Early Benchmarks Show ‘Post-Millennials’ on Track to Be Most Diverse, Best-Educated Generation Yet

A demographic portrait of today’s 6- to 21-year-olds



As a new generation of Americans begins to take shape and move toward adulthood, there is mounting interest in their attitudes, behaviors and lifestyle. But how will this generation change the demographic fabric of the United States? A new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data finds that the “post-Millennial” generation is already the most racially and ethnically diverse generation, as a bare majority of 6- to 21-year-olds (52%) are non-Hispanic whites. And while most are still pursuing their K-12 education, the oldest post-Millennials are enrolling in college at a significantly higher rate than Millennials were at a comparable age.

The parents of post-Millennials are more well educated than the parents of Millennials and those of previous generations, and this pattern most likely contributes to the relative affluence of the households in which post-Millennials live. More than four-in-ten post-Millennials (43%) are living with at least one parent who has a bachelor’s degree or more education. Roughly a third (32%) of Millennials in 2002 had a parent with this level of education.

The high school dropout rate for the oldest post-Millennials (ages 18 to 20 in 2017) is significantly lower than that of similarly aged Millennials in 2002. And among those who were no longer in high school in 2017, 59% were enrolled in college – higher than the enrollment rate for 18- to 20-year-old Millennials in 2002 (53%) and Gen Xers in 1986 (44%).

The changing patterns in educational attainment are driven in part by the shifting origins of young Hispanics. Post-Millennial Hispanics are less likely than Millennial Hispanics to be immigrants – 12% of post-Millennial Hispanics were born outside the U.S., compared with 24% of Millennial Hispanics in 2002. Previous research has shown that second-generation Hispanic youth tend to go further in school than foreign-born Hispanic youth. That is borne out in this analysis, as 61% of second-generation Hispanics ages 18 to 20 who were no longer in high school were enrolled in college in 2017, compared with 40% of their foreign-born counterparts. Overall, the share of post-Millennial Hispanics enrolled in college is significantly higher than the rate for Millennials in 2002 (55% vs. 34%, among 18- to 20-year-olds no longer in high school).1

More broadly, the post-Millennial generation is being shaped by changing immigration patterns. Immigration flows into the U.S. peaked in 2005, when the leading edge of the post-Millennial generation was age 8 or younger. The onset of the Great Recession and the large decline in employment led to fewer immigrants coming to the United States, including immigrant children. As a result, the post-Millennial generation has fewer foreign-born youth among its ranks than the Millennial generation did in 2002 and a significantly higher number who were born in the U.S. to immigrant parents, though this may change depending on future immigration flows.

The generation labeled “post-Millennials” in this report – referred to elsewhere as Generation Z, the iGen or Homelanders – includes those born after 1996. Pew Research Center uses the label “post-Millennials” as a placeholder until more consensus emerges as to their name.

For purposes of this analysis, the post-Millennial generation spans 16 years, the same number of years as the Millennial generation (now ages 22 to 37). That may change as well, as this new generation – and the factors that shape it – come into sharper focus.

This report compares the post-Millennials in 2018 with earlier generations when they were ages 6 to 21, examining their demographic characteristics as well as those of their parents and households.

Other key findings:
The oldest post-Millennials are less likely than their predecessors to be in the labor force. Only 58% of today’s 18- to 21-year-olds worked in the prior calendar year; this compares with 72% of Millennial 18- to 21-year-olds in 2002. And employment among post-Millennials is less likely to be full-time compared with earlier generations. This is likely due, in large part, to the fact that these young adults are more likely than their predecessors to be enrolled in college.
The living arrangements of post-Millennial children are similar to those of Millennials when they were growing up. About two-thirds (65%) of today’s 6- to 17-year-olds live with two married parents, slightly lower than the share (68%) of Millennials in that age range who lived in this type of household in 2002. Roughly three-in-ten post-Millennials ages 6 to 17 (31%) live with a single parent, somewhat higher than the share of Millennials growing up with a single parent in 2002 (27%).2
The median household income of post-Millennials exceeds that of earlier generations when they were young. The typical post-Millennial in 2018 lives in a household with an annual income of roughly $63,700 after adjusting for household size. That is slightly higher than the income for the typical household in which Millennials grew up – $62,400 in 2002 in inflation-adjusted dollars – and it far surpasses the income of Gen X and Baby Boomer households when they were growing up. This is consistent with the relatively high education of the parents of post-Millennials.

Post-Millennials more metropolitan and racially and ethnically diverse, less likely to be foreign born

A bare majority (52%) of post-Millennials are non-Hispanic white. One-in-four are Hispanic, significantly higher than the share of Millennials who were Hispanic in 2002. The share of post-Millennials who are black (14%) is nearly identical to the share of Millennials who were black at a comparable age (15%). Black representation among the nation’s youth has changed little since the early Boomers in 1968.

Asians account for 6% of the post-Millennial generation, up slightly from the 4% of Millennials in 2002 who were Asian. The remaining 4% of post-Millennials are non-Hispanics of another racial identity, mainly youth of two or more races.

Though post-Millennials are more likely to be Hispanic and Asian compared with prior generations, they are not more likely, at this point, to be immigrants. Some 7% of post-Millennials are foreign born, as were 8% of Millennials in 2002. However, post-Millennials are more likely to be U.S. born of at least one foreign-born parent (22%) compared with Millennials in 2002 (15%).3

In terms of sheer numbers, the Millennial generation was shaped to a much larger extent by young immigrants than the post-Millennials have been. When Millennials were ages 6 to 21 in 2002, they numbered 65.3 million.4 Their ranks that year included 5.0 million immigrants. By contrast, only about 4.4 million of the 66.5 million post-Millennials are immigrants – a pattern that more closely mirrors the experience of Gen X.

Even with the diminished flow of immigrants into the U.S., the racial and ethnic diversity of the post-Millennial generation is expected to increase in future years as new immigrants join their numbers. Today’s 6- to 21-year-olds are projected to become majority nonwhite in 2026 (when they will be ages 14 to 29), according to Census Bureau projections.
Majority of post-Millennials are nonwhite in urban areas and Western states

The geography and mobility of post-Millennials differ from earlier generations. Reflecting broader national trends, post-Millennials overwhelmingly reside in metropolitan as opposed to rural areas. Only 13% of post-Millennials are in rural areas, compared with 18% of Millennials in 2002. By comparison, 23% of Gen Xers lived in rural areas when they were ages 6 to 21, as did 36% of early Boomers.

