Global Courant
The world has advanced thanks to innovation. This allows today that the life expectancy of the world population has increased considerably. It is the product of those who have noble ideals, that is, the one that leads men to a degree of material and spiritual well-being, based on fruitful work, scientific study, guided by a noble ideal of improvement. The goal is to create life, not cut it short.
It has been mistakenly believed that a noble ideal of government is to take away from some to give to others. So reality shows that if we take away from a rich man what he achieved to distribute it among the poor, what we ultimately do is create one more poor person. This retrograde thinking was characteristic of socialist governments fond of populism that, instead of creating jobs, installed adverse conditions for investment with heavy tax burdens and regressive labor laws, generating uncertainty in economic operators with the mistakes of their suffocating intervention.
They are governments addicted to socialism and the populist distribution of wealth that created the efforts of others for their contraction to work. Its objective has not been to establish equitable conditions for the distribution of income. They reward the mediocre will of the one who expects the protective State to provide him with that form of well-being, to which he could not access due to lack of training or his lazy attitude towards life. Populist governments encourage obscurantism and degrade the culture of work.
They use power to fall into the ease of distributing what has been done, rather than the rational conception of becoming a pole of attraction for innovators. For this reason, in our country, food boxes have been distributed among the needy, but nothing has been done to establish new companies to produce them. On the contrary, capital has emigrated and with it the production of foreign currency.
After years of indiscriminate redistribution, giving away rates for public services, energy, and fuel, and abusing the fiscal deficit financed with emissions to encourage the rusting of the gears that move the economy, confiscatory taxes were implemented, such as the one that taxed the great fortunes, and insisted on the denial of freely disposing of one’s own income through stocks and preventing the remuneration of external investors.
The country continues to apply methods similar to those of the Soviet revolution, 106 years ago. As a result we see that poverty has increased, that the currency has lost its value, and with it the hopes of a better way of life. Having taken from some to give to others has not been a guarantee to continue giving, because the country’s resources to generate income have been exhausted.
I think it is time to innovate and abandon the thought that life is improved for the needy with subsidies and distributing the income that we take from those who have the most. Social solidarity is a feeling that must be born from the people’s own culture, be a volitional act, not imposed by force or fed with the expropriation of companies or the plunder of income. Because this form of transgression creates divisions and leaves very deep marks on the level of understanding and tolerance of the social classes. That populist policy has kept us in isolation from the rest of the free nations of the world.
Note that through political and economic agreements we stimulate relations with countries whose governments have deserved clear signs of rejection of their totalitarian methods and instead we encourage conflicts or we are forced to rebuild relations with countries that have reached a respectable degree of development and with which we could maintain extremely convenient links for the application of new technologies.
Without a doubt, it is time to change, open up to the world, be attractive for the inflow of capital and so that those generated in the country do not emigrate. Instead we close imports and contradictorily want to increase exports, as if the countries had the obligation to buy from us and we prohibit them from selling their products to us and to conclude we intervene in the exchange market restricting the negotiation with foreign currency.
Let’s stop scaring away investment, because soon there will be nothing to distribute and deepening the model will mean taking more from some to give less and less to others. As we can see, taking away from some to give to others is not the recommended method for development.
Víctor N. Luis La Pietra / [email protected]
THE EDITOR’S COMMENT
By Cesar Dossi
Social plans, a hot debate
Remove or not social plans and subsidies. The subject comes from drag. Already in 1983 Raúl Alfonsín tested it with the National Food Plan (Cajas Pan). Then it was the Solidarity Bonus. In 1990, the Comprehensive and Solidarity Food Program (PAIS) was created. In 1994 the social plan Trabajar I. Los tres was launched. under the presidency of Carlos Menen. It is there when the piquetero movement emerges due to the wave of unemployment.
In 2001, the Heads of Household Plan was created, in the presidency of Rodríguez Saá, which lasted only 7 days, put into operation by Eduardo Duhalde, who presided over Argentina for one year (2002-2003). Then Néstor Kirchner took over. In 2009, Cristina Fernández signed decree 1602/09 and created the Universal Child Allowance, the idea of the deputy Elisa Carrió, who in 2015 said that “our AUH project was not to keep people from working or to keep them in poverty . It is not a subsidy, it is an income”. And since the K era everything continues under that statute.
Already in 2022, and now last Thursday, Patricia Bullrich had proposed eliminating social plans in 6 months and “replacing them with unemployment insurance”, but the Government fell on her. And there the issue fluctuates since democracy was established in Argentina. After 40 years, thinking about social plans is quite a challenge.
It may not be the right time to experiment, because in order to lower or neutralize the reproduction of poverty, constant maneuvers are needed that become stronger over time.
Are social plans and subsidies necessary today? Yes. Lack shakes bravely. Should they be perpetuated? No. The country needs to renew ideas. Betting on and redoubling efforts in education to smooth out that entrenched percentage, and at the same time create a sustainable employment policy.
Politicians have been due for this debate for a long time, and the mea culpa is a behavior that is not palpable in that atmosphere. Corruption and that fascination with power are also the main executors of that Argentina that today carries with it laziness and begs favors from tyrannical countries.
