If President Javier Milei’s government does manage to reboot the economy, it will then face the same challenges that are causing so much concern in the developed world, where a rapidly growing proportion of a disgruntled workforce is trapped in the so-called “gig economy,” in which permanent jobs are rare and people move from one to another every few months in search of something better. Though politicians everywhere like to insist that this is just a passing phase and that fairly soon things will return to “normal”, by which they mean the situation that prevailed several decades earlier when jobs were often for life, there is no sign that this is about to happen.
As a result, voters are turning to newish parties, most of which these days are described by their opponents as “right-wing,” which promise to shake things up. Milei’s outfit, La Libertad Avanza, is assumed to be one example of the breed though, unlike most of the others, it pins its faith on full-blown free-market economics and certainly cannot be accused of preaching ethno-nationalism like some of its “new-right” counterparts in Europe. He wants Argentina to rejoin the rich developed world from which she dropped out over half a century ago. While such an aspiration is more reasonable than those favoured by his opponents, it would not guarantee a trouble-free future.
There are many who think that, for Argentina to leave behind her largely self-inflicted woes, her inhabitants will have to embrace the work ethic that inspired millions of upwardly-mobile European immigrants who arrived when Buenos Aires looked as promising as New York. Those who say this may be right, but since then circumstances have changed so much that even for the most gifted and industrious it is now far harder to reach even quite modest goals than was once the case.
Awareness of this is behind the unrest that is affecting every significant country in the world. As democracy depends on the majority feeling satisfied with its lot, the sour mood that is affecting large chunks of the population in high-income countries is causing anguish among those who fear that authoritarianism could make a comeback in places where many took it for granted that it had been definitively consigned to a disreputable past.
More and more people feel pessimistic about their own prospects not because they are unwilling to exert themselves but because the rules, which once seemed clear-cut, are constantly changing. This helps explain the proliferation in the United States, the United Kingdom and parts of Europe of strange “identity” cults involving alleged racial characteristics and sexual preferences: as anyone familiar with foreign media outlets will know, the “chattering classes” are obsessed by the acrimonious squabbles about pronouns that suddenly seem to be of vital importance. Despite the efforts of some Kirchnerites and their allegedly “progressive” allies, Argentines have not shown much interest in them; with the economy going down the plug hole, taking with it a huge number of families, there are rather more important matters for people to worry about.
However, while the country has yet to engage fully in the “culture wars” that are going on in much of the Western world, it has not been immune to the malaise of which they are a symptom. Argentina’s economy, like those of other countries, has evolved in such a way that it is all but impossible to plan ahead. Once upon a time, young people could assume that, if they got their foot on a career ladder, they could climb up step by step until, decades later, they would reach wherever it was their abilities and their performance could take them. This has ceased to be the case – they are constantly being told that a wide range of jobs will soon be rendered obsolete by technological progress so they will have to learn new things every five years or so in order to take advantage of the opportunities that may arise. Artificial Intelligence promises – many would say threatens – to speed up the destruction of what are still assumed to be reliable options, starting with those having to do with computers.
In journalism this has been going on for some time. To the dismay of people who thought a degree in “media studies” would launch them on their way towards somewhere near the top, the profession and others associated with it have been hollowed out. First to go were printers who were once regarded as the aristocracy of the working class because they were highly skilled and, in many countries, enviably well-paid; almost overnight, their services were no longer required. Then came the turn of those working in the news rooms of prestigious publications that found their advertising income going to the tech giants which, as a result, have prospered so splendidly that some make more money than all but a tiny handful of countries; despite going down slightly in recent months, Apple’s market share remains bigger than that of Italy or Canada.
Needless to say, the news business is not the only one to be rudely restructured by the technological juggernaut. A similar process is going on, or is about to, in law firms, clinics and a wide range of companies in which middle managers are getting laid off long before they had expected. Argentine politicians are not the only ones who are fond of telling voters that, once they are in charge, plenty of decently-paid high-quality jobs will become available, but if what has actually happened is anything to go by, they are indulging in wishful thinking.
Most of the jobs optimists have in mind demand skills few people have, and those who manage to acquire them are conscious that they could soon be about as useful to them as those of old-fashioned typesetters. Of course, some trades, such as those of competent plumbers and electricians, will survive for many years to come and provide those practising them with a good income but, as millions of young university graduates have found out to their cost, in many countries the educational authorities have tended to look down on such ways of earning a living and encouraged students to devote themselves to some supposedly more relevant alternative that met with their approval. Many discovered that their degrees do not qualify them for positions of the kind they had been told would be there for the taking.
Not surprisingly, they feel let down by the existing system and want to see it replaced by something that bears little resemblance to it as, in a very different context, did much of the Argentine electorate when it gambled on Milei.
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