With the possible exception of the kirchnerists most fervent and their equivalents from other latitudes, all agree that, without silver, the populism it is a disaster, but the same can be said of any other political project in a world where expectations have moved away from real possibilities. That’s why in United States and Europe In the Western West, all the ruling establishments, whether they are left-leaning or conservative, are in a bind, while those hoping to replace them are hesitating between proposing ambitious but risky, not to say suicidal, changes on the one hand and, on the other, committing to act with a wise mix of fiscal responsibility and social sensitivity. While they are keeping their fingers crossed and praying that good times will return soon, they need to prepare for years, perhaps many years, of scarcity.
The same as in the ArgentinaPoliticians and those interested in their activities understand that, as things stand, it is much easier to oppose the status quo than to improve it. Many fear that the end of what in retrospect will be remembered as a beautiful era has come to an end when it became normal to assume that, as long as the government did not make too many mistakes, the standard of living of the common man would continue to rise and that therefore it would be unacceptable to exclude some from the resulting consumer party. Unfortunately, it seems highly unlikely that, after a short hiatus, the broad-based growth that so many came to believe was guaranteed will resume.
It is not just about the foreseeable consequences of the pandemic that, everywhere, hit the economy and forced governments to ignore the warnings of those who predicted that increases in public spending would unleash an inflationary tidal wave, from the war in Ukraine that, in addition to raising the specter of famine in Africa and the Middle East, has caused a new energy crisis, and the negative economic impact of the will of many governments to drastically reduce the emission of carbon dioxide to combat climate change. So is globalization combined with technological progress that was already harming millions of people in rich countries who were not in a position to take advantage of the new opportunities. For a very significant proportion of those who live in the world considered developed, the increase in the gross product of their country has not brought benefits but, on the contrary, has left it poorer than before in societies in which others receive enviable incomes that, As has always been the case, they attribute it to their own merits.
Covid-19, war, climate change and the divisive socioeconomic evolution of the most prosperous and dynamic societies, are four horsemen of the apocalypse that threatens the Western order that, until relatively recently, seemed destined to spread throughout the world. A fifth horseman is the catastrophic drop in the birth rate that is so characteristic of modern civilization and that, in Europe has begun to make pension schemes unviable that were organized when it was fashionable to worry about the “demographic bomb” that some believed was about to explode.
Now, will all democracies be able to overcome such challenges? There are reasons to doubt it. If the majority insists on asking for the impossible, or refuses to recognize that certain limits are quite concrete, They will end up self-destructing.
Each society reacts in its own way to problems that do not recognize borders. It does so by interpreting them in the context of its particular experience and repudiates those who point out that they are due to external phenomena that no local government could have modified. In the United States, it has become customary to attribute all difficulties to white racismwhile in Europe nationalism and class ideologies tend to carry more weight, although lately, on both sides of the Atlantic there are more and more people aware that globalization is contributing to the impoverishment of ever larger sectors.
Because what is happening in the world is so unforeseen, initiatives that just two years ago were considered positive already seem foolish. At the beginning of his administration, the president Joe Biden was applauded after taking measures that, he assured, would serve to erase the North American “carbon footprint” because his country would stop depending on fossil fuels; How could it be otherwise, the decision to mistreat the giant oil companies increased the price of gasoline. Although Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave him a pretext to change the energy policy he was trying out, it was already too late. In United States, Few believe that the rapidly rising cost of living is Vladimir Putin’s fault; rather, most attribute it to the Democrats’ propensity to squander public money on political grounds.
In addition to applying “green” measures in the hope that “science” would soon provide non-polluting substitutes for traditional fuels, the Democratic administration spent a lot of money in an attempt to help ethnic minorities who, in its opinion, continued to be victims. of “white supremacy.” If the opinion polls are correct, those worried about both inflation and the Biden administration’s supposedly progressive propaganda are preparing to hit Democrats hard in November’s midterm elections. There has also been the impression that the Democrats have become too leftist due to the presence in their ranks of figures who do not hesitate to declare themselves Marxists even though their version of the creed has little in common with that of other times.
Caught between the elitist progressivism that the most loquacious sectors have adopted, the Democratic Party and rudimentary and sometimes truculent populism of donald trump, still has the support of many Republicans, USA It will not be entirely easy for it to emerge unscathed from the cultural civil war that obsesses its leaders. Even so, the situation in which Biden finds himself is less alarming than that faced by his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, that, shortly after defeating Marine Le Pen in the presidential elections, he suffered such a painful setback in the legislative elections held last Sunday that there are those who question his ability to do much more than try to hold on to power until the middle of 2027, since his adversaries will be able to frustrate all his initiatives.
To the bewilderment of other Europeans, in political terms France is divided into three large irreconcilable blocks: the diffuse center of Macron, the leftist alliance headed by the ultra Jean-Luc Mélenchon which has already begun to crack, and Le Pen’s chauvinist right which, to the alarm of many, more than tenfolded the number of seats it has in the national assembly, going from 8 to 89. Mélenchon and Le Pen owe their electoral success to the almost universal feeling that Macron he is a cosmopolitan elitist who despises most of his countrymen. Although both imply that they are contrary to the European Union, the recipes that are proposed to remedy the French disease are very different; Mélenchon would like to redistribute economic resources, while Le Pen would like to expel those members of the very large Muslim minority who in his opinion pose a danger to the sacrosanct national unity.
Be that as it may, the one macron beech lost many votes thanks to his willingness to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65, tells us a lot about what is happening in his country and others. After all, the reform he has in mind is far from radical; So much has changed since 1889, when the German Otto von Bismark created the first public pension system for those over 65 years of age and the average life expectancy was barely 40, which one would suppose would be convenient to update, but since it is a question of a “social conquest”, all the proposed changes are resisted. Something similar happens in other areas. For trade unionists, leftist militants and many others, trying to eliminate an “acquired right”, one of which is to have enough income to sustain the way of life to which they have become accustomed, is inadmissible even when the economy, that is to say, , the community, do not have the necessary money.
All developed countries face a period of hardship with no one knowing how long it will last or what could be done for them to emerge with their political systems intact. For now at least, they have more material and even human resources than Argentina, where the precipitous fall in the educational level can only cause serious difficulties in the coming years, but the obstacles they will have to overcome, including the growing gap between expectations minimum and what the economy will be in a position to provide, are not so different. Here democracy, despite decades of economic failure, has managed to survive. Will democracy be so lucky in the still-rich world? This is a question that many are asking.
