General Strike Brings Argentina to a Halt over Milei Austerity Program | Hacker News Reader

General Strike Brings Argentina to a Halt over Milei Austerity Program

commondreams.org

29 pointswahnfrieden19 comments

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I wouldn't count on commondreams as a reliable source

As someone unfamiliar, what do you know about it?

It's literally the mouthpiece of a political party...

It's a far-left news source

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/common-dreams/

The media watch dog you cite (influencewatch.org) is a conservative outfit with a partisan mission, so you should take the assessments with a grain of salt [0].

But AFAICS it doesn't mean that they produce rubbish a rule, only that they concentrate on demonstrating left wing affiliations. In some case they do overstep the line of decency however, like when they try to smear commondreams.org with a "far-left" annotation, without substance. While consistently using the term "left of center" to describe Common Dreams, they use the "far-left" tag in three highly dubious instances:

1. Quoting your link: because "far-left" Susan Sarandon has praised them. Now, is Susan Sarandon a "far-left" activist? Not according to the definitions I use [3], and nothing such is mentioned on her Wikipedia page. [1]

2. Quoting your link: because "Its opinion section does not feature any right-of-center columnists, and most of its articles advocate for far-left policies and political perspectives." To support this claim they link to an article on commondreams.org written by Jeffrey Sterling, a CIA employee turned ethical whistleblower (he revealed details about a covert operation to supply Iran with flawed nuclear warhead blueprints), for which he was subsequently imprisoned [2]. Jeffrey Sterling has never been accused of being "far-left" in any serious publication as far as I can see.

3. Quoting you link: As proof of far-left bias, influencewatch.org posits that "opinion contributors have also called for far-left foreign policy implementation." and then goes on to quote some pretty standard run-of the mill progressive stances, like the role of US economic blockade against Cuba in the popular protests against living conditions.

While "far-left" can be considered subjective, it is unavoidable that it has a hard, commonly agreed, meaning just as "far-right" does. It usually implies extreme intolerant and fringe opinions, often involving condoling violence as legitimate political means. [3]

Insidiously using "far-left" in this case is just as bad as people on the left trying to conflate normal libertarian and conservative values with those of fascists and Nazis.

You might not have considered how sloppily used terms like this contribute to the enshittification of discourse, both political and otherwise. Perhaps now is a good time to start considering it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Research_Center#Influe...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sarandon

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Alexander_Sterling

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-left_politics

Here's the AP https://apnews.com/article/argentina-milei-strike-protest-li...

There either is or there isn't a strike. The reason is even included in the article and pretty easy to validate.

Do austerity programs even work? Europe tried such an approach in 2008, and expressing that we did better than the US would be a lie.

Greece's austerity programs resulted in the biggest brain drain the country has ever seen, and people make peanuts.

In Argentina, it is well proven that economic programs not based on austerity always fail. For 24 years, the country has not attempted a path of austerity, always trying to spend more than it has and accumulating debt to very high levels. Two debt defaults later, it is evident that another path must be attempted.

You're saying it's well proven that austerity programs are required for success. Your evidence is that it hasn't been tried there yet.

your reply only makes sense if Argentina is only 24 years old. It is not.

Have your edit:

You're saying it's well proven that austerity programs are required for success. Your evidence is that it hasn't been tried there in 24 years.

I guess we'll find out

To channel Bill Clinton define "works".

Austerity works in the sense of reducing deficits and no longer digging a fiscal hole. It is something which happens eventually after a country runs out of creditors who don't demand austerity as a precondition.

Austerity does seems to perform inferior to stimulus but not everyone can afford it. Stimulus being unavailable is itself a statement of lack of faith in existing plans. Austerity is hard to screw it up in the same sense it is hard to screw up losing weight in a Gulag. Hence why lenders of last resort insist upon it as a precondition.

Sure austerity works. Austerity means not throwing good money after bad. Whereas you can lose unbounded amounts of money with stimulus spending, or cause hyperinflation.

If people felt like Greece would have been successful without austerity, they could have lent Greece money at lower rates and with less conditions than the IMF.

This all being said, the poverty trap is a real thing and making people so poor they can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps it can be very expensive in the long run.

I have to admit it was somewhat amusing to see so much incompetence bundled into a single person. He wanted to make it easy to fire employees for protesting. Best way to encourage protests.

What do you expect to happen if you suddenly render large numbers of people without income? Sure, you can take away grandpa's pension if you must but you have to do it gradually and slowly. Increase the retirement age, make the pension smaller for new pensioners, create elaborate pension pyramid schemes, cut healthcare etc etc

What does anarcho-capitalism look like without capital? For an anti-establishment party he really did well. Everyone is anti-establishment now.

(for very small values of "everyone")

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