Economic crashes linked to rise in male suicides, vast review shows

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Governments need to fund health services to support people during recessions and economic crises, say the authors of a vast review of research on the topic to-date.

Their findings from this first-of-its-kind analysis shows that rates of suicide among men rise when countries face fiscal downturns.

Meanwhile results published today in the peer-reviewed Journal of Mental Health display that, despite poorer mental health being witnessed among all genders, women are shown to be at an overall greater risk of general poor mental health outcomes compared to men.

Issues are worse in countries where governments make cutbacks and where there is lower social spending at times of crisis such as the banks collapsing. Plus, job type and unemployment were found to be major triggers for problems such as depression and anxiety.

Experts from Canada and the UK led this research into the impact of financial meltdowns on psychological well-being.

They analysed nearly 100 papers, focused on major events such as the 2008 global crash. These included articles with huge national datasets of millions of people and also longitudinal research (monitoring impact over time).

The academics from the University of Montreal in Canada; and the UK institutions UWE (University West of England) Bristol, De Montfort, and Edge Hill, say their findings are timely given the cost-of-living crises affecting many countries and global events such as the Russia-Ukraine war.

“This review confirms the undeniable impact of national and international financial crises on population-level mental health and well-being,” states lead author Deborah Talamonti, a researcher affiliated with the University of Montreal.

“The studies included in our review show the long-term repercussions of financial crises and highlight the crucial and urgent need for social support and welfare systems to safeguard the mental health of individuals.”

“By addressing the distinct needs of various groups and populations, policymakers have the instruments to mitigate the mental health impact of financial crises and build a more resilient society.”

Only one previous study has investigated multiple financial crises. However, it was not as extensive as this new study which has reviewed 98 articles published worldwide up to 21 November 2022 with the majority from Europe followed by North America, Asia, and Australia.

These studies examined global events spanning 1990 to 20017 [DT1] and included the global financial crisis (2008); the Greek debt crisis (2007); the Asian economic crisis (1997); the South-Korean financial crisis (1997); the Finnish (1991) and Swedish (1990) economic recessions; and other periods of economic recessions, austerity, and financial or banking crises.

Most of the research studies focused on the impact of these financial crashes on suicide rates. The rest looked at depression and anxiety; and a small number at other mental health factors, such as stress, life satisfaction, well-being, and sleep quality.

Results showed that suicide rates generally increased both during and after financial crises, especially in men. Employment type influenced this trend – some manual workers such as labourers were at increased risk.

Unlike suicide rates, suicide attempts increased among women and men.

The evidence suggested that suicide rates were unchanged in some countries, a trend which the authors say may be because of the stronger welfare systems.

A rise in the number of people out of work following a financial crash predicted that anxiety and depression would increase too.

However, the authors point out that being employed after such an event did not necessarily protect people from mental illness. Increased workload and lower income were among possible work-related factors behind this negative impact, according to the authors.

The authors say financial crises exacerbate gender inequalities (e.g., women as caregivers and men as breadwinners).

Hospital admissions for mental health issues increased especially among women and people on low incomes. However, demand for mental health services decreased especially among unemployed.

This, the experts suggest, may be because people actively avoid to (or are not able to) seek help and end up in hospital as a result.

“What’s needed,” says, senior author Professor Mark Forshaw from Edge Hill University, “is enough funding from governments to reinforce healthcare systems, especially mental health services”.

“People will then get the support they need when countries are in financial meltdown,” Professor Forshaw, an internationally recognised expert in health psychology, adds.

“Education campaigns to empower people to identify potential symptoms and awareness-raising about the consequences of economic crashes are also required.”

Limitations of the research include the majority of the studies assessed were not conducted in the last three years due to the dominant focus on the COVID-19 pandemic, whose unique impact on mental health could have skewed the previous findings.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Mental Health

DOI

10.1080/09638237.2023.2278104 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The impact of national and international financial crises on mental health and well-being: a systematic review

Ireland’s Housing Crisis Is an Indictment of Irish Capitalism

A dysfunctional housing system is putting intense strain on Ireland’s social fabric as rents spiral out of control. The current malaise has deep roots in the structure of Irish capitalism, and radical reform is the only way to turn things around.

Rental signs outside Georgian buildings in Dublin city center, Ireland on February 15, 2023. 

(Artur Widak / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

BY COLIN GANNON
05.06.2023
JACOBIN

On April 1, amid a protracted housing crisis that has been steadily mounting in scale and intensity, the Irish government lifted an eviction ban that had protected tenants since last October. As the current housing minister Darragh O’Brien conceded, the predictable outcome will be a rise in already record-breaking levels of homelessness.

Whatever way you look at this hydra-headed housing crisis (which seems increasingly unmanageable for the ruling parties), it has produced catastrophic effects for the country’s residents, particularly in urban areas. Emergency accommodation houses 11,988 people, with others sequestered away in more hidden forms of homelessness. Those who wish to buy will see that house prices are now seven times the median income.

But we can find the most striking symptoms of the crisis in the private rental sector, as is the case in many other countries. One day last August, only 716 homes were available to rent in the south of Ireland, and rents stood at an all-time high. Even mainstream liberal commentators detect unmistakable signs that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have “decided to bring back nineteenth-century landlordism, to reshape Ireland as a nation beholden to private property owners.”

Overcoming the crisis will require a comprehensive transformation of the Irish housing system. But how are we going to achieve this?
The Irish Housing Question

Exasperated at the ineffectual efforts of bourgeois reformers, Friedrich Engels wrote in 1872 that the “housing question” could only be resolved by ending the capitalist mode of production. Yet Ireland’s capitalist class and its political elite are clearly not staring down the barrel of social revolution, however unanchored they may be in economic reality. While the problems with housing “may not be resolvable under capitalism,” argue Peter Marcuse and David Madden in their book In Defense of Housing, “the shape of the housing system can be acted upon, modified, and changed.”To make sense of the Irish housing crisis, you have to understand why the development of the southern Irish state has been so bound up with housing and property.

If you want to make sense of the housing crisis, you have to understand why the development of the southern Irish state has been so bound up with housing and property. By drawing this historical arc, we can see how the underlying philosophy shaping Irish housing policy for a hundred years in the South — the North deserves its own analysis — has been an unhealthy obsession with owner-occupation. This preference interacted with the forces of globalization and the neoliberal turn to bring us to where we are today.

In the apocalyptic aftermath of an Gorta Mór (the Great Famine), an agrarian movement called the Land League, formed in 1879, organized the rural poor in Ireland into a mass national campaign that resisted evictions and employed rent strikes and boycotts. It eventually concluded that the only way to defeat a vampiric form of rural landlordism was through widescale farmer-tenant proprietorship. This dream soon became a reality.

Before the British state carried out agrarian reforms in response to popular mobilizations known more broadly as the Land Wars, thirteen thousand landlords owned the land of rural Ireland. By 1920, tenants had purchased 316,000 holdings. These tenants became private land- and homeowners, beneficiaries of a mass division and redistribution of estates held by the Anglo-Irish ruling class.

Politically, as the historian Diarmaid Ferriter writes, the implication was that the descendants of the “Land War generation” were “imbued with the idea that home ownership was the ultimate goal and renting was wasted money.” Those descendants, Ferriter concludes a little too definitively, were the “inheritors of a conservative impulse.”
Housing and the Irish State

After gaining independence, the nascent post-partition state in the South would come to assume a leading role in providing housing capital by funding a relatively large social-housing construction program, which constituted a majority of the housing built from the 1920s to the 1950s. At the same time, it also played an outsized role in the funding and building of dwellings for owner-occupation, its preferred type of tenure.

Similar surges in output during the 1960s and ’70s could not conceal the fact that government subsidies still favored, to a considerable degree, the private home-buyer more than the social-housing tenant. The 1966 Housing Act was a further boon for private ownership, extending the right of purchase to all local authority tenants. Come 1969, local authorities had sold an astonishing 64,490 council homes.

As the Sinn Féin housing spokesperson and author Eoin Ó Broin points out, the “largest output of housing in the history of the State” during the 1970s was severely undercut by the “massive transfer of stock from the public to the private sector via tenant purchase.” This transfer tipped the balance in favor of homeownership further still.Irish governments prioritized ownership of property over other forms of social protection.

Private homeownership, having stood at 52.6 percent in 1946, rose to 70 percent in 1971. The ruling conservative parties could reasonably have felt that this was the crowning achievement of the modern Irish state, after centuries of absenteeism, dispossession, and insecurity.

