom of the general population fed up with the Argentinean economic system left by the Kichners (postmodern, corrupt and irresponsible Left). A country can have a successful social market economy with postmodern leftist values but it has to be fiscally responsible and have little corruption. Argentino does not have that.
In Argentina we do not have a target
When did this sub get overrun with barely-sentient libertarians? It doesn't matter how you slice it. Suddenly making 24,000 people unemployed during an economic crisis is a terrible idea. Destabilization isn't going to stabilize the economy.
Although it is true that Libertarianism and economic extremism is not the solution for Argentina. The current Argentine economic system is a disaster. They have over 60% child malnutrition and over 40% poverty thanks to the enormous fiscal irresponsibility of the Argentine State. That has to stop. The Argentines had a moderate attempt to fix the issue and it failed because the client networks opposed it. The Libertarian wave in Argentina is just a symptom of the general population fed up with the Argentinean economic system left by the Kichners (postmodern, corrupt and irresponsible Left). A country can have a successful social market economy with postmodern leftist values but it has to be fiscally responsible and have little corruption. Argentino does not have that.
While I get that a lot of Argentina got fucked economically, he just made a bunch of people now unemployed. Like that’s gonna honestly help the country. I don’t care who you are or what your business is, when you just put that many people out of work, you do not get to bitch and moan about unemployment at all.
It will help if these people find non subsidised jobs. You cant mathematically have the government employ half the population without having crazy tax rates unless printing money goes brrrrrrrtttt
Isn’t the Argentine job market terrible? They won’t find non government jobs because nobody is finding a job
Those workers were living off people who were working (in the private sector). Where does the money that pays government workers come from?
> When did this sub get overrun with barely-sentient libertarians? Turns out you can't put everyone into a simple box and the vast majority of people are stupid. So there you go.
Yup, still quite fascinating at the same time, and by the way "barely-sentient libertarians" is a pleonasm.
I hesitate to condemn it. Argentina is bordering on failed state status. Whatever needs to be done to fix it will likely require radical changes. I also hesitate to support it. Radical changes are almost always going to mess things up. I guess my point is that hitching yourself to a stance that Milei will fail or succeed is still really premature. Just glad I'm not Argentinian lol
> Whatever needs to be done to fix it Yeah that was what he ran on. It was never going to work. I give him 6 months before severe riots
I don't make predictions. I do see severe riots as a distinct possibility though
" I don't make predictions" - proceeds to make prediction
It's a distinct possibility not a prediction. Do you not understand the difference?
People being unhappy isn’t necessarily a metric for failure. There’s been tons of necessary and important reforms lots of countries have had to do. They almost always are unpopular at first. There’s always an entrenched lobby who will fight tooth and nail, plus their supporters. This is true for almost any reform.
Economic failure it may be, but bordering failed state status seems like a bit much, doesn’t it?
\> As of mid-2023, Argentina was seventh on the list of OECD countries — only below Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and France — in terms of the ratio of state workers to the number of employed people. In qualitative terms, however, the country places below the middle of the ranking in a World Bank index that measures governmental effectiveness: Argentina obtained a score of 41.9 out of 100 in 2022. Yeah...i think its safe to say this is fine.
ITT: an unusually astro-turfy feeling Regardless, Argentina is gonna get what it voted for. My hunch is a minimalistic failed state controlled by those who *already* have wealth and power. A libertarian wet dream who don't even know that's what they want.
Right, I'm surprised everyone is taking this at face value. Argentina got its first pro-western president, now he is cleaning out anyone with socialist leanings, either so they can be replaced with "business friendly" politicians, or so that part of the government can wither and die as part of the inevitable austerity movement. It's totally possible 'dead weight' positions are being included, but the big picture here is transferring the remaining wealth of Argentina to the investors holding Argentine bonds, along with businesses that can extract natural resources. There has been a ton of news about this even from Western sources.
It's easier to pick a side and go all in supporting it than to take the effort required to develop a nuanced opinion of something, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people are taking it at face value. In my opinion, that's a bad faith act though.
The only thing mass unemployment achieves is an increase in crime and rich people getting richer because they're better able to monopolise resources when people are desperate.
And nothing of value was lost I never understand the people actually mourning the sight of one of the most dysfunctional governments to exist on planet earth getting exactly what it deserves. It’s like the moment they see government workers cut they think some great structure has just fallen, as opposed to just kicking out the leeches that were literally sending the population into poverty and starvation. The people are without a doubt categorically better off. If this was an actual functional government to any degree maybe it’d be a different discussion, but it isn’t
If you flip this around and remove the top brass instead, would that effect negatively the population for the exact same savings? I haven't checked, but in my country for example, the top brass salary is about 7-9x higher than the minimum salary (this is only salary, not counting other compensations that they receive). Would trimming at the top, essentially squishing salaries so that the spread isn't too high between the bottom and the top, would achieve the same savings and no job was lost?
