Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id588231623
Faced with the unmistakable data in the report, the usual suspects took one of two tacks: ignore it or, more amusingly, cast about for any explanation that didn’t give credit to governmental policy. According to the Associated Press, “It was unclear what was behind the reduction in poverty,” as if the case were simply too mysterious and inscrutable to be fathomed
✏️ Such a strong distaste at admitting the success of the government’s socialist programs 🔗 View Highlight
id588230711
social programs — including old-age pensions, stay-in-school scholarships, farm supports, and a rural tree-planting program — represent only one factor and not necessarily the most important. Also fueling the drop in poverty are wage increases, fueled by annual 20 percent hikes in the minimum wage that have had spillover effects in certain union contracts, together with a tightening of the nation’s outsourcing laws (liberalized in 2012) that has nudged some three million workers into formal employment and increased the number of people eligible for mandatory profit sharing. The lesson is clear: in the absence of upward pressure on wages and more favorable labor legislation, transfer programs on their own are not enough.
id588231347
Ahead of it now is a road of continuing to increase wages and labor rights while attacking intransigent structural problems such as health care: something that will be virtually impossible without a progressive tax reform, something that has been a third rail for MORENA up to now.
id588231408
In the face of a pandemic, worldwide inflation, and supply chain shocks, Mexico is reducing poverty. The New York Times was wrong; AMLO was right.