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POPS“A History lesson….Cry for Me, Argentina” 12.9.2009
Among Irigoyen’s changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance, and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy. Simply put, the state assumed economic control of a vast swath of the country’s operations and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts. With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government’s payouts soon became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers’ contributions. Put simply, it quickly became under-funded, much like the United States Social Security and Medicare programs. The death knell for the Argentine economy, however,came with the election of Juan Perón. Perón had a fascist and corporatist upbringing ; he and his charismatic wife aimed their populist rhetoric at the nation’s rich. This targeted group “swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes, who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated.”