In recent statements, the Milei government has addressed two key public policy issues, clearly demonstrating its ideological stance and indicating the likely socioeconomic outcomes of its official policies.

In the official speech before the World Economic Forum held in Argentina in October, the President boasted that his government had carried out the largest economic adjustment in the history of mankind, which allowed “returning 15 points of GDP to the private sector to finance investment and achieve genuine growth”. He added that this adjustment was carried out without touching social spending. He omitted, of course, to say that the cost of the adjustment, given the recession produced and the unemployment created, especially in the public sector, led almost 60% of the population to poverty.

Approximately at the same time, the presidential spokesman, who in this government is not the spokesman of the presidency but exclusively of the president, declared in a press conference that “inequality is not an issue of concern”. He meant that it does not worry the government. He speaks of an income inequality that in terms of the Gini coefficient has escalated exponentially given the fall in social income and the concentration of wealth that is taking place in the country.

The question is how these two statements should be interpreted. That is, not what they mean as political statements, but what idea of economy and society they contain.

As for the first statement, it is a central postulate of neoclassical economics, and therefore of liberal economic thought, according to which the less state intervention in the economy — taxes, regulations, production of goods, sectoral incentives —  the more resources and markets are freed for private initiative. The idea is that in theoretical terms all the freedoms that expand in the market will be used by rational and competitive productive agents who, in their constant action, will generate jobs and income that will benefit the whole. Smith’s “invisible hand”: from the search for individual profit, the progress of the social collective.

The detail is that, in the current economic model that prevails globally, in this phase of the historical cycle of capitalism, it has already been amply demonstrated (Stiglitz, Piketty) that market freedom and the incentives that this freedom generates for private initiative only favor the concentration of wealth exponentially. An equation that the more economic growth, the greater the concentration of profits.

The 15 points of GDP that Milei announced he returned to the private sector were not captured by small and medium-sized enterprises, reproductive activities such as construction, commerce, micro-enterprises, etc. The same official statistics strongly suggest that all these activities and sectors are in recession, if not at risk of collapse.

Those 15 points of GDP resulting from the adjustment went to swell the accounts of large companies, technological unicorns and, above all, the financial sector, clearly unproductive and null in terms of job creation. The private sector that has benefited from the government’s policy is the same sector that has benefited from the economic policy of the last decades, including recessionary cycles.

Let’s go to Manuel Adorni’s phrase, spokesman for the president, especially to some statements that, due to their degree of rispidity, the president cannot say. In a country where, since the inauguration of this government, 10 months ago, poverty has grown almost 10 points (59% of the population) and indigence 8 points (20% of the population), and where the so-called multidimensional poverty (poverty that, from the loss of income and its sustainability over time, leads to deficiencies in educational, health, territorial, access to justice services…) is expanding in wide swathes of the population, declaring that “inequality is not a matter of concern” is, to paraphrase Lenin, a blatant political cretinism.

It is almost common sense that, if economic policy concentrates and poverty expands, the result is inequality that is not only, and should be, worrisome. It is immoral.

To bias and blur the contribution that the government’s adjustment makes to the concentrated private sector and to omit the socioeconomic crisis that the country is experiencing is a political act and a hypocritical policy. One could say, an immoral policy, as long as one speaks of a government with a certain dose of social and political morality. This does not seem to be the case.

_{*Machine translation proofread by Janaína da Silva}