Milei's Chainsaw Infuriates Voters He Needs to Salvage His Presidency

[Zorro]

Spending cuts hit the middle class hard, leaving the libertarian at risk of becoming a lame duck after this weekend’s crucial midterm election.

Angel Santos is, by his own description, “bitter.”

Bitter that every time he walks into a Buenos Aires grocery store he feels poorer than the last; bitter that at age 67, he’s had to squeeze in odd jobs to supplement his pay as a doorman; bitter that this means working 14 hours a day, five days a week; bitter that his mother and uncle had their pensions capped while inflation raged; and bitter, as a result of all of these things, that he ever fell for President Javier Milei and his zany chainsaw-economics pitch.

The mere mention of the chainsaw now sets Santos off. As he had heard Milei tell it again and again back in 2023, that saw he brandished so theatrically at campaign stops would be wielded against the “casta” — the establishment — to rightsize government bureaucracy, stabilize Argentina’s battered finances and jump-start the economy. “But in the end,” Santos says, “it was used on those who are in need of help the most.”

On the eve of midterm elections that threaten to derail Milei’s radical free-market experiment and plunge the nation back into crisis once again, this is his biggest problem. All across the country, from downtown Buenos Aires to the rolling forests that form its remote northeastern edge, Argentines are growing weary of the sacrifices Milei is asking of them.

Yes, he’s brought inflation down rapidly, as promised, from a peak of almost 300%, but no, many of them will tell you, they do not feel better off as a result. Their wage increases have shriveled up, too — Santos, for example, now just gets a 1% bump a month — and so their purchasing power remains depressed. Besides, the economic boom that Milei said his libertarian policies would unleash has failed to materialize. Investment, from both foreign and local companies, is barely trickling in, and the jobless rate remains stuck over 7%, far higher than when Milei took office.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-24/argentina-midterm-election-milei-spending-cuts-anger-middle-class-voters?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2MTM2OTIzMSwiZXhwIjoxNzYxOTc0MDMxLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUNE41TzdHUTdMRUcwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNjgyQTUwQzJCRDM0MTFCQTgwQjEwQjZEQjczQzM1MSJ9.Rqq2GhGCeN_4Y3QaW5RNdbtqcoXkh228MmbYXW93rRA