In a landmark study, Michelle Norris disputes the widely held assumption that the southern Irish state failed to develop a comprehensive welfare regime like many of its Western European counterparts. Instead, she argues, a paradigm called “asset-based welfare” meant that Irish governments prioritized ownership of property over other forms of social protection, reminding us of Ferriter’s contestable, if resonant, notion of the inherited conservative impulse.
Financialization

From the 1980s onward, the structure of the system did not change — just the way in which it was financed. In his book Sins of the Father, Conor McCabe writes of a kind of “revolution” that was underway at the time:


Banks were becoming “one-stop shops” for financial services, and the Irish government played its part by changing the rules and allowing building societies and insurance companies to compete with high-street banks in the areas of personal and business loans.

The impact of credit and financial liberalization combined with the withdrawal of the Irish state from providing homes and funding their construction. The 1980s saw a 30 percent collapse in the output of social housing compared to the previous decade.The 1980s saw a 30 percent collapse in the output of social housing compared to the previous decade.

Yet as Ó Broin explains, the effects of credit liberalization on house prices were “more delayed than in Britain,” where the Thatcher government was engaged in a mass sell-off of council housing. By the time prices started creeping upward, financial deregulation and banking standardization steered through by the European Union in the 1990s exacerbated the trend — in particular the newfound access to cheap credit for Irish financial institutions arising from membership of the single currency.

Housing in Ireland, now thoroughly financialized, was thus central to the boom and bust of the Celtic Tiger. In 1994, the average price of a house in the state was €72,000. By 2004, it had soared to €249,000.

Then came the crash of 2008. Construction, private sector investment, and capital spending vanished overnight. Successive austerity budgets by the Fianna Fáil–led government slashed capital expenditure in social and affordable housing from €1.5 billion in 2008 to €485 million in 2011. After the bailout, when the Irish state lost its fiscal sovereignty to the European Union–European Central Bank–International Monetary Fund troika, social-housing output plummeted, shrinking to a new historic low of 642 units in 2014.
Getting Boomier

Meanwhile, housing affordability became a growing problem in the private rental sector, which had expanded during the Celtic Tiger as investors flooded into the market through buy-to-let mortgages. Rents in the state ballooned by 68 per cent between 2010 and 2021. Across the EU as a whole during that period, rents rose by just 16 per cent.By explicit design of government policy, the latest phase of the crisis has increasingly been fueled by investment from what scholars call asset-manager capitalism.

In 2014, the introduction of the landlord-friendly Housing Assistance Payment led, as Ó Broin notes, to a situation whereby “non-subsidised renters were being crowded out of the private rental sector by increasing numbers of social housing tenants.” He describes this as ground zero for the terrifying excesses of the homelessness crisis. All the while, house prices were rocketing skyward, squeezing prospective home-buyers into an ever-larger pool of tenants.

By explicit design of government policy, the latest phase of the crisis has increasingly been fueled by investment from what scholars call asset-manager capitalism. In the words of Rory Hearne, real estate investment trusts (REITS) and similar funds of that kind desire the creation of “a permanent renting class,” out of which they can wrench endless rents.


The economist Josh Ryan-Collins observes that this state-sponsored swarming of asset-management institutions around real estate in Ireland is a global phenomenon, as the “wall of liquidity created by Quantitative Easing” resulted in a search for “high yielding, but safe assets.” When those engaged in this search made it to Ireland, they set their sights on distressed commercial assets that were being held by Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA).

Now that the market for commercial assets is contracting, the “wall of liquidity” has moved into the domain of residential development. Deploying scorched-earth investment strategies, these institutional landlords — who bought just seventy-six units in Ireland in 2010 — scooped up 5,132 homes in 2019, and now own more than forty-five thousand across the country.

Put simply, the private rental sector is completely broken, blighted by severe supply shortages and unaffordable, exploitative rents. Various rent subsidy schemes for social-housing tenants also drain close to €1 billion from the exchequer to fill the coffers of private landlords. Only harebrained schemes to line the pockets of developers are forthcoming from the government. The crisis thus rages on with no end in sight.

To make matters worse, the coalition government, in full knowledge of the scale of the crisis and the breadth and depth of hardship, has failed to spend over €1 billion of its housing budget over the last three years. Of perhaps greater concern is the unforgivable refusal of local authorities to spend 90 percent of their allocated affordable housing budget across 2021 and 2022. But if the system appears to be at a tipping point, then where are the main, viable solutions coming from on the Irish left?
Alternatives

On behalf of Sinn Féin, Ó Broin has put forward various proposals, mapping out in detail the most compelling reformist alternative. This vision closely resembles the housing policies supported by the strongest socialist force in the Dáil, People Before Profit (PBP). PBP’s ideas differ from those of Ó Broin in making an explicit call for rents to be set at a percentage of take-home pay and advocating the nationalization of all dwellings owned by corporate landlords. Few on the Left would resist such moves to radically rebalance the system.On behalf of Sinn Féin, Eoin Ó Broin has put forward various proposals, mapping out in detail the most compelling reformist alternative.

So what are Ó Broin’s solutions? Chiefly, in the medium to long term, “the expansion of public housing on a scale not seen in the history of the State,” with something in the order of an additional 230,000 public housing units over the next ten years. Ideally, he argues, this would be led by resurgent local authorities that had been reassigned the power to build and build. Developments would be mixed-tenure and mixed-income, as well as world-class from the point of view of amenities and architecture. The housing movement also sees a constitutional right to housing as an imperative.

Ó Broin’s most interesting policy idea may be his lease-holding suggestion. Firstly, he argues, “the land on which the affordable purchase home sits should never be sold, rather it should be leased to the homeowner indefinitely at no or low cost.” Secondly, to avert re-commodification, it should not be possible to sell the property on the private market. A slightly diluted version of this model of affordable housing has already been developed, on a micro-scale, by Ó Cualann Cohousing Alliance in Dublin since 2017.

According to Ó Broin, public-private partnerships, sales of public land, private rental subsidies, and long-term leasing arrangements “all introduce ever greater levels of profit maximisation” and should be phased out of the public housing sector. To address the short-term affordability crisis as we await the largest house-building program in the state’s history, O Bróin has proposed an immediate three-year rent freeze, which would replace the existing, unfit-for-purpose Rent Pressure Zones.

To achieve a reduction in existing rents, he also wishes to introduce a refundable tax relief, pegged to “8.3 percent of rent paid in the previous year.” A three-year rent freeze, combined with a refundable tax relief alongside an ambitious program of public house-building, should in Ó Broin’s view see “private rental supply and in turn rents start to return to pre-peak levels by the time the freeze and relief expire.”

Even if these policies are successful, should the limit of our ambition, against a backdrop of hyperinflated rents and stagnating wages, be to return the cost of rent to precrisis levels? For Sinn Fein at least, that seems to be the case.
Supply Is Not Enough

Other policy interventions called for by Ó Broin include greater tenant participation in policy formulation and decision-making as well as far-reaching land reform. The latter could, he maintains, be tackled by actively increasing the stock of publicly owned land, reintroducing credit controls, and reviewing the current vacant tax rate. More broadly, he wants a reconsideration of how “land speculation is financed and taxed” in order to “end the corrosive impact of speculative investment in land on the housing system.”

The continued use of Irish housing as an asset class by international asset-management institutions deepens the links between the domestic housing system and global financial markets. For economist Ann Pettifor, the main “propellant” of this crisis is not supply shortages but an excess of finance. House prices will fall, she has argued, “when the propellant is withdrawn — and flows of finance decline.”

There is a serious engagement with the history of financialization in the interventions of Ó Broin, Hearne, and others. However, they fail to fully connect the financial exuberance that underpins the current economic order in Ireland to the need for a reformed housing system. Extra supply will not resolve everything.Irish housing activism must make arguments that challenge the entire edifice of housing commodification and Irish capitalism.

We should therefore place greater emphasis on land reforms. We should also give more consideration to whether a continuation of the current Irish economic model — based on an overreliance on foreign direct investment, with Ireland as an intermediary zone between US and European capital — will allow for the kinds of reforms that are required, and not simply bake further instability and pricing flux into the system.

As the example of Finland has shown, the policy of Housing First — giving homeless people a home unconditionally, preferably with integrated support in a context of higher supply — can work and come close to ending different types of homelessness. It is also necessary to rein in the brutal predations of landlordism through regulation and possibly new taxes.