In the nation’s urban areas and in the Western region of the U.S., post-Millennials are at the leading edge of growing racial and ethnic diversity. Two-thirds of post-Millennials living in urban counties are racial or ethnic minorities, with a plurality (36%) being Hispanic. Among Millennials, 59% who live in cities are racial or ethnic minorities. In rural (non-metropolitan) counties, only 29% of 6- to 21-year-olds are nonwhite – still somewhat higher than the share of rural Millennials who are nonwhite (27%). Minorities constitute 43% of suburban post-Millennials. Among those living in suburban counties, 39% of Millennials, 34% of Gen Xers and 23% of Boomers are nonwhite.5

In the West, post-Millennials are just as likely to be Hispanic as non-Hispanic white (both 40%). This stands in contrast to older generations. Among those residing in the West, 45% of Millennials, 50% of Gen Xers and 64% of Boomers are non-Hispanic white. Minority representation among post-Millennials is lowest in the Midwest, where roughly a third (32%) of 6- to 21-year-olds are racial or ethnic minorities.

When it comes to geographic mobility, Americans are not moving as they once did, and post-Millennials are no exception. About 11% of post-Millennials in 2018 had a different address from a year earlier, implying that they had moved. By comparison, 17% of Millennials and 20% of Gen Xers and early Boomers had moved in the past year when they were the ages post-Millennials are today.
Post-Millennials more likely to be pursuing college and less likely to be in the workforce

While it’s still much too early to draw conclusions, initial signs suggest that post-Millennials are on track to become the most well-educated generation yet.

As of 2017 (the most recent year available with school enrollment information) 80% of post-Millennial 18- to 20-year-olds had finished high school.6 That represents a modest improvement from previous generations. At the same ages, 76% of Millennials and 78% of Gen Xers had completed high school. Some of the overall post-Millennial improvement stems from the leap in high school completion among Hispanic youth. In 2017, 76% of Hispanic 18- to 20-year-olds had finished high school, outpacing the 60% of Hispanic Millennials attaining this benchmark in 2002. Black high school completion has also improved: 77% of black post-Millennials ages 18 to 20 had finished high school, compared with 71% of black Millennials in this age group in 2002.

Since white post-Millennial high school attainment is no higher than among white Millennials, some of the long-standing racial and ethnic gaps in high school completion are narrower among the post-Millennials than was the case for prior generations.

The share of post-Millennials who have dropped out of high school is significantly lower than it was for Millennials. In 2017, 6% of 18- to 20-year-old post-Millennials had neither finished high school nor were enrolled in high school. By comparison, 12% of Millennial 18- to 20-year-olds had dropped out of high school in 2002, as had 13% of Gen Xers in 1986.

One indicator suggests that younger post-Millennials are behind where Millennials were in terms of their progress in K-12 education. In 2017, 30% of post-Millennials ages 6 to 17 were enrolled below the “modal grade,” which is the typical grade a child is enrolled in given his or her age. By comparison, a quarter of Millennials and Gen Xers were enrolled below the modal grade in 2002 and 1986, respectively. This indicator is of value because it can foreshadow subsequent dropping out of school, particularly if the student is behind in school due to grade retention. It’s unclear from this data whether students are behind grade-wise due to being held back in school or whether their parents elected to have them begin kindergarten at an older age.

Beyond K-12 education, post-Millennials are more likely than earlier generations to be pursuing college. In 2017, 59% of 18- to 20-year-olds who were no longer in high school were enrolled in college. Among Millennials and Gen Xers at similar ages smaller shares were pursuing college (53% and 44%, respectively).

Some of the post-Millennial gain stems from Hispanic youth. More than half (55%) of Hispanic 18- to 20-year-olds who were no longer in high school were enrolled in college last year. Less than half of their Millennial (34%) and Gen X (28%) peers were pursuing college at a similar age.

Black post-Millennials are also outpacing the previous generations of black youth in terms of college enrollment. Among blacks ages 18 to 20 who were no longer in high school, 54% were enrolled in college in 2017, compared with 47% of black Millennials in 2002 and 34% of Gen Xers in 1986.

Post-Millennial women are showing major strides in college enrollment. In 2017, 64% of women ages 18 to 20 who were no longer in high school were enrolled in college. That’s up from 57% of similarly aged Millennials in 2002 and up substantially from 43% of Gen Xers in 1986. The trend, while more modest, has been upward among men as well.

It’s important to point out that future immigration patterns may affect the educational outcomes of post-Millennials, so these generational comparisons represent a current snapshot.
Post-Millennials are slower to enter the labor force

Post-Millennials are entering adulthood with less experience in the labor market than prior generations. Roughly one-in-five 15- to 17-year-olds in 2018 (19%) report having worked at all during the prior calendar year, compared with 30% of Millennial 15- to 17-year-olds in 2002. Almost half of early Baby Boomers (48%) in the same age group worked in 1968. Among 18- to 21-year-olds today, 58% were employed during the prior calendar year. At the same age prior generations were much more likely to have been employed. Among Millennial 18- to 21-year-olds in 2002, 72% reported working in the prior year. Among Boomer 18- to 21-year-olds in 1968, 80% worked in the prior calendar year.

Post-Millennial workers are less likely to work full-time compared with prior generations. In 2018, only 15% of 15- to 17-year-old workers worked full-time, down sharply from the 26% of 15- to 17-year-old workers in 1968 who worked full-time. The pattern is similar among 18- to 21-year-olds.

Over the decades the earnings of American workers have increased modestly, and teens and young adults are no exception. If they worked full-time in 2017, a 15- to 17-year-old typically earned about $5,000 (the median). Adjusting for inflation, a similar early Millennial earned slightly less, $4,200. The median earnings for a full-time 18- to 21-year-old today is $19,000, somewhat higher than the median pay of a similarly aged full-time Millennial worker in 2002 ($16,700).

A common indicator of “at-risk” behavior in the transition to adulthood is the share of youth who are neither enrolled in school nor working. Youth who are detached from school and the workplace may not be acquiring valuable learning experiences and networking opportunities. Post-Millennials are less likely to be detached than earlier generations. The shift has been more significant among young women. Only 9% of 16- to 21-year-old post-Millennial women are detached in 2018. About 12% of Millennial women and 16% of Gen X women were neither in school nor working at a comparable age. Post-Millennial women who are detached are far less likely to be married than detached Gen X women were at a similar age (12% vs. 37%).

