Comment by kspacewalk2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kspacewalk2 | Hacker News Reader

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I'd say you don't really understand Keynesian economics, also known as macroecon 101. Nowhere is it claimed that deficit spending promotes economic growth indefinitely and in all circumstances. Deficit spending (or just more spending, whether financed by deficits or not) can, and demonstrably does, temporarily dampen the effects of economic downturns. It can also promote economic growth if investments that are made will enable longer-term growth, e.g. by investing in infrastructure, education or research. Clearly none of that prescribes structural deficits ad infinitum and spending your way to hyperinflation in order to make good on idiotic populist promises, otherwise known as Argentinian macroecon 101 before Milei. The fact that it took chainsaw guy to trick Argentinians into electing someone who implements adult policies is a damning indictment of the average Argentinian voters, so I'd say leave poor John Maynard Keynes out of it, no one in Argentina was listening to him anyway, possibly ever.

Also, just say surplus.

I always thought keynes gets a bad wrap because he didnt understand or atleast didnt explain that for his ideas to work the politicians need to be reasonably sure they will be voted out if their deficit spending isnt atleast mostly positive roi stuff or very short duration negative roi stuff, which isnt true unless all voters have real losses when politicians run deficits or decades of negative roi stuff has left a majority of voters sure things cant get better or atleast keep them insulated from the bad down that path.

Well, Argentina has been in recession for more than a decade. Now, he's cut 30% of the government spending and... the economy is back to growth.

So, sorry for destroying your Keynesian beliefs.

Honestly, consider taking a macroeconomics 101 course. I promise, the economic terminology you're throwing around will make a lot more sense, as will Keynes' ideas and how they relate to the way every single mature economy is run since circa the 1940s.

> Argentina has been in recession for more than a decade.

To the rest of us layman not familiar with your language, they just entered into a recession earlier this year[1]. And on behalf of us laymen, we'd love to know more about the etymology and context of your use of "more than a decade". To the rest of us, that normally means 10s of years, not mere months.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/argentina-jobless-rat...

Well, nominal GDP was US $642.5b in 2015 and they haven't recovered yet. And if you measure real gdp (not nominal), even worse. What do you call having lower GDP year after year? I call it recession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Argentina

How is that US$642.5b calculated? IIRC in 2015 we had at least two values for the dollar/pesos ratio. The official one was like 10AR$/US$, but you could buy a small amount of dollars at that value. And the street value (so called "blue dolar") was like 15AR$/US$. So which one was used? It's like a 50% difference.

(Now we had like 10 definitions of the dollar/pesos ratio. The official one is 950AR$/US$ but it's almost imposible to buy at that price. To buy dollars, the prices are around 1300AR$/US$ or 1500AR$/US$ depending on the day of the week.)

I just used the data available in Wikipedia. Instead, if we go to official data from Argentina's INDEC (national institute of statistics) we get a more reliable picture. Here [1] we see they show annual GDP (called PIB in Spanish) in constant prices of 2004 (so, they correct it by inflation). In page 6 you can see this image [2], where you see that yes, GDP hasn't really grown at all since 2011 (which is more than a decade ago). And this is aggregate GDP, but population has grown, so GDP per capita has gone down.

[1] https://www.indec.gob.ar/uploads/informesdeprensa/pib_06_242... [2] https://i.imgur.com/f0pIiFE.png

In 2015 the situation of the INDEC was strange, the inflation was underestimated [1] and also the dollar/peso ratio was fictional. So take all that numbers with a grain of salt. However I agree that there is (almost) no gro in the GDP in a long time. [2]

[1] Comparison of the official inflation rate and the unofficial one published by the oposition in the congress: https://economictrends.com.ar/2015/01/16/economia-en-1-grafi...

[2] Anyway, I remember 2015 was a good year, we had a huge soy harvest and the international price was very high.

Back to growth?

This month uptick YoY appears to be driven by their agricultural sector which last year had suffered due to a severe drought.

The IMF just revised their GDP projections down from -2.8% to -3.5% for this year.

Seems a wee bit premature to start gloating.

Well, wasn't it Hitler that pulled the US out of the Depression by forcing it to spend 40% of GDP of military?

Keynes just suggested, that there may be better options to end a recession than to fight a war.

Argentina, like most South American countries, has too much red tape, too much bureaucracy, too much corruption, too many people with entitlement. I don't think Keynes has much to do with it. And please spare me the ideas of god' ol Ludwig who has not worked one day of his life in private entrerprises.

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