A common narrative suggests that this whole crisis was not a necessary outcome of Irish economic policy in general but rather a housing-policy failure in particular, which arises from the misjudgments of politicians, not any inner logic of capital. If not for those misjudgments, everything might be okay.

However, this reasoning is seriously flawed and myopic. Irish housing activism must make arguments that challenge the entire edifice of housing commodification and Irish capitalism.
Housing Activism

Amilitant uprising in the style of the nineteenth-century Land Wars seems unlikely, and not only because those struggles arose from the specific historical conditions of post-famine rural Ireland. It is also because Sinn Féin, on the brink of real power for the first time in the South, has effectively monopolized the debate on an alternative model, ably assisted by housing activists, the socialist left, and even some social democrats in other parties.Postcrash Ireland witnessed a new wave of extra-parliamentary housing activism.

Over the past decade, however, there have been real echoes of the Land Wars on the ground, particularly in Dublin. Postcrash Ireland witnessed a new wave of extra-parliamentary housing activism, from Housing Action Now to Home Sweet Home to Take Back the City. These campaign groups emerged to build a counternarrative on the housing crisis and engaged in forms of direct action such as the occupation of vacant buildings. Many were connected to the Right2Water campaign, Ireland’s largest grassroots mobilization so far this century.

Formed in 2019, Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), the only tenants’ union in Ireland, has gone from strength to strength, accumulating members across the island on an all-Ireland basis. Along with the inherent difficulty in organizing atomized tenants, Irish tenant politics, in the judgement of Michael Byrne, suffers from political centralization, which moves sites of organized conflict away from the city or town to central government.

This is an obstacle CATU must overcome, but it is not helped by the passivity of the trade-union movement and the pacifying effects on the housing movement of NGOs. A number of small charities that rely heavily on state funding are among the loudest voices in the debate, yet simultaneously find themselves unable to advocate for sufficiently radical change because of “service level agreements” and the threat of losing access to funding.

We can see the consequences of this “NGOization” of the response to the housing crisis most starkly in advocacy over homelessness. As some scholars have observed, the Apollo House occupation maintained a rather “restricted focus on homelessness” that “failed to connect up with the wider impacts of the housing crisis.”
Fighting Back

Today, we run the risk of succumbing to the same temptations: focusing our attention on rising homelessness and evictions at the expense of reexamining a wider system that also alienates us in our workplaces and in our everyday interactions with the world around us. As Marcuse and Madden argue, a “truly radical right to housing” cannot be limited to a narrow legal right: it must “comprise a similarly expansive set of political demands”.

Even if a left-leaning coalition led by Sinn Féin comes to power, it would leave the current economic model largely untouched, so activists should not rest on their laurels. Given the scale of the crisis, all actions should be on the table. During the Land Wars, the Whiteboys and Ribbonmen — secret organizations whose tactical repertoires included attacking landlords and their property — attracted notoriety.

But much more recently, at a time when levels of trade-union density and activity were high in Ireland in a European context, tenants still undertook national rent strikes. In 1972 and 1973, tens of thousands of tenants fought back against deteriorating housing conditions and spiraling rents. Powered by a social movement, the Left can confront the beast head on, smashing the neoliberal consensus on housing and cleansing the system of predatory land and property speculation.

Colin Gannon is an Irish journalist and researcher who has written for the Baffler, Tribune, the Guardian, and the Verso Books blog, among other outlets.

Bosses thought they won the return-to-office wars by imposing rigid policies. Now they’re facing a wave of legal battles

Gleb Tsipursky
Wed, November 22, 2023

Getty Images


After seemingly having won the return-to-office wars, employers may be walking into a legal storm by enforcing rigid return-to-office (RTO) mandates.

The post-pandemic era presents a unique challenge as employers grapple with shifting workforce dynamics. The insistence on a full return to the office, without considering individual circumstances, could lead to a surge in legal issues, particularly discrimination claims. This concern is not mere speculation–it's a reality backed by a significant uptick in workforce discrimination charges.

Rigid RTO policies are disproportionately impacting disabled employees, mothers, and older workers–and could even, in certain cases, breach the law.
The disability discrimination dilemma

One of the most pressing issues is disability discrimination. With many employees having worked remotely for over two years without a dip in productivity or performance, employers face a challenging legal landscape when justifying the need for in-person work.

Thomas Foley, executive director of the National Disability Institute, noted that he has “great concerns” over RTO for people with disabilities, including transportation to and from work, workplace accessibility, and the potential to encounter micro (or larger) aggressions. Brandalyn Bickner, a spokesperson for the EEOC, said in a statement that the ADA's reasonable accommodation obligation includes “modifying workplace policies” and “might require an employer to waive certain eligibility requirements or otherwise modify its telework program for someone with a disability who needs to work at home.”

In a notable legal settlement, a facility management company agreed to pay $47,500 to settle an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The case, EEOC v. ISS Facility Services, Inc., involved the company's refusal to allow a disabled employee at high risk for COVID-19 to work part-time from home, despite previously allowing a rotating schedule during the pandemic. The company's denial of the employee's request for accommodation, followed by her termination, was deemed a violation of the ADA. The settlement also required the company to permit EEOC monitoring of future accommodation requests. This case emphasizes the importance of ADA compliance and the need for employers to be flexible and consistent in accommodating employees, especially in changing work environments.

In a lawsuit against Electric Boat Corp., Zacchery Belval, a resident of Enfield, Conn., claimed discrimination for the company's failure to provide reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act. Belval, who has multiple health issues, including a heart defect and severe anxiety, argued he was at increased risk for COVID-19. He had worked from home during the pandemic, but faced challenges when the company encouraged a return to the office. The physical demands of returning and poor office conditions led him to seek continued remote work, which the company partially granted. However, Belval deemed this accommodation insufficient. When he did not return to work under these conditions, Electric Boat considered him resigned. This case underscores the complexities employers face in implementing return-to-office policies while also needing to provide ADA-compliant reasonable accommodations, particularly for employees with significant health risks.

Mental health issues have become increasingly prominent in the context of workplace accommodations. The pandemic has led to a 25% increase in cases of depression and anxiety in the U.S., underscoring the need for employers to consider remote work as a reasonable accommodation. Companies are facing a rise in mental health disability discrimination complaints from employees who view remote work as a reasonable accommodation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has observed a 16% increase in such charges between 2021 and 2022, particularly for conditions like anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress syndrome. This trend is indicative of a broader challenge where mental health disorders have become a prominent reason for disability complaints. Employers who fail to make an effort to accommodate such requests risk facing EEOC actions. In September, the agency filed a complaint against a Georgia company after it fired a marketing manager who requested to work remotely three days a week to accommodate anxiety.
Impact on older workers

Older workers are particularly impacted by RTO mandates. A recent survey from Carewell has illuminated this trend, revealing that as many as 25% of workers over the age of 50 are contemplating retirement more seriously in light of RTO mandates. This statistic is particularly striking when compared to the 43% who expressed a reduced likelihood of retiring if given the option to work remotely. Such figures not only highlight the preferences of older workers but also underscore the potential unintended consequences of inflexible RTO policies.

The resistance to RTO mandates among older workers isn't just a matter of preference; it brings to the forefront concerns about age discrimination. If RTO policies disproportionately affect older employees, either by forcing them into early retirement or by making their work conditions less favorable compared to their younger counterparts, employers could face age discrimination claims. These concerns are amplified by the fact that losing older workers en masse could mean a significant loss of experience, skills, and institutional knowledge for organizations.

Employers, therefore, need to carefully consider the impact of RTO mandates on their older workforce. Offering flexibility, whether through remote work options or hybrid models, could be crucial in retaining older employees. Additionally, engaging in dialogue with this segment of the workforce to understand their specific needs and concerns can help in formulating policies that are inclusive and considerate of all age groups.
Working parents and gender disparities

The legal risks associated with RTO policies are further highlighted by their impact on working parents, especially mothers. The transition from remote to office work brings into sharp focus the balancing act that working parents, especially mothers, must perform between their professional responsibilities and childcare obligations. The legal implications of these policies stem from the potential for indirect discrimination and unequal treatment of working parents.

Studies have consistently shown that working mothers are disproportionately affected by the lack of flexibility in work arrangements. The data reveals that nearly twice as many working mothers as fathers have considered leaving their jobs due to the stress associated with childcare. This statistic is alarming and points towards a deep-seated issue in the current work environment where the needs of working mothers are not adequately accommodated. Furthermore, 30% of mothers, compared to 17% of fathers, report difficulties in finding working hours that align with their childcare needs. This disparity not only highlights the challenges faced by working mothers but also raises concerns about potential gender discrimination in the workplace.