Post-Millennial women are more likely to be engaged in school and work than earlier generations in part because they have fewer parenting responsibilities. Teen births have been falling, even recently, and post-Millennial women are more likely to be childless than earlier generations. In 2016, 88% of women ages 18 to 21 were childless, compared with 79% of Millennials and 80% of Gen Xers at a similar age.
Post-Millennials’ family lives are similar to those of Millennials when they were young

Steady gains in college completion among U.S. adults are reflected in the households of post-Millennials. Fully 43% of post-Millennials ages 6 to 17 have at least one parent with a bachelor’s degree or more education. This compares with 32% among similarly aged Millennials in 2002, 23% among Gen Xers in 1986 and only 16% among early Boomers in 1968.

Roughly two-thirds (65%) of post-Millennials ages 6 to 17 live in a household with two married parents; fully 31% live with a single parent.7 The share of 6- to 17-year-olds living with two married parents is down slightly from the share of Millennials who were growing up with two married parents in 2002 (68%). Gen Xers were even more likely to live with two married parents – 73% did so in 1986. And for the early Boomers, this type of arrangement was very much the norm: 85% of early Boomers ages 6 to 17 were living with two married parents in 1968.

Of those children and teens who are living with two married parents, most live in dual-earner households. Slightly fewer post-Millennials have two working parents compared with Millennials in 2002 (63% vs. 66%). In 1986, 59% of Gen X youth (ages 6 to 17) with married parents had both parents in the labor force, up substantially from 37% among similarly aged Boomers in 1968.

Post-Millennials have the same number of siblings living with them as Millennials did at a similar age – 1.5, on average. This is down substantially from what the early Boomers experienced in their youth. Among those ages 6 to 17 in 1968, the average number of siblings was 2.6. By the time the Gen Xers came along, that number had fallen to 1.6 (in 1986).

Older post-Millennials appear to be postponing marriage even more than Millennials were at a similar age. Among those ages 18 to 21, only 4% of post-Millennials are married. Millennials in 2002 were nearly twice as likely to be married (7%), and the rate was higher still among Gen Xers in 1986 (12%). In 1968, 26% of early Boomers ages 18 to 21 were married.

Some measures of economic well-being indicate that post-Millennials are growing up in more affluent circumstances than previous generations did. The median or typical household income of 6- to 21-year-olds is $63,700. After adjusting for inflation the typical Millennial grew up in a household with a slightly lower income level ($62,400). The typical household income resources of Gen Xers ($52,800) and early Boomers ($42,000) growing up were significantly below these levels.8 By the official poverty measure, 17% of post-Millennials live in families that are below the poverty line.9 This may exceed the share of Millennials in poverty in 2002 (16%) but is below the share of Gen Xers in 1986 (19%).

Because the most recent available data on educational attainment come from October 2017, the analysis of high school completion and college enrollment is based on post-Millennials who were ages 18 to 20 in 2017. ↩
The typical 17-year-old is enrolled in 12th grade and most reside in the parental home. Some young adults ages 18 and older live in a household that does not include their parents, and thus marital status of their parent or parents is not available. ↩
The Current Population Survey did not begin to collect information on place of birth on a consistent basis until 1994. ↩
This is based on the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, which covers the civilian, non-institutionalized population. ↩
Comparisons between generations in the regional analysis are based off U.S. Census Bureau vintage 2017 county population estimates and all generations are as of 2017. Historical comparisons of each generation at similar ages are not possible using this data set. ↩
The school enrollment supplement of the October Current Population Survey is the standard source for historical analyses of school and college enrollment. The school enrollment supplement has been collected since at least 1955. Easily accessible repositories of the data (such as IPUMS and the National Bureau of Economic Research) only have the school enrollment supplement from 1976 on. ↩
Prior to 2007 a second parent in the household can only be identified if he or she is married to the first parent. Children residing with two unmarried parents are classified as single parent families. Step and adoptive parents are included as well as biological parents. ↩
If they have the same income, holding other factors the same, households with fewer members are better off financially than larger households. So, the household income calculations follow a standard practice of adjusting for the size of the household. The Census Bureau revised the income questions in 2014 so the post-Millennial household income and poverty figures are not strictly comparable with earlier generations. ↩
The Census Bureau publishes an alternative poverty measure called the supplemental poverty measure. Among other differences from the official poverty rate, the supplemental measure includes the value of noncash transfer payments (such as food stamps) and adjusts for geographic differences in the cost of housing. The supplemental poverty rate for 6- to 21-year-olds in 2018 is 16%. The supplemental measure is not available before 2010. ↩

The Textile Industry loves Trump's China Trade War

Matt Townsend


While there’s no shortage of doom and gloom coming from corporate America about President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, there is at least one U.S. industry cheering him on: textiles.


After decades of shedding thousands of jobs and closing factories as the U.S. opened up trade with China and other countries, textiles stabilized in recent years. And just as the sector was trying to invigorate growth, along came a presidential candidate pledging to revive American manufacturing.

The industry immediately saw Trump’s election as the best chance in a generation to reorient U.S. trade policy. And so far he hasn’t disappointed. The president withdrew America from negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in his first week on the job. Now he’s enacted tariffs on $36 billion of Chinese-made goods, including some textiles, and wants to push that to $250 billion.

But the industry wants more. Textiles -- like fabrics and yarns -- are the materials used to make everything from clothing to seat belts. And duties on end, or finished, apparel and other goods from China would help domestic manufacturers compete better on price with Chinese companies and generate more orders for U.S.-made textiles, industry leaders say. Trump, however, largely avoided targeting consumer products for fear of upsetting voters who could face higher prices at the mall.

Crediting Trump

“We’ve got to do something to level the playing field with China,” said Michael Woody, chief executive officer of Trans-Tex LLC, a Cranston, Rhode Island-based maker of lanyards and shoelaces. “I give the president credit for trying to make something happen. For a U.S. manufacturer like my company, we want to see tariffs on end products.”

Placing duties on finished items is anathema to U.S. retailers and consumer brands that rely on Chinese goods, including $28 billion worth of apparel last year, to keep prices low for shoppers. They say levies will only increase price tags, and ultimately cost jobs.

