TO CONTINUE THE FALLING OF POVERTY, IT IS NECESSARY TO REDUCE INFLATION

INDEC reported that poverty is going down. To accelerate this process and make it sustainable inflation levels must keep on descending. Therefore, the priority should be to reduce public spending by eliminating national programs that overlap with local roles and not keep delaying the pension reform. (más…)

REVISITING THE INFLATION TARGET MEANS ACCEPTING MORE POVERTY

The upward revision of the inflation target is an act of honesty, but also of resignation. The speed of gradualism chosen to order public finances forces to tolerate higher inflation. It also implies that the vested interests of those resisting modernizing the state are imposed over the needs of the poorest who will continue to finance the fiscal imbalance with the inflationary tax. (más…)

For every $100 billion increase in gov`t spending poverty decreased only 1%

The economic authorities desisted from publishing poverty statistics. The distortion of official statistics is of extreme lack of responsibility and diverts attention from the central issue. The controversy over the severity of poverty reduces the debate over the regressive consequences associated with the waste of public spending. In order to reduce poverty is vital to stop the manipulation of statistics and to reexamine how the state is managed.

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7 out of 10 poor people live in the interior of the country

The electoral campaign is dominated by candidates from the City of Buenos Aires and Great Buenos Aires. This occurs in a context of unprecedented concentration of public funds at the central government, being most of them spent on the City and Great Buenos Aires. However, severe deprivation hits much harder inside the country.  This is a costly contradiction that helps dodge important issues on the electoral debate, like the highly regressive economic subsidies.

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The Universal Child Allowance perpetuates poverty

One of the most widely accepted policies in Argentina is the Universal Child Allowance. Government authorities claim it to be a major achievement and the opposition has no criticism, except some formalities like it was not approved by law but by an inferior norm, as a decree. Both parts overlook that, because of its rudimentary design, it is probably a social scheme that promotes the intergenerational reproduction of poverty rather than a sustained process of social progress. Other countries’ experiences and the finding obtained locally suggest that there are elements of the design and the management of the program that should be improved.

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