Argentina's spending-slashing new President Javier Milei has hailed his country's first quarterly budget surplus since 2008 as an "historic achievement."This amounted to a surplus of 0.2 percent of GDP.
"This is the first quarter with a financial surplus since 2008," said Milei, referring to his left-wing rival Cristina Kirchner's first year in the presidency.
Sucking money out of households.
This kind of surplus isn't sustainable, it'll reduce future tax income because of the economy shrinking. So the only way to force a future surplus is with even more austerity.
And spending can only be cut so much before people revolt.
That's intentional, and seen by Milei as a good thing, just as it was for the libs of 90s Eastern Europe... and Thatcher and the like. Make the state dysfunctional to encourage the market to do it instead. It increases the profit rate for a few years (assuming people who rebel are beaten down, often literally) before market mechanisms mean the need to repeat the process.
The cruelty is the point, as is said here a lot. I predict a lot more Mileis coming to the west unless the proletariat finds itself wanting to act against the bourgeois state, capital, wage labor, etc. once again, instead of finding less unpleasant forms of capitalism.
This is basically how publicly traded companies get their return on capital and earnings per share up.