The Trump administration largely avoided hitting consumers in the first round with 25 percent duties -- mostly on machinery -- that went into effect July 6. China matched those with retaliatory levies on goods from soybeans to electric cars, like Teslas.

Just four days later, the president responded with a proposal to put 10 percent levies on $200 billion of imports that included end products like handbags, baseball gloves and air conditioners. Also on the list were dog leashes, a smaller part of Trans-Tex’s business that Woody called “good news.”

And while apparel was spared, Trump has threatened putting tariffs on all Chinese imports, which last year totaled half a trillion dollars. That’s raised alarm bells around corporate America. Rick Helfenbein, president of the American Apparel & Footwear Association with members like Gap Inc. and Macy’s Inc., has started calling the proposed duties a “Trump tax.”

Consumers to Pay

“This will not do anything to help American workers, American consumers, or American businesses,” Helfenbein said in a statement after the $200 billion list was announced. “This will result in inflationary costs throughout the supply chain, ultimately paid for by American consumers.”

The textile and apparel manufacturing industries have little sympathy for companies railing against starting a trade war with China. It points to the U.S. opening up trade with China beginning in 2000 and China’s entrance a year later into the World Trade Organization -- thanks to the backing of then-president Bill Clinton -- as ushering in an era of domestic decline that has cost their sectors almost 800,000 jobs.

“To the retailing and importing community, guess what -- this is what President Trump campaigned on,” said Lloyd Wood, director of public affairs for the National Council of Textile Organizations. “They knew this was coming. If you chose to keep all your eggs in the China basket, that’s a risk you are knowingly taking.”

‘Quite Positive’

Since Trump was a candidate, he’s criticized America’s trade deficit with China, which reached a record $375 billion last year. If he’s serious about reducing it, obvious targets would be textiles and the products made from them. In 1999, the U.S. imported $8.5 billion worth of textiles and apparel from China, and only exported about $176 million there. Shoot forward to last year, when the U.S. imported $45 billion of those products from China, and exported less than $1 billion. That’s a trade gap of about $44 billion just for textiles and apparel.

That’s why Trump’s election generated so much optimism in the industry. In January 2017, shortly after Trump was sworn in, Chief Operating Officer Thomas Caudle of Unifi Inc. -- one of the largest U.S. yarn and fabric producers with about $670 million in annual sales -- said it has the “potential to be quite positive for us.” The president’s decision to pull out of the TPP would also save money for the company, located in the heart of what’s left of the U.S. textile industry in Greensboro, North Carolina. Unifi declined to comment for this story.

Shift West?

Since then, Trump’s saber-rattling has turned into a very public dispute with America’s largest trading partner.

It’s one that could shift production to North America and Central America, where free-trade agreements have boosted the prospects of companies like Unifi, according to Christopher McGinnis, an analyst for Sidoti & Co. U.S. textile-makers sell yarns and fabrics to companies like Nike Inc. and Abercrombie & Fitch Co., who then finish making the items in those regions and export them to the U.S. duty free. More protections against Chinese imports could also boost production in America, McGinnis said.

“If you are looking for a green shoot, this could be an industry that could benefit,” McGinnis said. “They’ve been beat up so much by China.”


Woody, the Trans-Tex CEO, has been on the front lines of competing against China for more than three decades, and in 2016 published “American Dragon,” a book based on those experiences. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was a sales executive at a pen maker, Quill Co., which was undercut by cheaper Chinese imports and later acquired by Newell Rubbermaid.

In 2008, Woody joined Trans-Tex, an 85-person company that goes head-to-head with China. It buys polyester material from a plant in North Carolina and uses it to make items such as branded lanyards for trade shows. It’s survived by turning around small orders fast -- about a third of its orders are shipped in 24 hours -- and pitching better quality and fewer hassles because U.S. customers don’t have to deal with overseas shipments.

But on big orders for 100,000 units, or more, that aren’t needed so quickly, Trans-Tex faces Chinese competitors who often quote prices at a third of what it can, Woody says. Even a 10 percent tariff -- like the one the Trump administration proposed last week -- would help the company consider matching the Chinese more, he said.

“It would make a big difference,” Woody said. “China is the issue.”

Papelón en un documento oficial del Ministerio de la Producción

Una ilustración difundida en un documento oficial despertó la indignación de los usuarios de las redes sociales





El Ministerio de Producción se ganó el repudio de los usuarios de las redes sociales luego de que se difundiera, en una presentación oficial, una polémica ilustración que resultó discriminatoria y fue considerada como la manera en que el Gobierno ve el mundo del trabajo.

El documento en que fue incluido el dibujo lleva el título de "Leyes para la Transformación Productiva" y plantea la “estrategia productiva 2019”, con la que se propondría bajar “el costo argentino”, a partir de “reformas estructurales”; y evalúa las etapas de una posible reforma laboral, que hasta ahora Cambiemos impulsa sin suerte en el Congreso.

La condonación de deudas por el incumplimiento de leyes laborales, la reducción de las indemnizaciones y la eliminación de multas que sancionan el trabajo en negro, son algunas de las propuestas del Ministerio de la Producción.

El dibujo cuestionado fue publicado en la página 7 del documento y graficaba que “hay un 20% de contribuyentes que aportan el 99,4% de la recaudación fiscal”.

El primer usuario difundir el dibujo fue el economista Juan Ignacio Balasini, quien subió la imagen a su cuenta.



Siete personas rubias, de traje y con sillas de oficina, sostienen a un numeroso grupo individuos, la mayoría de ellos de piel y pelo oscuros, quienes serían aquellos que no pagan impuestos.

Twitter no perdona. Además de denunciar la discriminación racial, los internautas detallaron que los "rubios" tienen rostro y zapatos de colores, mientras los "morochos" o "mestizos" carecen de expresión en sus rostros, mientras que su calzado es en general de color marrón.

Además, destacaron que la muchedumbre sostenida por los siete rubios representaban mucho más que el 80 por ciento que no paga impuestos.

Algunos usuarios tildaron al dibujo de fascista y buscaron viejas ilustraciones de la Alemania nazi para desmostrarlo. También hicieron comparaciones con una publicidad de la última dictadura militar argentina. Otros lo tomaron con humor, como aquel que destacó que “hay dos mujeres rubias también”.

