Global Courant
Luciano Laspina has a long career in national politics, as a PRO deputy, but also as a reference in Santa Fe politics. However, lately he has been taking flight for being Patricia Bullrich’s “favorite economist.”
This Thursday, at the downtown Palacio Duhau-Park Hyatt hotel, Laspina presented his book “Unraveling Argentina” in front of more than 400 people, accompanied precisely by the pre-candidate for president of Together for Change.
“There is a tangle of rules, exemptions, taxes, refunds, special regimes, special pensions, subsidies, prohibitions and restrictions that entangled the country, isolated it and turned it into one of the most backward in the modern world. All that entanglement discourages, it drives away, repels those who want to create jobs and companies,” said Laspina, 50, a deputy since 2015 and head of the Center for Progress Studies.
The book contains an analysis of the main economic variables and problems that Argentina currently has, focusing on the central and structural challenges that its economy has. The issues discussed refer to the recovery of the currency, inflation, the fiscal deficit, and tax and labor reforms, among others.
Laspina maintains that “this book is the product of the work of many people who have contributed their vision regarding the great problems of the country. We are a team of great professionals with an outstanding career, men and women, who have decided to put forward our ideas so that Argentina can emerge from a structural decadence, and begin to walk the path of sustainable development”.
The plan “to defeat inflation”
In one of the four central chapters of the publication, Laspina describes the solutions to “defeat inflation”, as well as developing strategies to resolve another series of conflicts in the country’s own economic situation.
“Reducing inflation is more complex and difficult than is believed, due to the multiplicity of factors that operate on the variable. Therefore, a properly articulated stabilization plan is required that attacks the root of the inflationary problem, which is the monetary issue, but that at the same time can align monetary and exchange policies with fiscal, tax and income policies”, says the leader from Rosario.
Patricia Bullrich with her main economic adviser, Luciano Laspina, at Llao Llao.
And he lists the points of any stabilization plan: 1- Reconstruction of the reputation and credibility of the Central Bank, 2- Exchange unification and free convertibility of the currency, 3- Alignment of relative prices prior to the stabilization plan, 4- Attack the problem of fiscal deficit and public debt.
Laspina further argues that “fiscal and monetary policy must be calibrated to operate together with the same objective: to reduce the inflation rate. However, with few exceptions, the long history of Argentine stabilization plans shows that this was almost never respected. ”.
How to create quality jobs
In another section, it raises the challenges in labor matters and how to re-create quality jobs, in that context. “The diagnosis of the Argentine labor market reveals four problems: 1) Low registered employment, 2) High Informality, 3) Deterioration of income and 4) Low qualification of an important part of the labor force.
Based on this, the economist proposes to work on three axes: “Make viable the creation of private, formal and productive employment, softening the entry and exit barriers that distort hiring decisions, facilitating the creation of employment with a focus on SMEs “.
Luciano Laspina is a national deputy. Photo: Rafael Mario Quinteros.
The second is “to modernize the labor frameworks to align the rules and regulations to the productive reality, accompanying the transitions with new hiring modalities, new collective agreements and greater integration of value chains; adding new concepts such as the hour bank, versatility functional and teamwork”.
And the third “correct the incentives so that work is a true tool for social integration, development of skills and competencies, favoring the education-employment articulation that constitutes the foundations of our country’s competitiveness.”