The lack of flexible working options can exacerbate existing inequalities. Mothers often bear a larger share of domestic and childcare responsibilities, and inflexible work schedules can intensify these demands, leading to increased stress and potential burnout. This situation is particularly challenging for single mothers or those without access to external childcare support. The inability to balance these demands can lead to mothers being forced to choose between their careers and their family responsibilities, a choice that fathers are less likely to face to the same extent.

From a legal standpoint, these disparities could give rise to discrimination claims under various employment laws. Employers who fail to provide reasonable accommodations or flexibility to working parents, particularly mothers, might be seen as engaging in indirect discrimination. Such practices can be construed as creating an unfavorable work environment for certain groups of employees, thereby violating equal employment opportunity laws.

To mitigate these risks, employers must take proactive steps to provide equitable support to all working parents. This could include offering flexible work schedules, remote work options, or part-time arrangements that allow parents to manage their work and childcare responsibilities more effectively. Additionally, employers should consider implementing policies that specifically support working mothers, such as extended maternity leave, breastfeeding breaks, and facilities, or support for childcare.

Instituting these changes requires a cultural shift within organizations to recognize and value the diversity of employees' needs. This shift involves not only policy changes but also a broader understanding and empathy toward the challenges faced by working parents. By fostering an inclusive work environment that accommodates the unique needs of working mothers, employers can not only avoid potential legal challenges but also enhance employee satisfaction and retention.
Additional discrimination considerations in remote setups

The evolving legal landscape, shaped by advancements in legal technology and updated guidelines on harassment, presents new challenges and complexities for employers, particularly in the context of remote and hybrid work environments. The EEOC has recently published important updates in its guidance that address the nuances of remote work and discrimination.

One of the key aspects of this new EEOC guidance is the clarification it provides on legal standards and employer liability in the context of remote work. As the workplace extends beyond the traditional office environment into remote and hybrid models, the definition and scope of harassment have also expanded. This expansion necessitates a reevaluation of existing policies to ensure they adequately address the unique challenges and scenarios presented by remote work settings. For instance, harassment in virtual meetings or through digital communication platforms presents different challenges compared to in-person interactions, requiring tailored responses and preventive measures.

The guidance also underscores the importance of accommodating the needs of diverse employee groups, with specific attention to LGBTQ+ employees. This focus is critical in fostering an inclusive work environment and ensuring that harassment policies are sensitive to the needs of all employees, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression. Employers are encouraged to review and update their policies to ensure they provide clear, specific protections against harassment of LGBTQ+ employees, which is essential in maintaining a respectful and inclusive workplace culture.

Additionally, the guidance highlights the need for updated policies related to video meetings and lactation accommodations. As video conferencing becomes a staple in remote and hybrid work models, employers must establish clear guidelines to prevent and address harassment that may occur in these virtual settings. This includes setting standards for professional conduct during video calls and ensuring that employees' privacy and dignity are respected. Similarly, the guidance on lactation accommodations reflects an understanding of the changing needs of working parents, particularly mothers, in remote work scenarios.

Furthermore, the EEOC emphasizes the importance of training for employees on these new aspects of workplace conduct. Training programs should be updated to include scenarios and examples relevant to remote and hybrid work environments, ensuring that employees understand their rights and responsibilities under the new guidelines. This training should also cover how to report harassment in remote work settings and the resources available to employees who experience or witness such behavior.

In response to these challenges, I tell my clients that they would benefit from adopting a flexible approach to RTO mandates.

A one-size-fits-all policy may not only lead to legal repercussions but also overlook the diverse needs of a modern workforce. Companies need to consider individual employee circumstances, including disability, age, and parental responsibilities, to navigate this new landscape successfully. Inflexible RTO mandates not only risk alienating key segments of the workforce but also invite a host of legal challenges.

By embracing flexibility and inclusivity in return-to-work strategies, employers can mitigate legal risks, foster employee engagement, and build a more inclusive and productive work environment.

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D. (a.k.a. “the office whisperer”), helps tech and finance industry executives drive collaboration, innovation, and retention in hybrid work. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the bestselling author of seven books, including Never Go With Your Gut and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox and over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist at UNC–Chapel Hill and Ohio State.


EY is considering closing one of its major HQs because of remote working and climate change

Ryan Hogg
Tue, November 21, 2023

Jack Taylor—Getty Images


The corporate world’s post-COVID era has been defined by a tug-of-war between staff and employers over returning to the office. Amid a wave of new mandates from major companies, it looks like the bosses have been winning.

Now, though, Big Four accounting firm EY could be pulling the balance back towards long-term worker flexibility by potentially committing to long-term hybrid working.

The partnership is reportedly looking to give up its London Bridge office—its home for the last 20 years—in the latest blow for corporate real estate as companies adapt to worker demands.

The Telegraph and Bloomberg reported that the accountancy firm is considering vacating its massive 10-story building near London Bridge that houses 9,000 employees, citing people familiar with the matter.

EY launched a property review of its U.K. headquarters at More London under the belief that fewer people are working in the office, the publications reported.

The reported review comes ahead of the end of the group’s 25-year lease at More London in 2028. The review is in its early phases and is expected to take into account occupancy levels, according to the publications.

EY moved to a hybrid model in the U.K. in 2021. This gave staff the freedom to work remotely at least two days a week, with an expectation that they would work at client sites or in the office the rest of the time.

It’s understood that the More London office now operates at 88% occupancy on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the publications reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg reported that EY was considering moving to an environmentally friendly building to help towards its goal of being carbon neutral by 2025, citing one person.

A representative for EY told Fortune: “As a growing business with over 20 offices across the U.K., we continually review our real estate footprint. We do not comment on speculation.”
Office space shrinking

Pricey real estate has been a big motivator for companies trying to get their workers back into the office, particularly those that took up long leases before the pandemic struck. But other major companies have begun vacating their office space as they either embrace hybrid working or spy opportunities to cut costs.

In June, global banking giant HSBC said it was planning to move out of its iconic Canary Wharf headquarters, the Times of London first reported.

The group, which housed nearly 8,000 staff in the 45-story building, said it expected to move to the center of London in 2027 amid a drive to reduce global office space by 40%.

In September, Meta ended a lease on office space in the center of London 18 years ahead of schedule, citing an inability to fill it. The move cost Mark Zuckerberg’s company an eye-watering £149 million ($181 million).

Plans to shrink office space or leave it altogether have been the source of major headaches for London’s corporate real estate operators, who face years of painful adjustment to the new future of work.

In September, investment bank Jefferies said London was in a “rental recession” as office vacancies in the city hit a 30-year high, Reuters reported.

A June report by Capital Economics predicted a 35% plunge in office values by 2025, a decline that is unlikely to be recovered until 2040.

The consultancy’s predictions are far from an outlier. The head of real estate brokerage CBRE said commercial real estate value in the U.S. could decline by another 10% on top of an initial decline of 15% to 20%.

Gary Shilling, an economist who predicted the 2008 housing crash, described commercial real estate as a bubble on the verge of bursting.

“This isn’t of the magnitude of the subprime-mortgage bonanza, but I think it is a bubble which is beginning to crack,” Shilling said on investing podcast The Julia La Roche Show.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

ANARCHO-CAPITALI$T

Argentina's new president Javier Milei thinks adopting the US dollar can rescue its screwed economy

Huileng Tan
Mon, November 20, 2023 

A Javier Milei supporter at a pre-election rally in Buenos Aires.Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images

Right-wing economist Javier Milei won Argentina's presidential runoff Sunday.


He thinks replacing the peso with the dollar can tame hyperinflation and revive the battered economy.


Milei's supporters say it would tackle triple-digit inflation, but skeptics have their doubts.

Far-right economist Javier Milei's victory in Argentina's presidential runoff on Sunday means the country could abandon the peso — a radical move that would run counter to the country's dedollarization drive.

Provisional results showed Milei garnered nearly 56% of the vote, with most counted.

Milei's been hyping up his desire to dollarize Argentina's beleaguered economy. He argued the move would help tame runaway inflation that hit 143% in October after a slump in the peso that's wiped out 99% of its value against the US dollar this year.

The currency has been depreciating since 2008 due to various reasons including hyperinflation, debt, and political instability.

In October, Milei went as far as saying that the peso "can't be worth excrement."

Prominent economist Steve Hanke — a champion of Milei's dollarization drive — posted on X after the results were announced that the candidate's proposal was "clearly a vote-getter."