Crisis: los alimentos que los argentinos dejan de comprar

Efecto inflación: congelados, chocolate y otras categorías que los consumidores dejan de comprar

By Por Natalia Donato
Dentro de la categoría de alimentos, lo que más cayó es la venta de postres, gelatinas y flanes


La crisis económica obligó a los consumidores a ser mucho más estratégicos a la hora de ir al supermercado y evaluar cada compra con mucho detenimiento. Como suelen decir los analistas en consumo masivo, quedó atrás el impulso para que aparezca la "compra inteligente".


Los salarios quedaron muy por debajo de la inflación el año pasado, que trepó al 47%, y eso hizo que el consumo de alimentos y productos de limpieza y cosmética se resintiera fuerte. La contracción, según la consultora que lo mida, osciló entre el 1,5 y el 3 por ciento. Y este escenario que no cambiará durante el primer semestre del año, con alguna expectativa de que en la segunda mitad del año, con las elecciones de por medio, pueda comenzar a cambiar la tendencia.


Lo cierto es que hoy cada vez se profundizan más las tendencias de consumo que ya se vienen reflejando desde el año pasado. Consumidores que relegan primeras marcas para comprar segundas, terceras, o directamente las marcas propias de los supermercados; que migran de canales y comienzan a comprar en comercios chicos, donde pueden controlar más el gasto, o en los mayoristas; que realizan más de 1 o 2 visitas al mes para repartir la compra y ser más prudentes; y que, cada vez más, resignan determinadas categorías o subcategorías para reemplazarlas por productos de otras más económicos.


Por ejemplo, dentro de la categoría de productos de limpieza, los consumidores están abandonando los "productos específicos" para adquirir artículos multiuso. Lo mismo para lavar la ropa. Cae el consumo de suavizantes porque es un bien prescindible.


"Dentro de la categoría de alimentos, lo que más cayó es la venta de postres, gelatinas y flanes, mientras que en el caso de las bebidas, las aguas saborizadas y los jugos concentrados. En limpieza, todo lo que es bien específico. La lavandina, por ejemplo, viene bien porque es multiuso", explicó a Infobae el gerente comercial de Nielsen, Facundo Aragón.Congelados, una categoría “prescindible”, según las consultoras de consumo (iStock)


En el caso de la categoría de golosinas, los chocolates son los que más sufrieron. En tanto que en el rubro de cosmética y tocador, caen más que el promedio productos como quita esmaltes, hojas de afeitar o toallitas húmedas, agregó el ejecutivo.


Lo que sucede también con los productos de limpieza es que creció fuerte la cantidad de comercios de venta a granel. "Hay una explosión de estos comercios a granel porque hay una diferencia de precio importante", precisó el gerente del comportamiento del consumidor de Kantar Worldpanel, Joaquín Oría.

Dentro de la categoría de alimentos, lo que más cayó es la venta de postres, gelatinas y flanes, mientras que en el caso de las bebidas, las aguas saborizadas y los jugos concentrados. En limpieza, todo lo que es bien específico. La lavandina, por ejemplo, viene bien porque es multiuso (Aragón)


Según un reciente informe de la consultora, este canal de venta "todo suelto" es uno de los más beneficiados en el contexto actual, principalmente desde categorías básicas de cuidado de la ropa y del hogar: jabón para ropa, suavizantes, lavandinas, limpiadores y lavavajillas son categorías donde el canal maneja un precio por litro un 50% más bajo con respecto a la media del mercado. Este diferencial le permitió ampliar su base de compradores y –en 2018–, uno de cada 10 hogares que compró artículos de cuidado de la ropa y lavandinas lo hizo vía granel.
Las ofertas para compras por época de fiestas influyeron positivamente en la recuperación de expectativas económicas (Getty)


"Está pasando, y ocurrió en otros momentos de crisis, que las categorías que tienen un sustituto más barato o que no es necesario consumirlas, pierden muchos compradores", consignó Oría. De acuerdo con los resultados del último trimestre del año pasado de la consultora, uno de los rubros que más pierde son los postres refrigerados para chicos, cuya venta se contrajo 29%, mucho más que el promedio de los lácteos, que registró una merma de 4% en el último período del 2018.


El sector de congelados mostró una baja de 11%. Fue la categoría que más se resintió en el cuarto trimestre, seguido de bebidas, con 6% de merma, y lácteos en tercer lugar, con 4%. Dentro de la categoría de alimentos, que cayó 2%, crecen mucho pastas (2,3%), arroz (4%) y polenta (8%), que reemplazan otras categorías mucho más caras. "El concepto es 'dejo de comer hamburguesas que me sale $400 el kilo y me paso a otras categorías más económicas'", aclaró el gerente de Kantar Worldpanel.

Uno de los rubros que más pierde son los postres refrigerados para chicos, cuya venta se contrajo 29%, mucho más que el promedio de los lácteos, que registró una merma de 4% en el último período del 2018


La venta de hamburguesas cayó 24% en el cuarto trimestre. La venta de congelados se resintió mucho porque es una categoría completamente "prescindible". Si antes un consumidor optaba por comprar verduras congeladas para ahorrarse tiempo en la cocina, ahora adquiere la verdura fresca o directamente come otros alimentos más baratos. Lo mismo sucede con el pollo o la carne congelada; es reemplazada por productos frescos.


"Hay una dinámica compleja con todo lo que está sucediendo. Los consumidores migran de primeras marcas a marcas propias o a marcas nacionales, consideradas históricamente B, que con la crisis empiezan a tener otra envergadura porque tienen buena distribución y comunicación y, por sobre todo, mejor precio", afirmó, por su parte, Leonardo Alaniz, director de Scentia. Aragón, en tanto, agregó: "Hoy la gente compra distintas cosas en distintos lugares. Además, si antes iba 2 o 3 veces por mes al supermercado, hoy lo hace 6 o 7. Por otro lado, estiran mucho la compra".

Hay una explosión de estos comercios a granel porque hay una diferencia de precio importante (Oría)


Sobre la resignación de categorías por ser "prescindibles", Alaniz coincidió en que los consumidores optan por productos más baratos en momentos de crisis, pero también afirmó que "categorías que en forma regular se pueden llegar a caer, quizá renacen cuando se producen acciones de promos, por ejemplo".


