The legendary “lie, lie, that something will remain” quote attributed to Nazi spin-doctors only brings public figures into the short-term trap of tomorrow morning papers rather than tomorrow’s history books. Take the case of Argentina and its poverty figures; which were published this week by the Indec statistics bureau after three years in the dark. The administration of former President Cristina Kirchner knew that it was lying about the poverty figures, and decided to just believe its own lie. Faced with a bad economy and a political defeat in 2009, the Kirchner government sought a creative (and cash-happy) solution to its political weakness and launched the AUH child benefit program, which improved poverty numbers by hiking the monthly income of underprivileged families, which also boosting the government’s political standing, which ultimately resulted in a landslide reelection victory two years later. The new Indec poverty figures subtly modified the way the basic food basket is calculated – which is in itself good but skews the comparison through time.

Source: Bueno Aires Herald October 01, 2016 03:11 UTC