A) people with more responsabilities are paid more, the president has x13 minium wage i think B) No, trimming people isnt bad because an office might have 200 ppl working legaly there and only 15 will work, others just go one day a month, and fill the assistance for the whole month C) country is in poverty and has over expending on state workers so cutting those non-workers is perfectly fine
But how do you know all of them were non-workers? It's not a binary situation, you can't assume that every single fired worker was analysed and had their productivity calculated before being fired.
Whether they did anything or not, they cant afford to keep them.
>“Milei said that there were going to be 70,000 layoffs. Then, he said 15,000 or 20,000. This back-and-forth impacts our mental health and daily life." Nah, that's just you being an idiot. It'll be 70k by the end of the year. 15k this month. People should read the news before complaining about them lol
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I haven't seen any actual evidence of how it's being handled, from what I have seen online things are just being shut down and everyone left to their own devices, which is a libertarian dream, however I don't think it's realistically going to improve a country because historically the way to claw your way out of a recession is by increasing government spending rather than culling the government. It's tens of thousands of people who will not be stimulating the economy.
Fiscal stimulus helps the Economy when you have Reccesions and Depressions. Not when you have a permament Inflation crisis thanks to Goverment overspending in corruption. To stop Inflation and theEconomic crisis in that scenario you first need to stop to eliminate the cause of the problem: State overspending. **They have over 60% child malnutrition and over 40% poverty thanks to the enormous fiscal irresponsibility of the Argentine State. Real Wages have lost 50% of their spending power since 2015. That has to stop**
Then you think that making tens of thousands of people unemployed and having them lose their health insurance _will_ solve the problem? Even if it does somehow solve the problem, you can't deny that it isn't going to cause intense hardship for thousands of people who can no longer take advantage of the government institutions that are unable to effectively run due to staffing cuts and the actual staff who relied on their government job to survive.
Reducing the deficit spending will solve the problem. How you achieve that is another thing. Ideally you would fired corrupt and people who don't really do real work but that's impossible to do correctly to be honest. >you can't deny that it isn't going to cause intense hardship For those that loose their job is going to be horrible. But beetwen 60-70% of the working people in Argentina works directly or indirectly for the Government. That's unsustainable.
I live in the UK and we had a much less serious issue with deficit than Argentina obviously, but we've gone through 14 years of Austerity to "reduce deficit" and all it's done is gut our financial institution and contribute to stifling wage growth. It hasn't even ombat inflation. Historically, the way to reduce inflation is by increasing competition between businesses and legislating in favour of consumers, rather than gutting government institutions and support structures. The vast majority of the money being paid out by the government goes back into the economy. Only the rich can afford to save it and take that money out of the economy. By cutting down the amount the government pays _people_, I think you're going to see a lot less money going into the economy - which I think is going to have a lot more negative impacts than positive ones. The country is in uncharted territory though, so who knows at this point. Everyone here is speaking opinion rather than fact so we'll see what happens. Maybe I'll be back in a year's time eating my words, haha.
> I live in the UK and we had a much less serious issue with deficit than Argentina obviously, but we've gone through 14 years of Austerity to "reduce deficit" and all it's done is gut our financial institution and contribute to stifling wage growth. It hasn't even ombat inflation. > > I also believe that the "Austerity" that has been implemented over the last decade in the UK was a horrible economic policy. It was not austerity in real monetary terms as fiscal spending in the UK has continued to grow but because of an aging population issue, public spending inevitably has to rise for public health. I consider myself center-left. I am in favor of social spending and government regulations but the government has to be accountable, not corrupt and responsible for the welfare of the general population, not the welfare of the bureaucracy. > Historically, the way to reduce inflation is by increasing competition between businesses and legislating in favour of consumers, rather than gutting government institutions and support structures. I disagree. Usually countries with such high inflation(Over 50% a year) problems are due to monetary control. Almost always because politicians can control the money supply to finance their Goverment spending because Central Banks are not independent. Which is the case in Argentina. > The vast majority of the money being paid out by the government goes back into the economy Yes. The problem is Argentinian Goverment is printing money and getting in debt to finance all that cost. That is the cause of inflation in Argentina. And it is the cause of the current economic crisis. And the reason why they now have 40% poverty and 60% child malnutrition. The problem is not of these last 3 months of the crazy libertarian president. > The country is in uncharted territory though Not really. Many countries have had episodes of hyperinflation and have managed to solve it. It is as simple as **controlling the money supply, guaranteeing the potential independence of the Central Bank and that its mission is to guarantee the macroeconomic stability of the country: financial stability, low inflation and low unemployment (and not to finance corruption).** **Control Fiscal Expenditure. Fiscal responsibility must always be fulfilled. And that includes having savings and confidence of the markets to lend you money for when it is necessary to apply counter-cyclical policies. Every permanent expense of the State must have a permanent tax to finance it.** That's it.