Según Kantar Worldpanel, un cuarto de las compras realizadas en las cadenas de supermercados son bajo algún tipo de promoción. "Si bien esta acción atrae shoppers, no logran compensar al resto de las compras en hipermercados y supermercados y el saldo total resulta negativo", planteó la consultora.


Estas particularidades que denotan cómo se comporta hoy el consumidor son propias de los momentos de crisis y sólo se revertirán en tanto y en cuanto comience a haber una certidumbre sobre el repunte de la economía y, especialmente, la recuperación del salario. El 2019 arrancó con tasas interanuales muy negativas (superiores al 7%) y las expectativas es que los números del primer semestre persistan con esta tendencia. Lo que implica una profundización de estos cambios de hábito para que la compra sea cada vez más pensada y el bolsillo sufra lo menos posible.

Con Tucumán, ya son 13 las provincias que desdoblan eleccione

Apenas 4 distritos, Catamarca, Salta la Ciudad y la provincia de Buenos Aires, tendrán sus comicios en simultáneo con la Nación


Manzur eligió el domingo 9 de junio para todos los cargos electivos en la provincia





El gobernador de Tucumán, Juan Manzur, firmó hoy un decreto para convocar a elecciones para cargos locales en esa provincia el 9 de junio, con lo cual ahora son 13 los distritos que desdoblarán sus comicios en relación al calendario fijado por el Gobierno nacional, que dispuso realizar el 11 de agosto las Primarias Abiertas Simultáneas y Obligatorias (PASO) y el 27 de octubre, la compulsa general.

Así, de los 24 distritos electorales del país, entre la ciudad de Buenos Aires y las 23 provincias, 16 ya definieron en qué fecha realizarán la elecciones y trece decidieron hacerlos en forma separada del llamado nacional.

Solo Catamarca, la ciudad y la provincia de Buenos Aires confirmaron sus comicios para el 11 de junio y el 27 de octubre, la misma fecha dispuesta por la Nación.

En ese marco, aún resta que definan si desdoblan o unifican con las nacionales los gobiernos de Jujuy, Chaco, Formosa, Tierra del Fuego, Santa Cruz y Salta, en manos de un radical y cinco peronistas, respectivamente.

En tanto, Santiago del Estero y Corrientes, dos provincias que tuvieron intervenciones federales en la última década, no elegirán este año gobernador a raíz del corrimiento de sus calendarios electorales y recién tendrán que hacerlo en 2021.

En el caso de Tucumán, ayer, la justicia provincial resolvió declarar nula la norma de la Constitución local que establecía que la fecha electoral debía ser en agosto y dejó al Gobierno de Juan Luis Manzur facultado para convocar a elecciones, que se harán en forma anticipada a las nacionales.

Manzur explicó hoy que "en vista de que ayer hubo una decisión de la Justicia, junto al vicegobernador Osvaldo Jaldo, hemos decidido fijar como fecha el domingo 9 de junio para todos los cargos electivos en la provincia".

El siguiente es un panorama de la situación elaborado por la agencia de noticias oficial Télam por orden cronológico de fechas:

10 de marzo: Neuquén elige gobernador, 35 diputados, intendentes, concejales y titulares para integrar las comisiones de fomento. No hay PASO.

7 de abril: Río Negro vota gobernador y 46 diputados provinciales. Habrá elecciones municipales el 16 de junio.

12 de mayo: Córdoba elige gobernador. El espacio Cambiemos Córdoba fijó el domingo 17 de marzo para la elección interna que definirá el candidato entre Ramón Mestre, Mario Negri y Dante Rossi ( UCR); Héctor Baldassi ( PRO). Se bajó Luis Juez (Frente Cívico). Algunos municipios desdoblan.

En esa misma jornada, se realizaran comicios para gobernador en La Rioja, donde el mandatario Sergio Casas fue habilitado para competir tras una consulta popular autorizada por un fallo de la Corte Suprema.

19 de mayo: La Pampa votará gobernador y 30 diputados provinciales. El 17 de febrero de 2019 fueron las elecciones primarias que inauguraron el año electoral del país.

2 de junio: Misiones tendrá sus comicios generales se elegirán ese día gobernador, veinte diputados provinciales titulares y siete diputados suplentes.

San Juan elige gobernador, 17 diputados proporcionales y 19 legisladores departamentales e intendentes. PASO: 31 de marzo.

9 de junio: Habrá elecciones para cargos locales en Tucumán.

Chubut elige la fórmula de gobernador y los 27 diputados provinciales que integran la legislatura unicameral, entre otros cargos. PASO: 7 de abril.

Entre Ríos votarán para gobernador. PASO: 14 de abril.

16 de junio: San Luis elegirá gobernador, con internas llamadas PAS el 21 de abril.

Santa Fe tendrá comicios para gobernador, renovará 19 senadores y 50 diputados provinciales, medio centenar de Intendencias. PASO: 28 de abril.

29 de septiembre: Mendoza elegirá gobernador. PASO: 9 de junio.

El financiamiento con tarjeta de crédito se encareció por arriba del 200%

El financiamiento con tarjeta de crédito se encareció por arriba del 200%. Los planes de pago son prácticamente impagables y el nivel de ventas se desmoronó.




Con la crisis económica que golpea el consumo, la compra de electrodomésticos está imposible. Comprar con tarjeta de crédito conlleva un costo extra de hasta 260%.

Según un relevamiento realizado por el portal Ámbito Financiero sobre las principales cadenas, financiarse en 12 cuotas tiene un Costo Financiero Total (CFT) de hasta 260% y en 6 de más de 100%. Además, en planes de 24 cuotas, el CFT supera también el 200%.

Desde la Asociación de Fábricas Argentinas Terminales de Electrónica (Afarte) señalaron que en 2018 los precios de los electrodomésticos subieron en promedio casi al mismo ritmo de la inflación. Si a esto se le suma el encarecimiento del financiamiento y la caída del poder adquisitivo de los salario, el nivel de ventas cayó casi inevitablemente.

Por ejemplo, una heladera que se vende a $ 25.999, con el previo descuento de 24% sobre un valor real de $ 34.999. Al financiarla en 6 pagos se le aplica un CFT de 111,73%, por lo que su precio final queda en $ 32.082,76.

En 12 cuotas, el CFT pasa a 119,13% y se termina pagando por el producto $ 38.572. Ya en 24 pagos la heladera que se ofrecía a $ 25.999 sube a $ 72.110 por la aplicación de un 237,16% de interés.

