this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Argentine peso plunges after rightist who admires Trump comes first in primary vote (apnews.com)
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[–] Jallrich@lemmy.one 24 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Macri also admired Trump. And the current president is in good terms with the Venezuelan "president"

But aside of this, let's have a bit more of context:

Political State of Argentina

Argentina is mainly split into two parties, and, usually, no other party comes into power (like Dem/Rep in US or Conservatives/Labor Party in the UK). Even with stupid ads saying that you are team Argen or you are team Tina.

Those two parties basically kept the status quo, or made it slightly worse. For example, last 20 years:

  • Peronist party (the Kirchner marriage) hold the presidency for 12 years.
    • Country became worse (corruption, inflation, etc)
  • Macri (opposition) became president.
    • Came with a lot of half baked ideas, country became worse.
  • Alberto Fernandez with his new vice president Cristina Kirchner came into power
    • He has been publicly against the Kirchners in twitter, and suddenly did a 180 degree change and become pro them.
    • Country is even worse than before

So you can see, they vote one side of the coin, and because it doesn't work they end up voting the other side of the coin and they flip it over and over.

There are a lot of other delicate situations here, like the fact that both parties are constantly trying to stop the other party of achieving something (even if its good) or that one party brings an idea that sounds good but it's half baked (like the abortion law or the government budget) and when the other party wants to stop it they call them fascist or anything.

Javier Milei, the new candidate

Milei has slowly being growing in the social medias and winning the general young population.

He is eccentric, he is charismatic (in his own weird way) and he has new ideas.

He came up with some interesting propositions, (which I'm gonna write them all in the next comment) that are very detailed. Most parties propose to "improve the economy" or "give more rights to the workers" without explaining how.

Milei has a very detailed plan on that, and he wants to tackle a thing that annoys most of the argentinians:

  • Taxes
  • Inflation
  • Social plans

Taxes

As you may have heard, Argentina is heavily taxed, there are a lot of expected taxes + a lot of hidden taxes. Every time you buy something, you have a VAT tax of 21% (which was supposed to be 13% but it was “temporarily upgraded” in 1995 and never lowered down).

Inflation

The Argentinian peso has been going down since I was born, they print it so much that they started to import new bills from Europe as the machines in Argentina and Brasil can not keep up with the demand. As you can imagine, printing it so much generates inflation (tho one of the parties will deny it all the time).

Milei proposed to remove the peso and use American dollars.

Is it a good idea? I don’t know. But maybe it would be for the best when the peso seems like it will never really recover.

Social plans

There is a lot of hate discussion regarding this subject.

Let’s start with facts:

  • 55% of workers in Argentina work for the government
    • Which means that only 45% works for private entities.
  • Argentina provides social plans for people who can not meet their needs.
    • This has been very criticized. The most common argument is that it makes people lazy and that they don’t want to work.
    • Tie that with the fact that salaries are extremely low, and poverty is quite high and now you have a place to focus the anger of the “working” population.

This brings arguments like:

I don’t want to pay taxes for to maintain “these” people.

Milei also have a plan for this, offering to slowly remove social plans by adding requirements to get them and promoting work and studies.

This is a very delicate proposal, as I personally don’t know if this could be achieved.

Also, Milei is very much against having so much public spending in government work and social plans. When he got the majority of votes he said:

Leftists sons of bitches, tremble, freedom is advancing!

(The name of his party is “La Libertad avanza” that means “freedom moves forward”)

The conclusion

So, at the end of the day, you find two strong parties which have been failing at changing the country, and a new party that had risen with a charismatic leader, who has a detailed plan and is a new face.

People (specially the young) are tired of the same old people fighting to keep the country the same way, so they vote for someone who is different. Milei is known for appearing in discussion TV shows and arguing a lot with facts (tho he argues in quite a heated way) so people are more exposed to him, with his facts and attitude.

And this scares the people. In Argentina the peso devalues with any political event. Didn’t matter who would have win, the peso would go down.

[–] Jallrich@lemmy.one 8 points 1 year ago

Milei’s government plan

Translated from here with Chat GPT:

  • Reduction of public spending: Aims for a 15% target after advancing in a "reorganization of the State."
  • Elimination of taxes: The proposal aims to remove "90%" of taxes that have a 2% impact on GDP and "impede" the economy.
  • Labor reform: Proposes implementing the UOCRA model, a scheme of unemployment insurance with "greater financial depth."
  • Unrestricted trade openness: Proposes following the Chilean experience and removing all types of limitations, both for exporting and importing.
  • Elimination of the Central Bank: "There is no other way to end inflation," states the document, which foresees the extinction of the organization as a "monetary issuing agent."
  • Monetary reform: Proposes rescuing the "liabilities" of the Central Bank, developing alternative plans to recover and advance to a scheme where "Argentinians can trade in the currency they want."
  • Energy: Eliminate economic subsidies by recalibrating the economic and financial equation of contracts "to lower the cost" for companies; this way, "realistic tariff schemes" will be implemented that, as stated, "will not directly affect the pockets of Argentinians."
  • A reform of energy regulatory bodies is also proposed.
  • Reform the ministries of Health, Social Development, Labor, and Education into a single ministry called the Ministry of Human Capital.
  • Continue with social assistance until an economic model is adopted that allows for "wealth creation, job generation, and well-being."
  • A private health and education system, after a "reorganization of the State."
  • Combat childhood poverty through nutrition plans, income protection programs, and incentives for students, among other proposals.
  • Security reforms: Changes to the penitentiary system and to the laws on Internal Security, National Defense, and Intelligence are proposed. They also propose stopping land occupations, prioritizing the fight against drug trafficking, and ensuring free movement throughout the territory.
  • Defense policy: Revalue the Armed Forces and reformulate the current National Intelligence system.
  • Foreign relations: Promotion of free trade and alignment with all liberal democracies in the world.
  • Infrastructure: Replace public works with a private initiative scheme similar to Chile, with Peruvian wayouts and Swiss-style incentive schemes.
  • Public spending: Creation of a control area for the spending of each ministry, elimination of drivers and security personnel for officials in general (with exceptions for relevance).
  • Public media: Closure or privatization of Télam, Public TV. It also foresees doing the same with the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (Incaa), and the National Institute Against Discrimination (Inadi).
  • Elimination of exchange restrictions, all withholdings, and export rights, generation of a "special regime of promotion for long-term investments."
  • Negotiate the elimination of the gross income tax. This is a tax charged by the provinces.

Find the whole proposal here (in Spanish).

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