I created this thread as a response to Matias in another thread, instead of hijacking that thread further.
Matias, I wasn't trying to give you a hard time about your English - you do a fine job, I'm sure better than I do in Spanish, at least written. I've never heard you speak, but I can imagine you speak just fine too.
Perhaps I should have said "don't use so much hyperbole" (related to your statement first that the Argentine GDP was growing unstoppably, and then simply growing and growing). My apologies for referring to your level of English, that was incorrect. Hyperbole can be constant in any language, I believe
To the subject of Argentina's GDP growth: this is not the picture of growth that is either unstoppable or growing and growing. See the chart below. Notice how growth was falling off from 2012-2013 and has pretty much stopped since 2013 - a .5% increase through the second quarter (I believe that's the last data point for this year and that's "point 5 percent", not 5%), down from a high of 5.1% from 2011 to 2012. It's not going to get better this year, unless the government fudges some serious numbers through the end of the year somehow, I believe. Maybe I'm wrong and third and fourth quarters will be record breakers.
"The economy [in 2nd qtr 2013] grew 8.3 percent compared with the same quarter of 2012, due to the good performance of the auto and agricultural sectors."
Looking at the graph, at the end of 2013 (a little past where the data line hits the 600 GDP line) the growth has flattened out. I mention this particular point because this is also where the above quote comes into play. Auto and agricultural sectors had an apparently very high growth rate in the second quarter 2013 - and yet you can see the line falling off anyway in the graph above. It had been two years since that rate of growth had been seen for any given quarter. Kind of looks like there may have been something to prop the numbers up a little longer, hoping for something more to keep them afloat.
Of course, the chart is displayed in US Dollars, so if you take into account the real value of the peso vs the official rate, I think you would see a significant difference, not nearly as big a growth in 2013, maybe even negative growth (I didn't do the change rate difference calculation, depends on the blue value and the official value at the time and other factors that I'm not even competent to list) leading into another, sharper downturn this year. Which actually kind of matches the flow of inflation...but that's just my guess.
The negative view of this, to reiterate and clarify, would be calculated using the blue rate to get the true value (in billions) of dollars that the AR GDP actually equaled, not with the bogus official rate that the government here insists on - and spends large quantities of its reserves to maintain. All smoke and mirrors. And inflation. Plenty of it.
You're right that the unemployment rate seems fairly low here.
But I've seen the jobs available, that keep people "employed". For example, the guy who came by and sharpened my knives the other day. He had a bicycle with a grinding wheel on it, driven by his pedals. Great job. If electric knife sharpeners were more prevalent and less expensive (i.e., fewer import restrictions - hell, we had a mechanical knife sharpener in our house in the States in the '70s! And yes, I'm sure you can get them here. It's just a loose example of what people are willing to work for), people wouldn't need him to do that job. Could be that he could find a better job than tooling around on his bike looking for someone to spend a little bit of money for him to do his work (of course, that presupposes that there are more opportunities available, so really the guy is stuck where he is) - but I agree, better than nothing. Or the guys I saw filling in a trench on the sidewalk along Uruguay, between Arenales and Santa Fe, which also turned the corner on Santa Fe. They were hand-mixing cement (not even concrete) in a wheelbarrow to refill the trench they'd made. They must have spent the entire day (I passed by a number of times between about 11:00 am and 3:00 pm) refilling a trench that was about 30-40 meters long total (it wasn't contiguous - it was broken over about 80 meters). Where's the mixer that you can buy to make the job easier and faster - and more productive? And less laborious? Not to mention mixing a little pebble with your cement to give it some staying power. People still do construction here as it was done decades ago (or longer) in many cases. I have other examples of how much make-work goes on in every-day commerce, but I'll let that stand for now.
But at least there are a lot of low-paying jobs available. I don't think the low unemployment numbers explain the "growth" all that much.
There is no push for efficiency and productivity for various reasons, one of which is it's easier to employ people at menial, repetitive, labor-intensive tasks (and give them no modern aids in many cases) than it is to allow people to see that they can be more productive and not have to work like that. But in order to achieve the latter, you have to make serious changes at so many levels of "society".
As I mentioned, Argentina's GDP growth is far from "growing and growing" or "unstoppable". It could be so much better and not have its wild gyrations but it would mean people would have to stop listening to the government and BELIEVING them, and realize there ain't no mystical father figure that's going to come and save them, who is just waiting for the right time to take the reigns of government and make everything all OK.
Argentinos need to get serious about their country and committing to working it into better shape and quit blaming everyone but themselves for the state in which the country is.