Arranque de campaña: Trump le dice "loco" a Sanders, que lo tilda de racista

Frases picantes para la carrera presidencial




El presidente estadounidense, Donald Trump, le deseó suerte en la campaña electoral al precandidato presidencial demócrata Bernie Sanders, a quien llamó "loco", y éste le contestó que locura es tener de mandatario "a un racista, un sexista, un xenófobo y un fraude".

"El loco Bernie acaba de entrar en la carrera. íQue le vaya bien!", tuiteó Trump, luego de que el senador de 77 años, popular entre los jóvenes por sus conocidas posturas progresistas, anunciara ayer que volverá a competir en la interna demócrata por la candidatura a la Casa Blanca en las elecciones de 2020.

"Lo que es una locura es que tengamos un presidente que es un racista, un sexista, un xenófobo y un fraude. Vamos a unificar al pueblo y juntos no solo venceremos a Trump sino que también transformaremos la vida económica y política de este país", replicó Sanders en su cuenta oficial de Twitter.

Más temprano, Kayleigh McEnany, la secretaria de prensa de la campaña para la reelección de Trump, descartó al senador por Vermont como un rival de peso porque "los estadounidenses rechazarán una agenda de impuestos muy altos, de un sistema de salud controlado por el gobierno y de mimos para dictadores como los de Venezuela". El propio Trump le había dicho a un grupo de periodistas ayer, casi al pasar, que a Sanders "se le pasó la hora".

Apenas diez horas después de lanzarse como aspirante presidencial opositor, Sanders logró recaudar 3,3 millones de dólares de alrededor de 120.000 donantes individuales, informó la agencia de noticias ANSA.

El gran reventón de Nike que la hace bajar en la Bolsa

Zion Williamson, la estrella emergente a quien comparan con LeBron James, se lesiona al destrozarse su zapatilla a los 36 segundos del duelo universitario entre Duke y Carolina del Norte.
Ampliar foto Zion Williamson, con su zapatilla destrozada, en el momento de la lesión.

La expectación por disfrutar del partido del año con el clásico universitario entre Duke y Carolina del Norte y de las evoluciones de Zion Williamson, la mayor estrella emergente de los últimos años en el baloncesto mundial, saltó hecha pedazos cuando solo habían transcurrido 36 segundos de juego. El estallido fue tan literal como el de la zapatilla izquierda de Zion Williamson. Se trataba de unas Nike PG 2.5, el modelo que ha utilizado Paul George, el alero de Oklahoma City y una de las figuras de la NBA. La zapatilla izquierda se rajó bajo la presión de la pierna de Williamson, que se deslizó sobre el parqué en una postura inadecuada. La lesión dejó fuera del partido al ídolo de la Universidad de Duke, que perdió ante Carolina del Norte por 72-88.

El episodio conmocionó al público que llenó los 9.314 asientos del Cameron Indoor Stadium, la cancha de Duke. Entre los asistentes se encontraba el expresidente de Estados Unidos Barack Obama, sentado en la primera fila, al que las cámaras captaron algunos comentarios atribulados sobre la imagen que estaba presenciando. Myke Krzyzewski, el exseleccionador de Estados Unidos y entrenador de Duke, explicó que en principio se cree que se trata de un esguince, menos grave de lo que se temía. El alcance real de la lesión queda a expensas de las pruebas más a fondo que se le efectúen al jugador.

El incidente concentra los ingredientes más potentes del deporte profesional, aunque fuera un partido universitario. Se trata de Zion Williamson, el fenómeno millennial del baloncesto (nacido el 6 de julio de 2000, tiene 18 años), un monstruo de la naturaleza como a menudo es calificado por muchos jugadores y entrenadores. Mide 2,01 metros y pesa 129 kilos, es el favorito indiscutible a número uno del próximo draft de la NBA y se le compara por su complexión física y aptitudes a Charles Barkley —uno de los integrantes del dream team—, Larry Johnson e, inevitablemente, a LeBron James. Y lo sucedido en el derbi de Carolina del Norte atañe de pleno a Nike, una de las marcas más potentes de la industria deportiva. La multinacional emitió un comunicado en el que expresó su preocupación por el estado del jugador y le deseó una pronta recuperación, al tiempo que informa de que trabaja para identificar la causa del problema. Puma, una de sus principales competidoras, se apresuró a invitar a Williamson a alistarse a sus filas en un tuit que fue rápidamente borrado.

Las Nike PG 2.5, según explica la compañía con sede en Washington County, Oregón, a través de su página web, están diseñadas para los jugadores más versátiles. Son ligeras y resistentes, y están confeccionadas con correas de sujeción y una amortiguación cómoda para adaptarse a cada pisada rápida y determinada. El precio de venta al público es de 110 euros. No es la primera vez que jugadores relevantes sufren problemas con las zapatillas Nike. Aaron Gordon, de Orlando Magic, Manu Ginóbili, ya retirado, Tony Wroten, ahora en Estonia, y Andrew Bogut, ahora en Australia, también vieron como se les destrozaban sus zapatillas. Tras el incidente de Williamson ante Carolina del Norte, las acciones de Nike bajaron alrededor de un 1%, a 84.03 dólares, durante las primeras operaciones en la Bolsa de Nueva York. Nike es el proveedor exclusivo de los uniformes y zapatillas de la Universidad de Duke en un contrato que se renovó por 12 años en 2015.

Lo sucedido en el gran duelo del baloncesto universitario aviva otra controversia permanente, la disyuntiva sobre su profesionalización. Donovan Mitchell, el jugador de Utah Jazz así lo puso de relieve: “Una vez más, recordemos cuánto dinero movía el partido. Nada iba al bolsillo de los jugadores. Y ahora Zion se lesiona. Algo tiene que cambiar”. Las reglas de la Liga Universitaria son muy estrictas al respecto y penalizan con elevadas multas y sanciones a quienes transgredan la prohibición de pagar a los jugadores o por los fichajes. Tras el tuit de Donovan Mitchell, el esloveno de Dallas Mavericks y exjugador del Real Madrid, Luka Doncic sugirió: “Que vayan a jugar a Europa”. En el baloncesto europeo, las restricciones para fichar y pagar a jugadores jóvenes no son, ni de lejos, tan restrictivas como en Estados Unidos.

