Why does the middle class bother so much?

If we are all middle class, no one is. Sociology already identified this problem of self-perception a while ago: the rich believe that they are simply middle class, and impoverished workers feel middle class because perhaps they live in the house that their parents could have left them, even though their income would never have allowed them to sleep. of one’s own home, or for having a flip cell phone despite paying the minimum on the credit card.

Thus, in the country of I don’t remember, we are a little lost about belonging to social class. There is a confusion that lies in differentiating stock flows, that is, although by income (flow) one can have one or another class membership, by wealth (stock) one can have another. And normally stock also gives social circle, relationships and the famous social capital that Bourdieu talked about. But the confusion is also very consistent with the climate of the time: for libertarians, classes do not exist, they are only individualities.

But that middle class, which Svampa characterizes as a class that tries to behave like an upper class and votes against its interests, identifies education and cultural consumption as its ladder of social advancement. And that access is put in check today by Javier Milei’s adjustment policies.

In September, A couple with two children in the City of Buenos Aires and having their own house had to raise $993,854 to avoid being poor, while in September 2023 that amount was $322,275, that is, the poverty line tripled. And the salaries? Well, thank you, they are still there (or recovering very little by little) to guarantee the anti-inflationary anchor and reduction of exchange rate risk that the President needs.

Let’s go back to the middle class. That same GCBA report indicates that to consider yourself middle class in the City if you are a couple and have children and also your own home (no small detail), you need to earn between $1,548,416 and $4,954,931 per month. I insist, If you and your partner earn $1,500,000 and pay rent, you belong to a medium-fragile sector or are not vulnerable poor. This implies that it is very simple that with a small variation in the exchange rate, an increase in rates, or that you have to face an extraordinary expense, then you will fall into poverty.

What did we do wrong to fall out of the middle class? Nothing. Or yes, provide the highway to Milei for this government. The Argentine middle class or the “middle class” as Jauretche would say, swollen thanks to the years of incorporation of workers into State policies starting with the first Peronism and then with Kirchnerism, deny their origin and lose political perspective by blending in with the dominant culture of the upper classes. But today, their pockets are not enough to buy the famous AL30, to take advantage of the fall in country risk to buy CEDEARS, who do not enjoy the fall in the prices of imported final goods because they use the credit card to go to the supermarket or pay the ABL, today, that middle class is fragmenting, once again, just as it happened in the 90s.

That middle class may not yet feel interpreted by Peronism, but it despises Milei’s ways, the inability to support the INCAA, and is outraged that Mirtha Legarnd herself is its representative of basic values ​​of coexistence in Argentina. Because it is also that social group that takes advantage of social works financed by work and unions, culture in the streets, in theaters, in museums. He is also the one who uses the subway, the train, the bus. She suffers from insecurity, she is worried about power outages, and she receives utility bills that have little to do with her income. Today the middle class, which perhaps had forgotten its intrinsically hard-working nature, finds itself up against a rock and a hard place in Milei’s game.

The reality is that Javier Milei, Caputo and Sturzenegger do not need the middle class to validate their social and political support. The Argentine troika has other “neo-facist” mechanisms of domination, and knows that the middle class is the one that thinks, questions and defends democratic interests.. That middle class bothers Javier Milei’s political project, because it also wants to eat from the billionaires’ cake.

Today that class that was middle may still be in a state of shock, unfocused, tired, exhausted, discouraged.. But we only have to look at the kids from the universities and high schools who defend our houses of study, to know that the only way out is to build the alliance again with those who have been historically excluded and violated but who are the soul of our country. . It is 99% of the country against the 1% that Milei’s troika represents.

Economist