Hanke, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said in August that Argentina should "mothball" its central bank and adopt the greenback as its currency to tame inflation.



However, replacing the peso with the dollar would diminish some of Argentina's autonomy in monetary policy. It would also be the first time an economy as large as Argentina officially adopted the greenback.

Despite its economic woes, Argentina's economy was worth $633 billion in 2022, making it the world's 23rd-largest economy.

Critics of Milei's dollarization plans cite major challenges for Argentina against its backdrop of hyperinflation, economic crises, and political instability.

There's also a fundamental problem with Milei's dollarization plan — Argentina doesn't have enough US dollar assets to finance a major purchase of the currency, wrote Markus Jaeger, a global economy analyst at intelligence firm Stratfor, in October.

In fact, Argentina is so short of US dollars that it used the Chinese yuan to repay part of an International Monetary Fund loan last month.

Coupled with political instability and a history of poor economic management, Argentina would better off reforming its economic regime, wrote Jaeger.

"Full dollarization is the second-best solution to the inflation and economic instability problem," he wrote. "It is also a solution that is fraught with very substantial risks."

The Argentine central bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside regular business hours.

Javier Milei: outsider who ignited Argentine rage to become president

By AFP
November 19, 2023

Javier Milei's rants against the country's traditional political parties struck a nerve with voters weary of decades of economic decline and inflation which has hit 143 percent over the past 12 months. 

- Copyright AFP/File Patrick T. Fallon

Fran BLANDY

With his wild hair and powered-up chainsaw, the libertarian Javier Milei has upended Argentine politics in a meteoric rise from obscurity to the presidency, riding a wave of fury over decades of economic decline and rampant inflation.

“Long live freedom, damn it!” was his rallying cry throughout a campaign in which he railed against a “thieving and corrupt political class,” notably on TikTok and YouTube where he fired up the youth.

He has vowed to ditch the ailing peso for the US dollar, “dynamite” the central bank, and slash public spending.

His anti-establishment rants, pro-gun stance and abrasive style have seen comparisons drawn between him and former US President Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

However unlike those two leaders, “Milei came from nowhere… and his popularity came from the disaster of the bad performance of the economy in the last 12 years,” said economist Andres Borenstein, with the Econviews think tank.

While there are those who are fervent supporters, many who backed him were merely expressing disgust with the long-dominant Peronist coalition and its inability to halt Argentina’s cycle of deficit, borrowing, money-printing and inflation.

“They’re not right-wing people, they are angry people and disenchanted people,” Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think-tank in Washington said of Milei’s voters.

“This kind of anti-incumbent sentiment has really been everywhere… it’s really just been remarkable that Argentina has managed to avoid it until now,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Argentina Project at the Washington-based Wilson Center think-tank.

“What exists now doesn’t work for me,” said Milei supporter Matias Esoukourian, a 19-year-old economics student.

– ‘Anarcho-capitalist’ –

The 53-year-old economist with a rock-star persona blindsided experts when he first emerged as a serious contender by winning an August primary election with 30 percent.

While described alternately as libertarian, far right, or antiestablishment, Milei’s political views are hard to pin down.

He describes himself as an “anarcho-capitalist” who is “above all for freedom.”

He is opposed to abortion and sex education, does not believe humans are responsible for climate change, and thinks human organs should be sold freely.

After he placed second behind his rival Massa in the first-round vote, and allied with the center-right opposition, he toned down much of his more divisive rhetoric.

This includes insulting Pope Francis, a fellow Argentine, and vowing to ditch or privatize key government ministries.

His famed chainsaw — a symbol of cuts he wanted to make to public spending — was nowhere to be seen.

Milei has since said his dollarization program would be incremental, but he insists he will shut the central bank and end the “cancer of inflation.”

Most analysts are stumped as to what he will actually do next, saying most of his proposals are unlikely given his lack of power on Congress, even with his allies.

Political analyst Virginia Oliveros, speaking during an online webinar on the election, said that if Milei won, the transition would be “absolute chaos.”

“He has no team, no plan. It’s not clear what he’s going to do. I think that people are not going to have any patience with him, that the honeymoon is not going to last 15 minutes.”

– Cloned dogs –


Milei was born in Buenos Aires to a middle-class family with whom he admits a “complicated” relationship.

He is very close to his sister Karina, however.

The libertarian’s rock-star persona is no pose — he played in a Rolling Stones cover band in his youth and was also a keen footballer.

Milei began appearing on television shows in 2015, where his red-faced rants against the government gained traction on social media.

His party Libertad Avanza was only formed before 2021 elections when he became a lawmaker for Buenos Aires.

Unmarried and childless, he is known for his love of dogs, and owns four large mastiffs named after liberal economists. He has recently been dating actress and comedian Fatima Florez.

According to “Madman,” the unauthorized biography from journalist Juan Luis Gonzalez, Milei never accepted the death of his first dog, Conan, and all his other pooches are clones he had made in the United States.

When asked about being dubbed crazy, he says: “The difference between a genius and a madman is success.”

Far-right candidate Javier Milei wins Argentina election

Sarah K. Burris
November 19, 2023 

Far-right presidential candidate Javier Milei speaks while celebrating the results of the primary elections in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 13, 2023. 

(Photo: Alejandro Pagni/AFP via Getty Images)

The man some called the Argentine Donald Trump has won Argentina's top post.

Sunday evening, Javier Milei was declared the winner of the presidency in the country that has experienced significant inflation after the global pandemic. Despite this, Milei promised to kill government services, including healthcare, transportation and eliminate subsidies for utility bills, like gas, electricity and water. He intends to ban abortion and will refuse to take any action around climate change.

In the past, the country has given funds to poor provinces in the country. Milei intends to cut those as well.

The austerity measures are so significant that one NPR report suggested that the markets could crash in the country as a result of the election. After winning the primary, the country saw a slide, but not a crash.

Donald Trump championed the win, posting on social media: "Congratulations to Javier Milei on a great race for President of Argentina. The whole world was watching! I am very proud of you. You will turn your Country around and truly Make Argentina Great Again!"

He followed it with a screen capture of a tweet showing the far-right libertarian standing behind a U.S. Gadsden flag



Javier Milei, right-wing pundit with a passion for Judaism, is elected president of Argentina

He has said he has considered converting to Judaism but worries about how Shabbat observance would clash with the duties of the presidency


Javier Milei speaks during his campaign’s closing rally in Cordoba, Argentina, Nov. 16, 2023. 

(Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images)

By Juan Melamed

November 19, 2023

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Javier Milei, a colorful right-wing populist who has said he would like to convert to Judaism, was elected president of Argentina on Sunday.

Early results showed he garnered over 55% of the national vote, defeating Sergio Massa, the current left-wing government’s economy minister.

Milei’s passionate love of Judaism and Israel has been one of the several unexpected qualities that Argentines and political analysts have become accustomed to during his rapid rise over the past year. Milei, 53, throughout his campaign blamed the outgoing government for soaring inflation and poverty rates. That government included Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — who has been accused of obstructing the investigation into the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing — as vice president.

“Today we will start the rebuilding of Argentina,” Milei said in his acceptance speech Sunday night.

Milei, an economist and former TV and radio pundit, calls himself an anarcho-capitalist. He has promised to close several government ministries, including Argentina’s national bank, a move that would make the country’s currency the American dollar. He calls climate change a hoax and has earned comparisons to Donald Trump.

He also studies Torah regularly.

In an interview with Spain’s El Pais newspaper over the summer, Milei talked about his study with Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, who heads ACILBA, an Argentine-Moroccan Jewish community based in Buenos Aires. Milei said he has considered converting to Judaism but worries about how Shabbat observance would clash with the duties of the presidency.

He demonstrates his passion for Judaism at rallies and public events, often walking out on stage to the sound of a shofar, the ram’s horn blown on Rosh Hashanah. At one rally in August, the shofar sound was accompanied on a screen by a photo of a man wearing a Jewish prayer shawl.

He is also an outspoken supporter of Israel, having stated before the start of Israel’s war on Oct. 7 that he would like to make an early diplomatic trip to Jerusalem and to move Argentina’s embassy to that city. In one of his final public appearances before the election, Milei was seen waving an Israeli flag among a large crowd in Rosario.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

Fiery right-wing populist Javier Milei wins Argentina's presidency and promises 'drastic' changes

The Canadian Press
Sun, November 19, 2023 


BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Populist Javier Milei resoundingly won Argentina's presidential election Sunday, swinging the country to the right following a fiercely polarized campaign in which he promised a dramatic shake-up to the state to deal with soaring inflation and rising poverty.

