Argentina's Mileise: Poverty hits 57%, highest number in 20 years

[peppertree]

Argentina’s poverty rate reached 57.4% in January according to a new report by the Argentine Catholic University’s respected Social Debt Observatory.

It’s the highest poverty number since 2004, when the observatory began publishing reports, amid widespread economic deregulation and price hikes.

“Our perspective is that this will keep getting worse in February,” the observatory’s Director Agustín Salvia told the Herald. “The crisis is about to explode in systemic terms.”

According to the report, which analyzed the inflationary effects of the 54% Argentine peso devaluation in December, poverty rose from 44.7% in the third quarter of 2023 to 49.5% in December, then 57.4% in January.

Salvia said there is “a generalized impoverishment of Argentine society” as a result of “a decrease in real salaries” as well as “a high risk of losing jobs” and the devaluation of the peso. “Households can’t compensate the effects of inflation on the food basket with working more hours, like they did in 2023.”

“The working class and middle class who don’t receive any welfare suffered the biggest increase [in poverty levels],” the report said.

The observatory also found that 15% of Argentines are destitute (unable to afford a basic food budget) — the highest since 2004. Destitution afflicted 9.6% in the third quarter of 2023 and 14.2% in December, and went up even more in January “due to the increase in the cost of the basic food basket.”

At: https://buenosairesherald.com/society/poverty-in-argentina-hits-57-highest-number-in-20-years-report-says

Children enjoy a meal in a soup kitchen in Villa Fiorito, an impoverished Buenos Aires suburb, recently.

As real wages plummet and unemployment rises, demand in the nation's 41,000 soup kitchens has jumped 30% since far-right President Javier Milei was elected in November.

Milei, however, has effectively ended federal assistance to these centers - which now rely solely on provincial subsidies and private contributions.

The rise in income poverty from 44.7% in the third quarter 2023, to a shocking 57.4% in January, has only been seen twice in Argentine history - during collapses in 1989 and 2002.

[Judi Lynn]

1. This is such a severe blow in a very short term, it's terrifying guessing where the population will be in 6 months.

Everything about the appearances of the people in the photo of the people eating at the soup kitchen says they are all totally new to poverty. They have a completely protected, insulated aspect, like kids who grew up in very comfortable homes, who always had everything they needed, and were never expected to wear old clothes, share bedrooms. The boy looking reluctant to eat his food has probably never been actually hungry before. They all look soft, even pampered by comparison to crowds of children one often sees in photographs from other countries.

What a shame those who intend to continue their class wars against the vast majority of the human population don't ever evolve, and history appears to repeat itself endlessly. How cruel it is seeing how rapidly technology has developed after individual people started finding ways to be profoundly wealthy and able to control so many poor people by hiring enforcers to ride herd over them, forcing them to basically serve the interests of moral criminals throughout their entire lives while the same perverts at the same time pretend to be superior to those without power, smarter, and infinitely more moral!

Takes your breath away if you have the luxury of enough free time to actually think things over!

I remember decades ago seeing a documentary on PBS concerning an earlier time Argentina had been driven into the deepest ditch on earth by greed and powerful political nterests, and the entire long program illustrated thoroughly the middle class had been almost erased altogether. People were suffering who had never worried about looking for work, eating, clothing themselves, finding affordable housing. . . The documentary undoubtedly made a lot of US Americans aware that poverty can strike swiftly to people who probably hadn't had poor people in their family tree for generations, if ever...

Milei is clearly daring to go where Macri totally feared to tread. Macri only had to wildly destabilize the economic structure he and his kleptocratic allies could manage.

Thank you for sharing these amazing stats, peppertree. The situation is horrific. We need to know what this sociopath is doing. It's too serious to overlook.

[Judi Lynn]

2. A growing hunger: Argentina's soup kitchens battle Milei's spending cuts

Under President Javier Milei, Argentina’s government has cut funds to community kitchens, sparking mass protests.



Protesters on January 24 raise an effigy of newly inaugurated President Javier Milei [Patricio A Cabezas/Al Jazeera]
By Josefina Salomon and Patricio A Cabezas

Published On 28 Feb 2024
28 Feb 2024

Buenos Aires, Argentina – It is an unusually hot Friday morning but the line outside the communal soup kitchen in Merlo — a town on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina — is particularly long, stretching around the block.

Some of the people waiting are first-timers, fidgeting with empty plastic containers in their hands. Many have jobs. Still, the rice stew the soup kitchen is ladling out could be their only meal of the day.

Similar scenes have been playing out across Argentina in recent weeks. As inflation skyrockets, advocates and everyday citizens are warning of a hunger crisis that could ravage the country’s poor.

Much of the outcry has been directed at libertarian President Javier Milei. Less than three months into his term, Milei’s administration has implemented a series of austerity measures that have slashed government spending — including funds already allocated for soup kitchens, or “comedores”, like the one in Merlo.

“Demand for food has doubled in recent months,” said Liliana Soledad Loto, 38, one of the soup kitchen’s cooks and a leader of the social organisation Somos Barrios de Pie.

. . .



More:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/a-growing-hunger-argentinas-soup-kitchens-battle-mileis-spending-cuts