Completely agree that that is the way that it should be. And to a significant extent that is the way that it is already.
What bothers me is that many "anti-Mileistas" don't bother to read beyond the tag-line and seem to point and say “won’t somebody think of the poor!”, making claims that the ambiguously defined "poor" are the only ones paying for this adjustment because it has a more "noble" tone of argument to it.
Meanwhile, and here is the point, such claims frequently ignore the fact important subsidies (e.g.
electricity and gas) are being left in place for all low-income earners.
Food cards for
families remain and were increased by 50%.
Social plans including AUH for parents remain and were increased by 100%.
Other programs continue to exist and be created to support the poor and the popular economy. As I touched on previously they also ignore the fact that many of the poorest already can't afford (or don't consume as much of) various items affected by price controls or special subsidies such as meat, prepagas, netflix, petrol, formal rental contracts, to face too much exposure to their rising costs. Also they tend to ignore that anyone with a formal job has wages that are constantly increasing with paritarias (by enough or not is the argument
de siempre between employers and unions and looking at where they already were before this government took office, obviously not enough... great work CGT and its self-proclaimed party of the working class...) and that they continue to have access to the same public services they have always relied upon such as free education and health care.
This suggests that the adjustment
should be less noticeable for the poorest in society, who at least still enjoy some padding between their reality and the market reality, than for those traditionally a bit better off who are suddenly finding themselves both without subsidies
and confronting higher costs of living
while trying to maintain a certain level of lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.
Moving on to that "middle class". Many of whom may seem "poor" compared to an expat with dollars or euros but are a czar compared to the impovrished low-wage worker, even with only $100-$300 more a month standing between them (by Argentine standards to date that meager difference in earnings puts them over the threshold to access a top tier gold or even black colored credit card despite not earning enough to be required to pay income tax... to put this ridiculousness into some perspective..). It is these people who seem to be complaining the loudest because they now need to cut back on small - and by no means extravagant - luxuries like a weekly asado, eating out a few times a week, daily cafe visits, Netflix, gym memberships or private health insurance or private school for the kids, which they could have only actually ever have afforded themselves thanks to
a lot of money coming from the state to finance it all. Many of these people are simply finding out they were never actually as well off as they were led to believe and despite whatever efforts they made it was all a
papelón of privilege.
And as for the "upper classes" who fed from this papelón? The next natural outcome, although remains to be seen in the few short weeks since this started, is that this will come back to bite them hard on the ass once all that middle-class labor - with the experience and education that they need for their businesses to make money - stop accepting monopoly money for payment and start insisting on real wages that will finance the lifestyle they are accustomed to and willing to accept that they no longer have subsidized by the state. And for those businesses that were also primarily a destination for all that monopoly money of the middle class, they too are going to have a hard time until people start having real money of their own to spend.
I truly fail to see anyone who won't eventually have something to bemoan or who will get a "free-ride" out of this kind of adjustment, which is not necessarily a bad thing since in some way everyone has been part of the problem Argentines elected to try and solve.
This whole process and objective all reminds me of what many East Germans quipped after the wall came down: “
Before we had money, but could not spend it on what we wanted. Today we have no money, but all the freedom to buy whatever we want”.