Argentina’s libertarian president Javier Milei, perhaps best known for his shotgun approach to government jobs…
… plans to fire 70,000 government workers in the coming months, in what Bloomberg called “one of the clearest signs yet of how the libertarian’s chainsaw-style approach intends to slash the swollen state.”
Beyond the job cuts, Milei also boasted at an event on Tuesday that he has frozen public works, cut off some funding to provincial governments and terminated more than 200,000 social welfare plans, which he labeled as corrupt, all as part of his strategy to reach a fiscal balance at any cost this year.
“There’s a lot of blender,” Milei said in an hour long speech at the IEFA Latam Forum in Buenos Aires, referring to the erosion of wages and pensions by 276% annual inflation. “There’s a lot more chainsaw.”
Other key points from Milei’s speech Tuesday:
- Milei said peso futures contracts are aligned with the central bank’s 2% monthly crawling peg scheme, labeling calls to sharply devalue the currency again “ridiculous”
- Argentina central bank on the path to achieving net neutral reserves after starting with debt liabilities that surpassed cash on hand by $11.5 billion in December
- Milei says he’ll double down on his attempts to reform the Argentine economy after 2025 congressional elections, with more than 3,000 reforms in the pipeline
- He described the Senate rejecting his emergency decree as “marvelous” because “it left all the dirty fingers” of exposed of politicians he calls “delinquents”
- Milei expects V-shaped economic recovery
Full speech is below:
It’s not just the US that has a government worker problem with its 23.2 million state parasites…
… Argentina’s state (and deep state) is also rather extensive. And while Milei’s termination plans affest just a small fraction of Argentina’s 3.5 million public sector workers, the job cuts are bound to face tremendous pushback from the country’s powerful labor unions and could jeopardize his high approval ratings. One union representing some government workers went on strike Tuesday, while a government report detailed that private sector workers suffered the worst one-month wage loss in at least three decades once he took office in December.
The leader of the state workers union ATE quickly shot back on X, announcing a national strike without providing further details.
Milei cited polls showing Argentines are more optimistic about the economy’s future, while a recent indicator of the public confidence in the government rose despite his austerity measures.
“People have hope, they’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” Milei concluded.
Well… maybe, but maybe not, because it doesn’t take much by those used to state handouts to organize and collapse the system. And sure enough, a quick look at the country’s real GDP (as measured by the EMAE monthly activity indicator), shows a brutal 4.3% year over year contraction in January, as well as a sequential decline in real GDP of 1.2%, with Goldman noting that “activity softened significantly at the end of 2023 and the weakness extended to the beginning of the year.”
While we appreciate the novelty and excitement sparked by Milei, we wonder: just how much real pain can the people sustain before they demand that he, too, be replaced with someone who promises to ease their pain?
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What do you call 70,000 Government Workers fired?
A darn good start!
So, they’re, uh, non-essential, then? Awsum.
Show me one gov official we cannot do without.
Sec. of Education. Actually the whole department. We had better schools with better student performance when local school boards were in control. Everything declined when states took over education, and then even more when the Federal government did. There are actually to many we could do without to list.
Don’t forget the repugnant to the Constitution “public employee unions”…..the teachers unions have existed since the CIVIL WAR!….
Only made official by an EO from JFK!…..
Even Roosevelt knew better…….
Not only non essential but an anchor on the economy.
2% of the total.
Still a long way to go.
On another hand, -2% is not +2%.
We need to shitcan about 250k to start.
Holding my breath about this dude……he’s a wall kissing judeo-phile……
That’s correct and a cause for concern, but so far, so good otherwise and I’ll gladly settle for that.
Well, all that saved money has to go somewhere…Big Tiny Hat Pharma got to eat ,too.
Javier Milei Spends Nearly $1 Billion on Trans Hormones for Argentine Kids
Argentine children and others will receive taxpayer-funded sex change hormones and puberty blockers, courtesy of President Javier Milei.
Argentina will soon be a libertarian paradise!
Nice sarcasm. Even if this guy could be trusted, the WEF, World Bank, CIA, and any of countless players, will come in an stop him one way or the other. There can NEVER BE a freedom-filled, economically-prosperous, free market-driven, etc. example for others to see lest they DEMAND the same in their home nation.
Strong medicine. It’s needed and we need it in USA. I wonder when he will be Kennedyed?
The actual number of unrenewed “temporary” contracts was fifteen th0usand, not seventy. Fifty/five thousand were renewed for another year. Still a step in the right direction.