What'$ Happening In Bueno$ Aire$ ?

[camberiu]

According to a today´s article in LA NACION, between 2003 and 2014 1,400,000 public employees were added to the goverment payroll(including federal, state and municipal jobs), wich were already bloated longtime ago.
This created an additional expenditure of 480,000 million pesos a year. This is twice as much as what was owed to the speculatives foreign funds("fondos buitres") that will amount to 187,000 million pesos, and is greater than the present fiscal defict (400,000 million pesos).

That is why a government hiring reform is beyond imperative and beyond urgent for Argentina. Until the passing of the 1988 Constitution, we had this exact same problem in Brazil.

 

[EJLarson]

Eye-opening and sobering numbers. But even that may yet pale to the effect of these hires - to effectively have blurred the lines between the government and the various K movements.
To have coopted the government - or at least large parts thereof - as an arm of La Campora.

We travel with our two small dogs. It's no fun jumping through all the unnecessary and bureaucratic hoops to have all the paperwork (with original seals, of course!) ready for the SENASA folks at Ezeiza, but without them we don't travel, so ...
Last year we hit the jackpot coming into BsAs. Seems the Texas vet had failed to get that last, important, embossed seal on the health certificate and - wham! The SENASA desk became the Berlin Wall.

It lasted seven hours, and finally ended with an emergency certificate emailed from Texas to SENASA, which they reluctantly accepted. During those seven hours my wife had lots of time to observe the operation. In that time, five animals came through for processing. Under k rules, proper staffing for these heavy duties was fourteen people! The capper, though, came when the certificate finally arrived. One of the ñoquis told my wife that the certificate had arrived, but ... there was a slight problem ... uh, could she come back and ...?

Not one of the fourteen knew how to extract and print an attachment. My wife had to go back to the office and do it for them.

We just finished a trip and are happy to report that Ezeiza SENASA was staffed by three (3) agents.

 

[ben]

No one of the fourteen knew how to extract and print an attachment. My wife had to go back to the office and do it for them.

Holy. Crap.

I am willing to believe just about anything. But I would not believe this story had you not told it in the first person.

So this is how far incompetence can get you, before we even start with malice.

I would love* to hear bajo's input.

*Where 'would love' means 'could not care less'.

 

[citygirl]

Holy. Crap.

I am willing to believe just about anything. But I would not believe this story had you not told it in the first person.

So this is how far incompetence can get you, before we even start with malice.

I would love* to hear bajo's input.

*Where 'would love' means 'could not care less'.

Sadly nothing about that story surprises me.

You have to understand though - the culture here for better or for worse is predicated on the expectation that people will be taken care of by the State (used as synonym for govt in this). It really is that paternalistic. If you start with the expectation that people believe that they will have free health care, pay literally next to nothing for utilities, that the state either needs to employ them or provide them with food, shelter, etc - you generally will end up where we have. Because the corollary to the above is that while many expect the state to take care of them, no one wants to pay the taxes required to provide those services. Small business owners don't because they feel like they're not using the services and they're being taxed every which way to Sunday. The upper class shelter their money elsewhere. The working class either doesn't have the disposable income to do so b/c they're already stretched thin by the cost of everything and they don't think it's their responsibility to pay. And voila - perfect storm.

 

[Noesdeayer]

citygirl
:Very well put..
Not only do they believe that they will but also that they SHOULD be so protected.I have often heard even from business people that the main function of the state was to do "Obra Social".Until the 1990s with the infamous dollar peg very few middle or even lower income Argentines were able to travel outside their country.I remember the culture shock some of them experienced upon discovering that things like health care and university education were not all state provided and free in other countries.I especially recall a Carta a Clarin written in the mid '90s by a woman who felt obliged as a public service to enlighten her compatriots that in Miami health care was not free for everyone in all hospitals and to take the necessary precautions.
Fortunately,there are signs that this is changing.In my Leadership Meet Up group in Spanish there is a new attendee -a young mechanical engineer recently arrived from Venezuela--who is turning out to be something of a linchpin in this regard.We are discussing changing paradigms and his contribution was that a job was not a birthright but something a healthy economy should provide.Absolutely! and it met with the agreement of the other 8 Argentine participants and myself. Moreover it was even more effective as,he is of mixed Spanish and indigenous parentage who were supposedly being helped by the chavistas and not a "piti-yanqui burgues" anti-revolutionary.

 

[scotttswan]

Here's a classic from the dailywtf

http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Classic-WTF-The-Indexer

 

[Noesdeayer]

ejcot en argentina:
An excellent link which shows the extreme lengths that intense and inbred fear of change and risk aversion raised to an almost incredible extreme will lead some human beings.Above all those fanatically addicted to any form of facism.It reminded me of what Lanata said about Kirchnerism."How can you argue with members of a sect?".It's a complete waste of time.Something like arguing with Bajo.