With 99.4% of votes tallied in the presidential runoff, Milei had 55.7% and Economy Minister Sergio Massa 44.3%, according to Argentina's electoral authority. It is the widest victory margin in a presidential race since the South American country's return to democracy in 1983.

In the streets of Buenos Aires, drivers honked their horns and many took to the streets to celebrate in several neighborhoods. Outside Milei’s party headquarters, a hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, a full-on party kicked off with supporters singing, buying beers from vendors and setting off colored smoke bombs. They waved Argentine flags and the yellow Gadsden flag, emblazoned with the words “Don't Tread On Me,” which Milei's movement has adopted.

Inside, the self-described anarcho-capitalist who has been compared to former U.S. President Donald Trump, delivered his victory speech, saying the “reconstruction of Argentina begins today.”

“Argentina’s situation is critical. The changes our country needs are drastic. There is no room for gradualism, no room for lukewarm measures,” Milei told supporters, who chanted “Liberty, liberty!” and “Let them all leave” in a reference to the country's political class.

Massa of the ruling Peronist party had already conceded defeat, saying Argentines “chose another path.”

“Starting tomorrow ... guaranteeing the political, social and economic functions is the responsibility of the new president. I hope he does,” Massa said.

With a Milei victory, the country will take an abrupt shift rightward and a freshman lawmaker who got his start as a television talking head blasting what he called the “political caste” will assume the presidency.

Inflation has soared above 140% and poverty has worsened while Massa has held his post. Milei has said he would slash the size of the government, dollarize the economy and eliminate the Central Bank as a way to tackle galloping inflation that he blames on successive governments printing money indiscriminately in order to fund public spending. He also espouses several conservative social policies, including an opposition to sex education in schools and abortion, which Argentina’s Congress legalized in 2020.

“This is a triumph that is less due to Milei and his peculiarities and particularities and more to the demand for change,” said Lucas Romero, the head of Synopsis, a local political consulting firm. "What is being expressed at the polls is the weariness, the fatigue, the protest vote of the majority of Argentines.”

Massa's campaign cautioned Argentines that his libertarian opponent's plan to eliminate key ministries and otherwise sharply curtail the state would threaten public services, including health and education, and welfare programs many rely on. Massa also drew attention to his opponent's often aggressive rhetoric and openly questioned his mental acuity; ahead of the first round, Milei sometimes carried a revving chainsaw at rallies.

“There were lot of voters that weren’t convinced to vote Milei, who would vote no or blank. But come the day of the vote, they voted for Milei because they’re all pissed off,” Andrei Roman, CEO of Brazil-based pollster Atlas Intel, said by phone. “Everyone talked about the fear of Milei winning. I think this was a fear of Massa winning and economy continuing the way it is, inflation and all that.”

Milei accused Massa and his allies of running a “campaign of fear” and he walked back some of his most controversial proposals, such as loosening gun control. In his final campaign ad, Milei looks at the camera and assures voters he has no plans to privatize education or health care.

Milei’s screeds resonated widely with Argentines angered by their struggle to make ends meet, particularly young men.

“Incredibly happy, ecstatic, it’s a global historical phenomenon!” Luca Rodríguez, a 20-year-old law student, said outside Milei’s headquarters after spraying a bottle of champagne into the air onto those around him, who squealed with glee. “I want to break free from this ridiculous elite that takes away all our rights, all the tax money that pressures us and doesn’t let us live in peace.”

Two Milei supporters in the raucous crowd were 32-year-old identical twins, both dressed in matching grey tank tops with Argentine flags draped over their shoulders.

“We want a change, we want everything to improve,” Amilcar Rollo said beside his brother, Gabriel. “It’s the hope for something new from someone who hasn’t been there and has different ideas. Otherwise, it’s just the same as always.”

Most pre-election polls, which have been notoriously wrong at every step of this year’s campaign, showed a statistical tie between the two candidates or Milei slightly ahead.

Underscoring the bitter division this campaign has brought to the fore, Milei received both jeers and cheers on Friday night at the legendary Colón Theater in Buenos Aires.

The acrimony was also evident Sunday when Milei's running mate, Victoria Villaruel, went to vote and was met by protesters angry at her claims that the number of victims from Argentina's bloody 1976-1983 military dictatorship is far below what human rights organizations have long claimed, among other controversial positions.

The vote took place amid Milei’s allegations of possible electoral fraud, reminiscent of those from Trump and former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Without providing evidence, Milei claimed that the first round of the presidential election was plagued by irregularities that affected the result. Experts say such irregularities cannot swing an election, and that his assertions were partly aimed at firing up his base and motivating his supporters to become monitors of voting stations. Many have expressed concerns they undermine democratic norms.

Both Bolsonaro and Trump congratulated Milei on social media.

“The whole world was watching! I am very proud of you,” Trump wrote on his platform, Truth Social. “You will turn your Country around and truly Make Argentina Great Again!”

And posting on on X, formerly Twitter, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan also commended Milei, as well as Argentina for holding free and fair elections.

“We look forward to building on our strong bilateral relationship based on our shared commitment to human rights, democratic values, & transparency,” Sullivan wrote.

Daniel Politi And David Biller, The Associated Press

Milei's dilemma: how to solve a problem like Argentina?

Agence France-Presse
November 20, 2023

Argentina's president-elect Javier Milei surged to power on a wave of anger over decades of economic mismanagement, vowing to ditch the peso for the US dollar, shut down the central bank and slash spending (Luis ROBAYO)

Argentina's president-elect Javier Milei will have no time to bask in his Sunday victory as he inherits a country crippled by inflation and short on cash, creditors and international sympathy.

"Being president of Argentina has got to be one of the worst jobs in politics in the world," said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Argentina Project at the Washington-based Wilson Center.

"The problems have become so deep and complex and intertwined that they're not easily solvable, even if they're easily identifiable."

Milei surged to power on a wave of anger over decades of economic mismanagement, vowing to ditch the peso for the US dollar, shut down the central bank and slash spending.

He has promised "the end of Argentina's decline" and warned there is no time for "gradualism... or half-measures."

He will take office on December 10, and analysts predict a rocky ride with inflation at 143 percent and poverty levels of over 40 percent.

- How and when will he dollarize the economy? -

Milei has proposed the dollarization of the economy by 2025 to halt the "cancer of inflation", meaning he would drop the peso and Argentina would lose control over monetary policy such as setting interest rates.

Dollarization requires a hefty stock of greenbacks, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned Argentina's dollar reserves are dangerously low.

Even with the backing of the center-right opposition, political newcomer Milei has "very little legislative power," said analyst Carlos Gervasoni of the Torcuato Di Tella University.

"So there is no way to pass laws that, for example, require changing the country's currency or closing the central bank."

- What will happen with the peso? -

To try and keep a lid on inflation, the Argentine government has for years strictly controlled the exchange rate of the peso to the dollar, which was frozen for three months before the election and is now being allowed to devalue at three percent per month.

The exchange rate is "a total fiction. And to maintain it is extremely expensive. Argentina just has literally no money. It can't continue doing this," said Nicolas Saldias, a senior analyst with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Between now and when Milei takes office, "things could rapidly scale out of control in those weeks. That's a period of a lot of instability," said political analyst Ana Iparraguirre of GBAO Strategies.

Saldias said people may panic believing dollarization is imminent, sparking a run on the peso.

Economy Minister Sergio Massa, whom Milei beat in Sunday's polls, may also implement a long overdue devaluation of the peso, making Milei "pay the political price."

"You'll probably see inflation ramp up very quickly," said Saldias, warning of possible hyperinflation.

- Will Milei take a chainsaw to state spending? -

Milei often appeared on stage at rallies with a chainsaw, vowing to slash public spending by 15 percent, privatize state companies and reduce subsidies on fuel, transport and electricity.

Such belt tightening has long been demanded by the IMF, which has bailed out Argentina 22 times, most recently with a loan of $44 billion dollars in 2018.

But Milei will face the same challenges as predecessors who have tried to get out of a vicious cycle of budget deficits, debt, money printing and inflation.

Untangling the country's economy is tricky. Removing subsidies or slashing welfare payouts would only further worsen poverty, and floating the currency would make imports much more expensive.

"At this point everything you fix worsens a second problem," Gedan said.

"The pain will be acute and spread widely if there is a serious stabilization program and it's not clear that Argentines will see the upside."

There is also the danger of protests and social unrest, especially given that almost half the country did not want Milei in power.

