The Argentine Time Tunnel.

[camberiu]

138,000 people out of poverty every day over the last 25 years, while you claimed neo-liberalism ruined the world.

 

[nicoenarg]

You guys mean to tell me Matias's posts are not satire?

 

[Rich One]

You guys have to understand. This country up to the seventies was all middle class. A very wide, mobile middle class. The tip of the rhombus, a 3% of upper class, and the same number to the bottom.
Im living in Mexico, and I still can not understand how marked and notorious are the differences between classes here. A very classist society, with a lot of poverty. Not a rhombus, but a triangle, with very marked strata.
Mobility was a distinct feature of Argentine society. Up to 1976 we have the same gini index than Canada, and no more than 6% of poverty. We were much more developed than Spain, to name a country with similar characteristics than ours.

This picture started to change in the 70s with neoliberalismo imposed by force (dictatorship) and other time by force (hyperinflation created by creditors of the debt of dictatorship) in 1990.

Then, in the 90s, the upper classes tried a closure, by consolidating them and sending more than 40% to the poverty, we started to see changes, such as cartoneros in the streets, informal job, sellers everywhere, poverty, insecurity, all those things didnt exist in Argentina till the 90s. And it wasnt just the 2001 crisis, it was 10 years of + 25% unemployment, of closing companies, national companies, PYMES, the industria nacional conmpanies. A real poverty factory. Menem changed the social map of this country, and even the Ks with huge social planning could not change this back.

So the country I talk is long gone.

But the gini index got better, and the redistribution of wealth really and trully improved dduring the K years. Industry grew as never before since Perons last government.

The Gini index is calculated from the INDEC numbers provided to the World Bank..? The GINI index is back where it was in 1983 (at the end of the dictadura) around 43.5

see Details https://www.quandl.c...ndex-by-country

[font=Source Sans Pro']The Gini index data on Quandl comes from the [/font]World Bank[font=Source Sans Pro']. The World Bank publishes income distribution data obtained from nationally representative household surveys conducted by national statistical agencies (INDEC ?) . You can find comprehensive details on the methodology used in the calculations on the [/font]World Bank Group website[font=Source Sans Pro'].[/font]

 

[Matiasba]

Yes, that must be why the Marxist movement here in Argentina was so big back in the 1970s. Because that is what middle classes with high mobility index do, they take up arms and start terrorist activities to overthrow the bourgeoisie. Hey, they are doing that in Canada right now. They have a revolutionary leader over there in Montreal called Ernest Guedikian. Yeah, Marxist guerrilas are super normal and a common sight, specially in countries that have Canadian levels of GINI indexes and 6% poverty.



And yet somehow Mexico has a better life expectancy than that of Argentina (Death by crimes included).

http://goo.gl/T9HVhZ

Mexico has 60% of poverty!!

 

[camberiu]

Mexico has 60% of poverty!!

And yet has higher life expectancy than Argentina, taking into account murders. And no Marxist guerrillas. Argentina with 6% poverty (according to you) had a huge Marxist guerrilla/terrorist problem. How do you explain those contradictions?

 

[Matiasba]

And yet has higher life expectancy than Argentina, taking into account murders. And no Marxist guerrillas. Argentina with 6% poverty (according to you) had a huge Marxist guerrilla/terrorist problem. How do you explain those contradictions?

the guerrillas, victims of all dictatorships in Latin America (see: figure of desaparecidos) were in its great majority upper middle class people, mainly students, at least students in Argentina. Google Juventud Peronista. The great majority of marxist guerrilla in argentina were upper middle class. Yes, they had some support of the working class, but the working class decided to look anywhere else when the dictatorship kidnapped and killed those people.

 

[camberiu]

the guerrillas, victims of all dictatorships in Latin America (see: figure of desaparecidos) were in its great majority upper middle class people, mainly students, at least in Argentina. Google Juventud Peronista. The great majority of marxist guerrilla in argentina were upper middle class. Yes, they had some support of the working class, but the working class decided to look anywhere else when the dictatorship kidnapped and killed those people.

If the youth had such a bright future, why join the guerrilla? If there was only 6% poverty, how did they get support from the working class? The Canadian youth is not joining and never joined Marxist guerrillas. Happy, prosperous people don't join Marxists guerrillas. If Argentina was doing so well back then, how do you explain the state of civil war the country was under?

Your story makes no sense.

And how to you explain life expectancy of Mexico vs. Argentina?

 

[Ries]

Go to the new ESMA museum, and learn about who actually was disappeared.
It was mostly middle class college students.
Of course, the "huge Marxist Guerrilla" problem was, mostly, NOT the same as the 30,000 disappeared.
That would be the approximately 7000 (maximum) members of the Montoneros.
7000, out of a 1975 population of 26 Million or so.
Not exactly what I would call "Huge", as a percentage.

The reaction was Huge, perhaps, those 30,000 people tossed from airplanes into the sea, many after spending a year lying in an attic with a bag on their head.
Go to the Museum.
Its a very powerful experience.

 

[Matiasba]

If the youth had such a bright future, why join the guerrilla? If there was only 6% poverty, how did they get support from the working class? The Canadian youth is not joining and never joined Marxist guerrillas. Happy, prosperous people don't join Marxists guerrillas. If Argentina was doing so well back then, how do you explain the state of civil war the country was under?

Your story makes no sense.

And how to you explain life expectancy of Mexico vs. Argentina?

I dont know of life expectancy, but life, and probably lots of other social indicators are far away here in Mexico than in Argentina. You have massive informal job, poverty... you have thousands of people living in low income. Although, for instance, I find Mexico safer than Argentina, at least in its frequency. And Mexico do not have a strong agro, but they have great industry here, their industry represents more and have more weight in their exports than in Arg.
But in general the picture is pathetic here.

About canada, they didnt have a guerrilla, but they had and have a great state with enormous social spend, with lots of taxes and regulations to capitals, with lots of controls to market. Its more close to sweden socialism than to Cuba, but still, its a great social state. Although that might be changing currently.


The guerrilla and the left here in Argentina were represented by upper middle class people. The 60/70 crises were not economical, in fact the main revolutionary explosion here in Argentina, the Cordobazo (please google it) in 1969 was organised by students (and by students I always mean university students -always uppper middle class) and the best paid workers of the country, the workers of FIAT.

In the 60 and 70s the world experimented crises of all kinds, but the organic crisis the capitalism had in Latin America was not economical, but cultural. It was also a generation fight, rebel the youth against their parents, lets say miniskirt, long hair, hippism, drugs, etc, etc, etc, it was cultural. It was from people with resources, from people with education, and the context: welfare state, keynesianism, you didnt have the big concentrated capitals as today, you didnt have the 1%, a middle class family could live only with the income of the father so the mother stay at the house. Today we have that no more.

 

[Matt84]

a middle class family could live only with the income of the father so the mother stay at the house. Today we have that no more.

Not judging, not saying whether it's good or bad, but how incredibly similar is Peronism to Fazism, or its German variant. It only makes sense that the big World Superpowers would want to sabotage Argentina. Just look at how international pressure changed South Africa,
Argentina doesn't want to go through something similar
Ant since we're discussing Argentina, the reverse is ALSO true