The Indec report this Thursday showed a worrying figure: the basic food basket (CBA) rose 4.1% in November, while average inflation was 2.5%. This means that essential products to avoid hunger increased almost twice as much as the general average price. Not only that: the total basic basket (CBT), which includes other minimum goods and services in addition to food, rose 3.6% in the same month. The numbers speak for themselves, the crisis and the adjustment of Milei and Caputo hit directly at the table of the lowest income sectors.
To put it into concrete figures, a typical family of four needed $566,364 in November to avoid falling into destitution and $1,257,329 to not be considered poor, according to official data. But what for statistics seems like just another calculation, for the daily lives of millions is an insurmountable wall: who reaches those numbers with frozen salaries and miserable retirements?
The disaggregation of the data shows that no item exceeded a 3% monthly increase, except for basic baskets. Food and non-alcoholic beverages, according to the same INDEC, rose 2.8%, while public services rose 3.4%. However, the food basket shot up 4.1%, showing that the prices of basic necessities are the ones that hurt popular pockets the most.
The Milei and Caputo adjustment: frozen salaries and pensions, skyrocketing prices
The economic plan that Milei and Caputo have been implementing since they took office deepens all these problems. While the CBA and CBT continue to rise, the Government decided to freeze retirements and social benefits, keep parity rates below inflation and, on top of that, move forward with a regressive labor reform that seeks to take away the rights of millions of workers.
In retirements, Milei froze the bonus at the minimum at $70,000, consolidating serious losses for retirees. Due to low salaries and the deterioration of living conditions, more than a million older adults work white or black; In ten years the number of working retirees increased almost 60%. This, added to the adjustment on workers who depend on the State and the freezing of joint ventures for the private sector, make up the low incomes of the vast majority.
Milei and Caputo intend to approve a labor reform that would take away the rights of millions of workers, while maintaining a precarious economic balance based on borrowing from the United States that can only bring greater problems in the future. It is urgent to restore the income of workers, retirees and their families to prevent poverty and destitution from growing again.
Organization and struggle: the only way out against adjustment
Faced with this scenario, the only way out is organization and struggle. We can expect very little from the CGT and the union centers, which have maintained a scandalous truce and just called a mobilization for this Thursday the 18th in the face of the massive rejection of Milei’s labor reform. It is urgent to fight for an emergency increase in salaries, pensions and social plans, so that no worker earns less than the value of the family basket calculated by Indec workers, which was $2,030,000.
The basic food and total basket rise more than inflation, but the Government responds with adjustment, regressive reforms and poverty wages. Only mobilization and unity from below can stop this looting and open a path so that the usual people do not continue to pay for the crisis.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