- Is there any good news? -

Gedan said that if Milei and his allies in the opposition do manage to curtail spending and reduce welfare and subsidies while protecting the most vulnerable, "this could be a turning point for the good."

There are other positives on the horizon.

After Argentina's worst drought in a century, which saw agricultural exports plummet in the past two years leading to a $20 billion shortfall in revenue, the country is expecting a bumper harvest in 2024.

Milei will also benefit from an estimated $10 billion in annual savings in energy imports as a new gas pipeline ramps up production from southern Vaca Muerta -- a massive oil and gas reserve -- estimates economist Elizabeth Bacigalupo of the Abeceb firm.


Argentina’s Crossroads Election Reminds Us to Never Underestimate the Far Right

Argentina goes to the polls today to decide between the centrist candidate Sergio Massa and far-right libertarian Javier Milei. The stakes could not be higher.


The far-right Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei threatens to take a chainsaw to the state budget during a rally on September 25, 2023, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
(Tomas Cuesta / Getty Images)

BYMARTÍN MOSQUERA
11.19.2023
JACOBIN

Argentines and the world were shocked when far-right libertarian Javier Milei swept the August 13 primary elections, seemingly guaranteeing victory in the general election taking place on Sunday, October 22. However, in a further twist, the candidate for the governing Peronist coalition, Sergio Massa, ended up squeaking out a narrow victory over Milei, setting up a nail-biter runoff election on Sunday, November 19.

Massa’s win in the general election may have tempered some of the more pessimistic forecasts of a far-right takeover in Argentina; however, the fact remains that a free-market paleolibertarian is still a narrow favorite in most polling. There needs to be, in other words, a more honest reflection on the rise of the far right in a society long regarded as inoculated against just this kind of reactionary turn.

Historically, the Argentine far right has been excluded from the halls of power. Until months ago, Milei’s Avanza Libertad (Freedom Advances) was a virtually nonexistent political force with no party structure, provincial candidates, senators, or governors. Pointedly, Argentina’s electoral system was designed to prevent the entry of just these kinds of outsider forces.

Thus, the Argentine political class underestimated the tectonic shifts taking place in society and failed to track their political repercussions. Understanding the eruption of a vigorous far right amid Argentina’s social democratic consensus requires going below the surface.

Upon deeper inspection, Milei’s ascent is clearly related to what is truly the bellwether event of this political juncture: the once-in-a-lifetime crisis of Peronism, the big-tent, populist formation around which the Argentine political system has been orbiting since 1945.

Some will argue that Peronism was resuscitated with Massa’s victory; others will claim that only a candidate as bizarre as Milei — whose mental health has come into question in recent weeks — could give the wildly unpopular minister of economy a fighting chance, thus undercutting the idea of a far-right threat. The truth, however, is that both phenomena — Peronist collapse and the rise of the far right — are very real and deeply interrelated.
An Earthquake Hits Peronism

The Peronists are unlike any other political party. Peronism’s presence in all spheres and levels of social life, its proximity to state structures, its on-the-ground influence through party militants and patronage networks, and its close link with labor and social movements make it a political force whose resiliency invites few modern-day comparisons.

Between 1946 and 1983, Peronism never lost a competitive election (it was, however, banned for decades). In presidential elections, its electoral floor always hovered around 40 percent of the vote. Peronism’s worst result was in 2015, when it reached 38 percent — and that was because a competing Peronist candidate won 14 percent.

By contrast, on August 13, Peronism went to the polls completely unified and saw its vote share reduced to 27 percent. Now, for the first time, Peronism is on the verge of losing its majority in the Senate and is ceding control of governorships in provinces historically considered Peronist strongholds (Santa Cruz, San Juan, and Chaco are notable examples).The Peronists are unlike any other political party.

Since the restoration of democratic rule, Argentina has been rocked by several major capitalist crises (in 1989, 2001, and 2019). Each time, Peronism emerged as the “party of order,” the one force capable of providing the social ballast to keep the state from collapsing and restore governability. In that same sense, the current crisis of Peronism is very much a crisis of the Argentine state itself.

However, the tremors of the current political earthquake have been felt beyond the Peronist camp. Amid massive discontent with the incumbent Peronist government, the traditional right wing had until recently considered itself the heir apparent to the Casa Rosada. Now, with the appearance of Milei, the conservative coalition Juntos for el Cambio (Together for Change) is staring down the possibility of its own collapse.

Patricia Bullrich emerged as the winner of the Juntos primary. Were it not for the appearance of Milei, it would have been Bullrich — the most openly reactionary Juntos candidate — who would have attracted all the attention: for the first time since Argentina’s democratic restoration, a mainstream party was putting forward an openly ultra-right-wing candidate to compete in the general election.

Nevertheless, Juntos por el Cambio has experienced an electoral setback even worse than in 2019, when former president and Juntos leader Mauricio Macri was roundly denied a second term. The traditional Argentine right wing, once confident of returning to power, is now closer to extinction after losing the general election to Milei by a substantial margin.
The Economy and Its Discontents

As the Argentine economy continues to stagnate and inflation hovers at around 140 percent, the rise of the extreme right raises the possibility of the kind of neoliberal shock therapy that the social opposition has kept at bay. What is at stake, in the figure of Milei, is an attempt to smash the resistance that has kept Argentina from backsliding into the austerity politics of earlier decades; in other words, Argentina is facing what Antonio Gramsci called “an organic crisis” of the state, in which a political and social stalemate is overcome by economic and extra-economic force.

One explanation of the Argentine situation stands above all others: the long stagnation of Argentine capitalism beginning in 2011, which saw a recession become an open crisis in 2018. Through inflation, the purchasing power of wages in Argentina experienced a 25 percent decrease between December 2017 and 2023 — a reduction that was even more dramatic for informal workers. Although the most critical decline was recorded in 2018, during the Macri government, the downward trend continued under Peronism and saw the gap between formal and informal workers widen even further (a difference that became more pronounced with the pandemic).

During that period, Argentina saw a loss of formal private employment and an increase in informal employment. In other words, informal workers saw their purchasing power decline while, at the same time, they comprised a larger share of the overall labor force. This new labor landscape has been especially devastating for Peronism, which has overseen a growing crisis while also hurting its own social base through successive austerity measures. The ongoing deterioration of the working class under the country’s two main political coalitions laid the foundations for growing social unrest that finally turned into a general crisis of legitimacy — in the form of Milei.Peronism has overseen a growing crisis while also hurting its own social base through successive austerity measures.

While devastating, the current economic crisis is anything but unexpected. In fact, it is part of a history of recurring cycles. Argentina’s constant political and economic instability is caused by, among other things, the relative strength of its working class. The strength of organized labor in Argentina has acted as a breakwater against a far-reaching capitalist restructuring that would depress wages and resolve the country’s macroeconomic imbalances.

Argentina’s economic turmoil is also related to the transformations in global production in recent decades. The country’s tendency towards economic and social decline began almost half a century ago with the crisis of the Peronist welfare state. That crisis took place against the backdrop of the internationalization of production and the crisis of postwar national development models.

Since then, Argentine society has experienced historic leaps in poverty and inequality indexes. The country went from a 4 percent poverty rate in the 1970s to 40 percent in recent years, showing a trend of almost uninterrupted social regression with few parallels in the world. Although there would be precipitous drops followed by partial recoveries, at critical junctures the decline in standards of living was answered by massive social upheaval.

The Peronist-affiliated movement of Kirchnerism, named after Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, emerged in 2003 as a political response to the economic crisis and subsequent social uprising of 2001. One of the defining features of the present situation is the dismantling of the very formation that emerged to manage the successive crises of the last two decades. Although the political crisis is most acutely affecting Kirchnerism, it is spreading to the broader umbrella of Peronism, with effects that are only just coming into view.

Critically, for the first time in its history, Peronism is tasked with dealing with the country’s crisis from a position of power. That seemingly minor detail is of inestimable importance: the extreme right cannot thrive unless a rupture between the popular classes and their traditional political representation has already taken place. Out of power and commanding the loyalty of large parts of the working class, Peronism has historically played a stabilizing role in mitigating the country’s recurrent tendency towards crises; the current political crisis within and without Peronism, which sees the populist formation in power but adrift from its base, is opening the door to a political crisis of greater magnitude.
A Popular Right-Wing Ideology

Early interpretations of Milei’s electoral success focused on the idea of a “protest vote”: that voters were rejecting the two establishment parties based on their chronic inability to tame inflation and revert stagnation. This does indeed explain part of the “Milei phenomenon”; a substantial electorate has expressed a “fluid” unrest and found in Milei the most effective instrument to make its discontent known.

