Taking advantage of the population’s general fed up with corrupt elites, the man who was sometimes presented as a libertarian or an anarcho-capitalist, sometimes as a neo-liberal of the old school, Javier Milei nourished the hope of millions of Argentines who saw in it a sort of messiah, politically and not football-wise. Because unlike Javier, Lionel doesn’t just dribble, he also scores goals.
Elected in the second round of the 2023 presidential elections with a narrow score of 55.65% but with a record participation of 76.32%, the one we now nickname “la motosierra» (the chainsaw in Spanish), due to his numerous rather zany appearances, chainsaw in hand, Milei at least had the merit of keeping his word, for better and especially for worse according to some analysts, by implacably applying his program, almost to the letter. A rare commodity in these times when the political classes strive to systematically betray their electoral promises.
But this nickname, “la motosierra“, he owes it above all to his drastic austerity policies which, according to a recent article in the famous British daily The Telegraphmade it possible to miraculously rebalance all the national accounts.
The article is full of praise: “With inflation falling, interest rates falling, and the peso on fire in a market, Milei is already proving the left-wing global economic establishment—addicted to bigger governments and endless deficits—wrong. Indeed, this could provide a model for other countries to move away from zero growth..
Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, Pangloss would have said.
However, not being by nature optimistic, unlike the archetypal character of Pangloss in “Candide”, Voltaire’s philosophical tale, I decided to contact an Argentine economist and political scientist, Ariel Umpièrrez.
After a long and interesting exchange, the observation seems to be quite different on the ground.
Yes, deficits have been reduced, but at what cost?
Because after the economic and social chemotherapy carried out by Milei, it was not just the tumor that shrank, everything shrank, as a certain comedian said. Namely, purchasing power, demand, employment…
Discontent and demonstrations are becoming more and more numerous in the Argentinian streets, and the euphoria of the first months of his election is gradually giving way to a hangover from which it will be very hard to escape.
Removal of a large number of subsidies (transport, energy…), education privatization project, price liberalization, brutal devaluation of the Argentine Peso with an increase in the cost of imported goods… these measures leave something like an aftertaste, a feeling of déjà vu, Ariel Umpièrrez tells us, for whom this program presented as radical and revolutionary during the elections is ultimately only a pale copy of the shock therapy implemented by the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, with the help of the “Chicago boys”, but also in Argentina under the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.
The Argentinian news portal El Destape even had fun drawing a parallel between Milei’s economic program and that of the former Minister of Finance under the Argentine dictatorship, Martinez De Hoz. The similarity is uncanny.
The risk being that the similarity of economic programs also results in a similarity of socio-economic consequences. Because basically, the same causes produce the same effects.
One of the long-term consequences of this policy, according to Ariel Umpièrrez, would be greater capital concentration for the benefit of large groups run by finance and commerce magnates who, unlike VSEs and SMEs, have the means not only to survive these austerity policies, but above all to benefit greatly from them because of the tax advantages that will be offered to them on a silver platter, literally and figuratively, by Milei’s program. The socio-economic consequences will inevitably follow: increasing inequalities and poverty, crumbling of the middle class and, ultimately, a strong return of the left, again for the better… and especially for the worse.
Supported mainly by Argentinian youth during the 2023 presidential elections, Milei is very likely to permanently disgust Argentines with politics, consequently delivering them either to an economically incompetent left or to a corrupt right. A classic, you will say, of politics in Latin America… For my part, I will be satisfied with the Classics that the Spanish Liga offers us, because there, for once, the suspense is complete and we are not likely to be disappointed by the spectacle.
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