For years, the discussion about public spending in Argentina was presented as a technical problem. There was talk of deficits, of items, of percentages of GDP, as if the State were a poorly managed Excel spreadsheet. But that look, comfortable and superficial, avoided the essential. The expense is not an accounting error. It is a tool of power. And understanding that completely changes the axis of the debate.
In recent days, the Government has advanced in a new phase of reducing spending in all ministries, with explicit goals that include cuts in current spending and a strong pruning of capital expenditure. The news was presented by the media as just another economic measure, a sign of fiscal discipline. But to reduce it to that is to not understand what is really at stake
.Because this is not economics. It's a philosophy of power.
For decades, Argentine politics built its dominance on a simple but devastating premise: spending to control. Each weight assigned wasn't just a resource, it was a relationship of dependency. Subsidies, transfers, oversized structures, unnecessary public employment. Everything was part of a framework that did not seek efficiency, but rather subordination. The citizen was not a free subject. It was a conditioned receiver.
In this scheme, public spending operated as the main mechanism of domination. It wasn't about solving problems, it was about managing them. It was not intended to eliminate poverty, but to manage it. Growth was not promoted, but dependence. And in that model, the politician became an essential intermediary between the individual and his own survival
.Therefore, every time we talk about “cruel adjustment”, we should stop for a second and ask: cruel to whom? Because what is under discussion is not a number, it's an incentive system. Trimming doesn't remove rights. Eliminate privileges. It does not punish society. Disarm the structure that lived on it.
