“All the same, all screwed” seems to be the motto that guides President López’s public policy and economic policy decisions. Almost four years have passed since the arbitrary and illegal cancellation of the airport in Texcoco in October 2018 and what we observe is that practically all the decisions it has made have inhibited investment (in May 2022 it had the same level as in November 2013) and, consequently, economic growth.
As a candidate, he promised that during his government the economy would grow at an average annual rate of 4% and that in the end it would be growing at 6 percent. The reality, the one he doesn’t like to see, is that so far during his administration, the economy has contracted; As of the second quarter of this year, the GDP was 1.7% lower than that of the fourth quarter of 2018 and has a level similar to that of the fourth quarter of 2017. With the growth expected for this year of 1.8%, the level will not yet have been recovered. that he had when he became president. Furthermore, if the growth expectations for the next two years are fulfilled, the average annual growth for the entire six-year term would be 0.2%, with an accumulated fall of around 5% of GDP per inhabitant.
In order to try to hide the economic failure that the government of President López has been and will be, it is that during the fourth government report he asserted: “The technocratic decision to measure everything in relation to growth meters that do not necessarily represent the realities has been discarded. social”. And later he stated: “The ultimate goal of a State is to create the conditions for people to live happily. Economic growth, and increases in competitiveness and productivity, do not make sense as objectives in themselves, but as means to achieve a higher purpose, the general well-being of the population and even more precisely, the material well-being and well-being of the population. soul”.
Apparently, because he has repeated it several times, the most important thing for him and it would be the purpose that guides him, even more so in the face of economic failure, is to increase (maximize?) the “well-being of the soul” (whatever that could mean) downplaying the material goods that people need to meet their needs. With this purpose it is that he has undertaken a quasi-religious – moralizing crusade against wealth while extolling, simultaneously, the virtues of poverty thinking, perhaps, of the Gospel according to Luke: “Blessed are you poor because yours is the kingdom of God” or in the assertion of Jesus as recounted in the Gospel according to Matthew: “And again I tell you that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. Perhaps this is what is behind him, when in one of his many diatribes against “neoliberalism” he stated: “If we already have shoes, what else is there for?” and he quoted Salvador Díaz Mirón: “No one has the right to what is superfluous while someone lacks what is strict.”
Superfluous and strict: vague and obviously relative concepts. We know that needs are unlimited and that not all of them can be met because resources are scarce; This obviously does not exclude that individuals would rationally want to have more and more resources, aspire to be richer, because this would allow them to satisfy more needs, more intensely and with higher quality goods. When is it considered that what one has and the needs that are satisfied are superfluous? Two pairs of shoes? Dozens of guayaberas like the ones the president owns?
If, on the other hand, someone wishes to live as an ascetic, satisfying only the needs considered to be the most basic, the minimum minimorum, that’s it, but this is not representative of what practically all individuals want and aspire to, much less still, it can be the objective of public policy.
A Head of State is elected basically to provide the main public good: to guarantee the safety of people and their property so that, in a framework of equal opportunities and in the full exercise of their freedom, everyone seeks their prosperity and your happiness. A head of state is not elected to save the soul or to make us poor; Tragically for Mexicans, this is what the president has been doing.
Twitter: @econoclasta
