The future can wait | profile

While Argentina, in the ever-exaggerated presidential language, will be on the podium of world powers by the middle of this century (forever doomed to success, as Eduardo Duhalde predicted), current data shows that it is in the lower leagues in various aspects of economic and social reality. To claim this is blasphemy from the point of view of a society that, perhaps victim of an inferiority complex, must always feel admired and envied, although this is mostly not registered in the rest of the world, except in individual emergencies (Borges, Messi, Maradona, Pope Bergoglio, etc.), a product of the stories and personal efforts of these aspiring people. So as we wait for the arrival of the heralded Nirvana, the present appears less illusory. According to a report by the Center for Political Economy of Argentina (CEPA), based on data from the Superintendence of Occupational Risks (SRT), between November 2023 and August 2025, more than 19,000 companies disappeared and 276,624 registered jobs were lost (of course, there is no data on unregistered jobs, although their numbers could be significant considering that 60% of the economy is in the black). The tracks of the chainsaw.

This is data from the real economy that influences real people in their daily lives, in their plans, in their life projects. It would be possible to understand whether there is a common thread connecting this character with another that is equally shocking and painful. According to a report by the Ministry of Security’s National Crime Information System (SNIC), 4,249 people committed suicide across the country in 2024 (latest official figures). An unprecedented number. According to the report, it is the leading cause of violent deaths, more than homicides, femicides and traffic accidents. There are those who have more resistance to hopelessness and others who have less resistance. When the MP Marcela Campagnoli (Civic Coalition) presented a project to declare a mental health emergency on May 19, she attached the following data to it. More than 45% of the Argentine population suffers from an emotional or psychological disorder (anxiety disorders, depression or post-traumatic stress), and more than 14 million suffer from mental disorders. It also highlights the increase in drug use and family violence problems. And he quotes a former head of the psychiatric service at Posadas Hospital who explains: “Many patients have to wait months for an appointment with specialists. The situation is becoming untenable and the possible loss of life due to the lack of urgent access is becoming increasingly likely.”

This panorama lies outside the radar of macroeconomics, speculation about the dollar and the peso, the hypnotic fascination with artificial intelligence that is massively destroying jobs for now without creating any significant new ones, it is outside the almost obscene euphoria over trade agreements that promise further destruction of various sectors of the economy, especially the productive, non-speculative ones. It is strange that someone who, like his style, deeply hates John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), the British economist whose theories about the role of the state in stimulating the economy and creating jobs and consumption in the 20th century, ends up (perhaps without realizing it) falling in with the subject of his hatred. While he promises a glorious future in the medium term, a sentence from Keynes can be heard in the background: “In the medium term we will all be dead.” The future is today.

*Author and journalist.