Matias, I wasn't trying to give you a hard time about your English - you do a fine job, I'm sure better than I do in Spanish, at least written. I've never heard you speak, but I can imagine you speak just fine too.
Perhaps I should have said "don't use so much hyperbole" (related to your statement first that the Argentine GDP was growing unstoppably, and then simply growing and growing). My apologies for referring to your level of English, that was incorrect. Hyperbole can be constant in any language, I believe
To the subject of Argentina's GDP growth: this is not the picture of growth that is either unstoppable or growing and growing. See the chart below. Notice how growth was falling off from 2012-2013 and has pretty much stopped since 2013 - a .5% increase through the second quarter (I believe that's the last data point for this year and that's "point 5 percent", not 5%), down from a high of 5.1% from 2011 to 2012. It's not going to get better this year, unless the government fudges some serious numbers through the end of the year somehow, I believe. Maybe I'm wrong and third and fourth quarters will be record breakers.
"The economy [in 2nd qtr 2013] grew 8.3 percent compared with the same quarter of 2012, due to the good performance of the auto and agricultural sectors."
Looking at the graph, at the end of 2013 (a little past where the data line hits the 600 GDP line) the growth has flattened out. I mention this particular point because this is also where the above quote comes into play. Auto and agricultural sectors had an apparently very high growth rate in the second quarter 2013 - and yet you can see the line falling off anyway in the graph above. It had been two years since that rate of growth had been seen for any given quarter. Kind of looks like there may have been something to prop the numbers up a little longer, hoping for something more to keep them afloat.
Of course, the chart is displayed in US Dollars, so if you take into account the real value of the peso vs the official rate, I think you would see a significant difference, not nearly as big a growth in 2013, maybe even negative growth (I didn't do the change rate difference calculation, depends on the blue value and the official value at the time and other factors that I'm not even competent to list) leading into another, sharper downturn this year. Which actually kind of matches the flow of inflation...but that's just my guess.
The negative view of this, to reiterate and clarify, would be calculated using the blue rate to get the true value (in billions) of dollars that the AR GDP actually equaled, not with the bogus official rate that the government here insists on - and spends large quantities of its reserves to maintain. All smoke and mirrors. And inflation. Plenty of it.
You're right that the unemployment rate seems fairly low here.
But I've seen the jobs available, that keep people "employed". For example, the guy who came by and sharpened my knives the other day. He had a bicycle with a grinding wheel on it, driven by his pedals. Great job. If electric knife sharpeners were more prevalent and less expensive (i.e., fewer import restrictions - hell, we had a mechanical knife sharpener in our house in the States in the '70s! And yes, I'm sure you can get them here. It's just a loose example of what people are willing to work for), people wouldn't need him to do that job. Could be that he could find a better job than tooling around on his bike looking for someone to spend a little bit of money for him to do his work (of course, that presupposes that there are more opportunities available, so really the guy is stuck where he is) - but I agree, better than nothing. Or the guys I saw filling in a trench on the sidewalk along Uruguay, between Arenales and Santa Fe, which also turned the corner on Santa Fe. They were hand-mixing cement (not even concrete) in a wheelbarrow to refill the trench they'd made. They must have spent the entire day (I passed by a number of times between about 11:00 am and 3:00 pm) refilling a trench that was about 30-40 meters long total (it wasn't contiguous - it was broken over about 80 meters). Where's the mixer that you can buy to make the job easier and faster - and more productive? And less laborious? Not to mention mixing a little pebble with your cement to give it some staying power. People still do construction here as it was done decades ago (or longer) in many cases. I have other examples of how much make-work goes on in every-day commerce, but I'll let that stand for now.
But at least there are a lot of low-paying jobs available. I don't think the low unemployment numbers explain the "growth" all that much.
There is no push for efficiency and productivity for various reasons, one of which is it's easier to employ people at menial, repetitive, labor-intensive tasks (and give them no modern aids in many cases) than it is to allow people to see that they can be more productive and not have to work like that. But in order to achieve the latter, you have to make serious changes at so many levels of "society".
As I mentioned, Argentina's GDP growth is far from "growing and growing" or "unstoppable". It could be so much better and not have its wild gyrations but it would mean people would have to stop listening to the government and BELIEVING them, and realize there ain't no mystical father figure that's going to come and save them, who is just waiting for the right time to take the reigns of government and make everything all OK.
Argentinos need to get serious about their country and committing to working it into better shape and quit blaming everyone but themselves for the state in which the country is.