The austerity tale that left Latin America adrift

Since the 1980s, a gang of expensively suited economists has sold us the story that the state must "tighten its belt." We were told that if we cut health budgets, privatized education and stopped taxing large companies, wealth would trickle down abundantly onto us... What a great lie!

Today, in 2026, the data are overwhelming: austerity policy served only to transfer money from wage earners to tax havens.

Over the past ten years, while real wages stagnated, the fortunes of the ultra-rich grew by 115%. When a state abandons controls, the "free market" does not come in to solve our lives; monopolies come in to charge us three times as much for products and services of terrible quality.

Austerity is not fiscal prudence; it is class struggle from the top down (crushing those at the bottom, of course).

It is time to stop idolizing a zero national deficit when it affects the lives of the majority.