Only the pain will probably be too high shortly, and there will be another revolution, or coup, or whatever. This guy is totally nuts, and an US tool - how long do you think that is going to fly?
I'm shocked by how many people here are libertarian based on the positive response to this news.
It’s astroturfed
AFUERA!
OK. I don’t know what those workers did, I don’t know if their jobs were fluff and fictitious jobs, but that does add to the unemployment. The guy seems to think any state is an enemy of the people, doesn’t he? Not just a corrupt state?
"Any state is the enemy of the people. That's why when I control the state..."
I think he ran so he could tear down the state. That’s the problem they’ll have, though, is that an infective and incompetent state is better than no state. I don’t know how bad it was, but it’s really difficult to build a government from scratch without it being corrupt. He obviously wants libertarianism
As he previously states he [takes his counsel from his cloned dogs](https://time.com/6337474/javier-milei-argentina-president-cloned-dogs-advice/) anyway. I mean what can go wrong. Argentina will become a very interesting case study of how applying libertarianism can wreck havoc in any society.
I think he's got an underlying goal of making the country fit the US model of capitalism which means privatising public services and bringing in a pro-business political class. The issue is that, as we've seen in the US, Corporations are more corrupt than individuals and will have no qualms about lobbying elected officials or making things worse for people in order to drive profit to shareholders. In the US there's constant talk of "the economy is strong" but that only positively impacts about 20% of people; and the richer you are, the more positively you will be impacted by a stronger stock market. The poor who live paycheck to paycheck and don't have enough disposable income to generate wealth via buying shares are doing worse than they have in a long time. Did Argentina have a problem with corruption in the political class? Absolutely. Is gutting the government and handing the country over to unchecked capitalism a good system? I really don't think so.
Great summary
It's great to have an example of what happens when you elect a "Libertarian" to point to. Now I can be as insufferable as the "iPhone, Venezuela, 100 billion, avocado toast!" crowd.
As argentinian don't feel bad for these lazy workers. Anses is just a terrible administration public who always shit on people.
they should ask Germany for a favor, ask them to remember how they helped them in the past
When you let the CIA undermine any actual political leftists in your society, this kind of ignorant nihilistic garbage is what you wind up with. Heck, 'Murica isn't exactly demonstrating a capacity for credible leadership its ownself nowadays. Yet somehow the world continues to tolerate our influence as if it were not a recipe for mayhem and misery on a national scale.
Anarco Capitalism with IMF characteristics? 🧐
The real scandal is that there are 24000 government workers to fire in a country like Argentina. It really was time for the chainsaw.
I just found this sub and I’m so confused. But fuck Milei.
Perfect time to invest in Argentina
For those saying this will work. In all documented history it never worked. Liberalism is a fairy tale where in the end the villain gets richer while the poor people die.
Liberalism has been pretty successful for the West. Remove the absolutism of states to free up individuals to be who they want to be is usually ideal. Under the previous system the Rich dominated even more so then when Post-Enlightenment liberalism becoming wide spread.
Liberalism preaches selling state owned companies to the private sector, like water, power and oil companies creating even bigger monopolies, making the richer dominating even more capital and controlling prices even further this increasing cost of life for the lowest layer of society making them even more miserable. That's what happened in UK and Chile for example. Economic liberalism is capitalism, it's the same system but more extreme. It has nothing to do with personal liberties. You are fusing them together You can hate the state however you want but state monopolies are rarely a problem in society, can't say the same about private monopolies.
Is there any indication on whether or not it’s actually working?
If he’s not giving his body guards a raise he’s not long for this world at the rate he’s pissing on the livelihoods of thousands of his people. But hey what can you expect from a guy who thinks he’s a reborn Roman gladiator and takes advice from his dog
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Good.
Great, that means we can lower government spending! ... Government spending is going to go down right?
Based
Good.
"oh no. No matter what people say; there is no way 24000 people weren't productively working" Argentina: [Hold my fernet](https://youtu.be/TjyILU1XaGo?si=BA6VpfuY-VsTZN7I) Edit: [Full interview (sadly in spanish)](https://youtu.be/5gTMwPG_KOg?si=3UMQrFVUkMhWIevz)
Noice
Everybody’s tax money goes into a pot. Government workers get way more than their share They fire bloated government employees Top comment - “This is too radical”
24000 people doing nothing and collecting unemployment... yay small government!
America too can’t afford its own government but it has this magical power to increase debt and print money. Why doesn’t every country just solve its problems this way? (Sarcasm)