However, the protest vote is not enough to explain the “Milei phenomenon.” First, the specific forms in which social unrest expresses itself are never completely innocuous. Milei’s fluctuating and heterogeneous electoral base should not obscure the consolidation of a popular right-wing ideology — an ideology that Milei has strengthened by bringing in social sectors ordinarily beyond the reach of the traditional right (some of them ordinarily the constituency of the Kirchnerist center left).

Moreover, the “liquid state” of Milei’s electorate is being shaped by a political process that is very much in motion, as his rise generates retroactive effects on his base. As Ernesto Laclau used to say, the “representative fulfills an active function” over the represented: political leaders are not just the result of public opinion and social relations but also shape and influence them.

But what does Milei represent? Milei’s rise poses some interesting parallels with the global populist reactionary movement while also revealing some important Argentine differences. Crucially, the windmills that he is tilting at are distinct from those of reactionary nationalists in Europe and abroad.

It’s true, on the one hand, that the incumbent Peronist government maintained the orthodox austerity measures of the previous Macri government, while it’s also the case that President Alberto Fernández adopted a socially progressive approach to issues like the legalization of abortion, the promotion of inclusive language, the implementation of job quotas for trans people, among others. In other words, the governing coalition’s apparent “neoliberal progressivism” could have made it the object of the same kind of nativist ire that has taken hold in Europe.

Peronism’s main difference with European social democracy is ideological: paradoxically, Peronism has embraced austerity in the name of the struggle against austerity. This is what Argentine sociologist Pablo Semán means when he refers to Peronism’s “mimicry of the state”: the incumbent government has branded itself a strong interventionist state, but only as an ideological cover for the progressive stagnation of state benefits, papered over by weak “income redistribution” measures and ineffective campaigns for “social justice.”

Thus, the current right-wing backlash in Argentina has taken a stridently anti-statist tone lacking in figures like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and Giogia Meloni. While the latter were at least verbal critics of neoliberal globalism, Javier Milei is a flamboyant anarcho-capitalist who dreams of the complete elimination of the state. The deterioration of living conditions under a government that sells itself as progressive and redistributive has created a space for anti-statist politics to find a new base, crucially among those who depend significantly on state subsidies.The current right-wing backlash in Argentina has taken a stridently anti-statist tone lacking in figures like Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and Giogia Meloni.

Combining a rhetoric of redistribution with harsh austerity measures has sown confusion among the Argentine working class. On the one hand, it has led them to forget the source of financial orthodoxy in the Macri years. On the other, it is breeding disenchantment with the values themselves — now seen as hollow or corrupt — normally associated with the Argentine social state: progressive income redistribution, the active role of the state in industry, human rights, and social mobilization.

Milei garnered support across all social classes and age groups. Studies indicate that approximately one-third of his voters are avowedly ultraright; another third are classic free-market-oriented voters, while the remaining third come from the popular sector. It is, in other words, undeniable that there is an electoral base for the extreme right; it is equally true that this base remains fluid and unstable.


This fluid and mostly popular constituency has been the source of some misguided optimism. Resigning themselves to an eventual Milei government, many argue that it is a matter of time before Milei starts to hemorrhage that electoral base as he fails to deliver economic stability. But many things — a stabilization plan, the demoralization of the more combative popular sectors, and the political disaffection of the working class — could lead to an opposite situation closer to what happened with Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The former captain lost the 2022 elections in a very close second round but managed to consolidate his own base at the cost of Brazil’s traditional parties.

Worse still, this mindset, which argues that a Milei government will lack political support and crumble under the pressure of popular mobilization, has led certain fractions of the Left to cast a “scratch” or “voto en blanco” in the past. It would be a grave mistake to lodge a protest vote in the current circumstances.
The Bizzaro Right Must Be Taken Seriously

Some of Milei’s more outlandish proposals create a sense of disbelief and even denial: his call to allow the unregulated sale of human organs, to create a market for the buying and selling of minors, to privatize all the country’s streets, etc. Naturally, no one thinks these measures can be implemented. Even his bread-and-butter proposals, like the abandonment of the Argentine peso in favor of the US dollar, are hardly feasible.

But the extravagant proposals paper over another package of measures that are very real. These more closely resemble the policies of ultraliberal finance minister Paulo Guedes in Bolsonaro’s government: fiscal austerity led by the privatization or closure of public companies, the dismissal of state workers, and a large-scale attack on public education and health, among others. Moreover, the extreme right will clearly want to go on the offensive against gender equality and LGTBQ rights (by criminalizing abortion, eliminating sex education, implementing a trans quota, etc.) in a manner similar to Bolsonaro in power.

Such a shock policy will require an authoritarian hardening of state structures: the judicial persecution of social leaders, an endorsement of police violence, unregulated access to and carrying of weapons, the revitalization of the reviled armed forces, an attempt to weaken the influence of trade unions in the workplace and, above all, the fight to undermine the strength of Argentina’s social movements in poorer neighborhoods. In short, if these measures were to be successfully implemented, it would mean a strategic defeat for the working class.

It will also require some durable social base, which, again, some sectors of the Left have put in question. Here, though, it is critical to understand that Milei’s rise is taking place amid an economic crisis that brooks no comparison with those of other countries where the far right came to power. A catastrophic economic crisis can provide the excuse for drastic measures, as history has shown: Argentina’s hyperinflationary spiral of 1989–1991 allowed Carlos Menem to take office with a blank check to restore order by any means necessary. What followed was the fire sale of all the country’s state assets and one of the most savage neoliberal restructurings on historical record. As Perry Anderson once said about such stabilization plans in Latin America, “There is a functional equivalent to the trauma of the military dictatorship, inducing a people through democratic and non-coercive means to accept the most drastic neoliberal policies: hyperinflation.”

The extreme fragility of the Argentine economic situation puts Milei’s rise in a different category from the global wave of ultraright governments. A more fitting parallel would be Peru in the 1980s. There, after a similar decade of stagnation, a hyperinflationary peak arrived in the late 1980s. It was in that context that Alberto Fujimori took office with a marginal political force and with no great social or business support. The economic catastrophe provided him with the legitimacy to apply shock therapy: a stabilization plan, privatization of public companies, and the liberalization of the economy, capped by the closure of Congress. The neoliberal restructuring of Peruvian society and the massive violation of human rights under the Fujimori dictatorship constituted a historic turning point from which the Peruvian working class has still not recovered.The disastrous effects of Milei’s short-term measures could actually be part of an attempt to pave the way for long-term restructuring.

The interlocking dynamics of inflation and authoritarian government have not been given sufficient attention, especially in a country where monthly inflation rates are in the double digits and the net reserves of the central bank are negative. Nor can a large-scale banking crisis be ruled out, especially since Milei seems to be aware of the potential benefits of triggering panic by announcing radical “pro-market” proposals with catastrophic effects in the short term (such as an abrupt end to the country’s system of currency controls, the elimination of export taxes, dollarization, etc.). Milei’s victories have already led to panic in the “markets”: falling bond prices, an increase of the “country risk” status, and the stagnation of stocks. But the disastrous effects of those short-term measures could actually be part of an attempt to pave the way for long-term restructuring.

And the Argentine Left?

For years, Kirchnerism served as the breakwater that kept the Right at bay and maintained the poor in a unified anti-neoliberal bloc. But years of orthodox austerity under Peronism have altered the landscape and confused matters politically. To a certain extent, it is now the Argentine popular classes that are reacting against the austerity of Peronism — albeit in a decidedly confused manner.

The left must do everything it can to keep Milei from coming to power, but it must also prevent the slogan “all against the right” from becoming a disciplinary tactic that ends up justifying the orthodox policies pursued by the traditional political forces. In other words, the Argentine left must prevent the “extreme center” from finding in the extreme right the perfect antagonist that allows it to demobilize radical opposition while holding onto power.

Argentina has witnessed the cohering of a great social movement against the ultraright in the weeks before the election. This could play a fundamental role in changing the outcome of the contest. Indeed, a polarization between a democratic mass movement and the extreme right is key to altering the electoral outcome, particularly because no one is more disempowered than the government itself to sound the alarm “against fascism.” And even if the extreme right were to come to power, it is essential that it do so against a backdrop of broad democratic mobilization, which will be the fulcrum for the social and political battles to come.

Martín Mosquera is editor-in-chief of Revista Jacobin.