Can wages beat inflation?
Uncontrolled prices despite a thousand controls and especially food prices in the clouds are torpedoing the attempt, clearly fired from the Government, to install the idea that this year wages are going to beat inflation. Cristina Kirchner herself gave a push to the operation, when she swept the 29-30% guideline set by Minister Martn Guzmn and promoted a 40% increase in salaries for Congressional employees National, including yours and that of all legislators. Still, there are too many doubts and too many open variables to take for granted what sounds good-looking like a campaign instrument, which wouldnt be questionable if it werent just that. The official attempt on the way to the elections would stumble, already, with the inconvenience posed by the inflation of 48.3% that analysts consulted by the Central Bank project for 2021: it exceeds by 8 long percentage points the 40% that Cristina and the boss sanctified deputies, Sergio Massa. Another data of a similar species appears in the supposedly victorious 45% who got Truckers, Hugo Moyanos union: pure rigor, for this year it will be 32.5% since the remaining 12.5% falls in March 2022. Clean, the balance would then give 48.3 against 32.5%. Something similar occurs with 45.5% of the ANSeS, which is distributed between 34% in 2021 and 6% plus a plus in January 2022. The string of variations on the same topic says: 43% in the PAMI, with two tranches of 11% that will wait until January and February, which will also happen with 6 and 5% for the same months computed within 35% of the state UPCN and ATE and with 6.8% in February that rounds up the 36% agreed by the UOCRA. The ribbon continues with other guilds and results too associated with the pressure capacity of each one. What matters most to me is that the salary does not lag behind inflation and that it beats it, because they are already many years behind, said Alberto Fernndez about the 43% real that, in front of him, they had just signed the banking with financial entities. The publicized increase totals 45.1%, but includes 2.1% from a previous agreement that workers had already been collecting. It is clear or should be clear that if the slogan is to beat inflation in 2021, neither that 2.1% nor the sections that fall in 2022 are valid for the calculation. Y thats exactly the key, because in the scenario designed by the Government the salary improvements and their impact on economic activity are matched by their electoral needs and the accompanying propaganda. Thats where Cristinas 40% comes in, so she can end up falling short in the fight against prices. But if instead of looking at the photograph that suits you or more or less suits Kirchnerism you go back just a few months, we will verify that the increases from now arrive quite bruised although they look considerable. Data from the Ministry of Productive Development based on INDEC statistics tell a story close to the film: they reveal that, between March 2020 and last March, the real salary of the private sector fell 7.8% and 7.6% that of the state. From that subsoil the rises of now start in principle. There we already have back wages without returns, like those to which Alberto F. alluded in his own way during the act of La Bancaria. It is a classic of politicians and, definitely, a classic that the President tires all the time and for everything: crushing bad news when he can place it in someone elses territory and dribble them olympically if they bite in your own area. The same suit could fit round 17% of the income that informal workers have lost since 2019, of the so-called black occupations, and the impressive 30% facing independent wage earners, the vast majority self-employed. They are estimates of the Abeceb consulting firm, about an army calculated in about 6 million people that, always subject to the risk of being left on the street, orbit on the frontier of the labor system. The dimension of this table and that of the backwardness it expresses jump strongly when one turns to the number of formal workers, that is, blank and almost all unionized, and it is noted that the number says just over 6 million. The difference between one and the other obviously anchors wages, working conditions, access to health and job stability. One case does not yield the same as the other, naturally, when it comes to measuring the impact of the governments wage bet in November. Faced with a work structure divided by halves and thus unstructured, the unemployment rate calculated by the INDEC becomes a very imperfect panorama of reality. The statistics serve, yes, to confirm the disturbing economic and social picture of the Buenos Aires suburbs, which is among the three worst in a sample that covers 31 large agglomerates from one end of the country to the other and where the sum of unemployment and underemployment is double that of the Autonomous City. Against this backdrop and against this backdrop, an electoral battle will be fought in several ways that are decisive, both for Kirchnerism and for the opposition. Estimates again from the consulting firm Abeceb and also from this time say that last year over a million jobs were lost, that is, pandemic and errors with the handling of the pandemic and the economy that hit on employment and, sung, on employment in the GBA. Now, figures taken from a report by the Capital Foundation. An account that 30% of wage earners earn income that is below the poverty line against the 20% that existed just five years ago. Another, that the 13 basic family baskets that in 2017 could be purchased with an average private salary have now been reduced to 10; This is called hovering over the poverty line. Not by chance, given such a cataract of raw data, specialists have long ago suggested that Argentina is less and less a middle class country and, increasingly, a lower-middle-class country. And from a lower middle class where with a loss of income of 25,000 pesos go right in poverty zone and, then, you shake up those who live off jobs and increasingly unstable temporary jobs , says one of the specialists. Just to complete, the cost of food that is key in the definition of poverty and, above all, in that of indigence he sings a serve of 49.9% in the last twelve months. If you prefer, there is 74% on the account of the Argentine table since Kirchnerism landed in the Casa Rosada. What follows is similar to a synthesis of everything and ends, clearly, in statistics that INDEC released these days. Private consumption, which here came to represent over 75% of GDP and still determines the thrust of the economy, has fallen back to the levels of 2010, 11 years ago, when Argentina had 4.6 million fewer inhabitants than now. The same, exactly the same is happening with investment, that is, with the factor that creates employment, that gives quality and diversity to the economy and that sets the stamp on the future. This what its called plain and simple decadence is at the center of an economy that is going from recession to recession, which in its per capita record has fallen 8% since 2011 and which, in the best of cases, this year it will recover by scratching half of the 10% that plummeted in 2020.