Tras su lesión, y en el caso de que le permita volver a jugar esta temporada, habrá que ver cuál es la voluntad de Williamson sobre su futuro a corto plazo. Muchos ya le habían aconsejado que no compitiera hasta que fuera drafteado, dado los millones de dólares que están en juego. Hay quien recuerda, sin embargo, que el jugador había manifestado que hubiera seguido jugando igualmente con Duke esta temporada aunque no existiera la norma de la edad mínima para competir en la NBA.

Las últimas entradas disponibles para presenciar el partido entre Duke y Carolina del Norte costaban 2.500 dólares (2.206,5 euros), muy cerca de los 2.674 dólares (2.360 euros) que costaron las últimas que se pusieron a la venta para presenciar la Super Bowl disputada el 3 de febrero, el acontecimiento deportivo del año en Estados Unidos. Hubo quien llegó a pagar 10.652 dólares (9.402 euros) por ver el derbi del baloncesto universitario, aunque la expectación se basaba principalmente en ver las evoluciones de Zion Williamson. “Es irreal”, dijo de él por ejemplo Stephen Curry, “Estuvimos hablando de él el otro día en el vestuario. Tiene un talento increíble, muchas cualidades exageradas y cosas que no se pueden enseñar. Juega duro cada posesión, y esa es una habilidad subestimada que los niños pueden... imitar”.

Las redes sociales reaccionaron inmediatamente y este jueves, los títulos de Nike ceden en Bolsa alrededor de un 1%. La marca es patrocinadora de la NBA, y del equipo de Duke, y sus principales competidores han aprovechado este tropiezo para intentar arrebatarle el puesto. Poco después del accidente, Puma publicó un tuit, ya borrado: "Esto no habría pasado con unas Puma". Este mensaje también ha recibido numerosas críticas.

Nike no ha tardado en reaccionar y ha emitido un comunicado: "Obviamente estamos muy preocupados y queremos desear a Zion una rápida recuperación". "Aunque se trata de un hecho aislado, estamos trabajando para identificar el problema", explican.

Las Nike PG 2.5 son las responsables del accidente, un modelo de deportivas que se venden a un precio de 110 euros en España y afirman estar "diseñadas para los jugadores más versátiles". No obstante, esta no es la primera vez que Nike se enfrenta a una situación de este tipo. En 2017, la marca tuvo que hacer frente a grandes criticas después de que varias de las camisetas vestidas por grandes estrellas de la NBA, como Lebron James, se rasgaran. La firma también ha sido criticada recientemente por uno de sus últimos modelos de deportivas para jugar al baloncesto: un zapato sin cordones que puedes controlar con el teléfono móvil y que sin embargo, los usuarios no han conseguido conectar con los dispositivos.

Javier Tebas: “Si se puede llevar la Supercopa a Marruecos, ¿por qué no jugar un partido de LaLiga fuera de España?”

El presidente de la competición española insiste en su búsqueda de llevar, la próxima temporada, un partido oficial a Estados Unidos

Tebas, durante su visita a México. En vídeo, el presidente de la Federación Española de Fútbol, Luis Rubiales, responde a las críticas de Tebas sobre el formato de la Supercopa.

Desde el despacho central de LaLiga lo tienen muy en claro: se debe jugar un partido oficial en el extranjero. El cuándo no lo tienen definido, aunque su próximo intento lo harán al inicio de la próxima temporada. "Existe una demanda judicial contra la RFEF [Real Federación Española de Fútbol] y sigue para poder cualquier partido fuera de España", zanjó Javier Tebas, el presidente de la competición y volvió a abrir una grieta con el dirigente de la federación.

LaLiga buscaba, el pasado 26 de enero, que el juego oficial entre el Girona y el Barcelona se jugara en Miami, Florida. La RFEF, la Asociación de Futbolistas Españoles y la FIFA se mostraron contrarias a esa intención. "Esperemos que la justicia nos permita jugar un partido fuera de España", agregó Tebas, durante una visita a Ciudad de México.



"Si se puede llevar la Supercopa a Marruecos, ¿cómo no vamos a llevar un partido de LaLiga fuera de España?", mencionó Tebas en referencia al partido entre Sevilla y Barcelona jugado en Tánger. El enfrentamiento entre el torneo liguero y la Federación Española de Fútbol, presidida por Luis Rubiales, presentó hace unos días una propuesta para cambiar el formato de la Supercopa española a uno llamado final four. Según su propuesta, se enfrentarían los primeros dos equipos clasificados en Primera División y los dos finalistas de la Copa del Rey durante cuatro o cinco días, fuera de España. Y desde LaLiga no dan el visto bueno.

"Estamos en contra, desde LaLiga, no se nos ha preguntado", cerró Tebas. Durante las últimas horas, el diario inglés The Times informó de que Javier Tebas era uno de los candidatos para suceder a Richard Scudamore como presidente de la Premier League. "Para mí y para el equipo es un honor que la Premier pueda pensar en Javier Tebas. No se puede decir nada más", explicó.
México, un mercado prioritario

La competición española abrió una oficina en México en febrero de 2017. Su intención ha sido la de enganchar con el público mexicano. "Es un mercado prioritario", consideró Javier Tebas. "Es un país [donde] el fútbol es fundamental. Nosotros no competimos con la Liga mexicana, pero competimos por ser los segundos. Llevamos muchos años aquí y los números son muy buenos", dijo sin ahondar en detalles.

El director de la oficina de LaLiga en México, Nuño Perez-Pla, atribuyó que una de las claves para encandilar al país norteamericano es la presencia de mexicanos en España. Los principales embajadores son Diego Lainez y Andrés Guardado del Betis, Néstor Araujo del Celta, Héctor Moreno de la Real, Diego Reyes del Leganés y Oswaldo Alanís, en segunda, con el Oviedo. "El Betis de Guardado y Lainez está destacando en la competición, en audiencias de televisión", mencionó Tebas. En la Liga Iberdrola "hay siete mexicanas que están haciendo que el fútbol femenino sea portada y noticia en México como Kenti Robles (Atlético de Madrid) y Charlyn del Levante", agregó Perez-Pla.

De acuerdo con el dirigente, la Liga mexicana está situada entre las ocho mejores del mundo en cuanto a estabilidad económica, aunque esté lejos del radar europeo. "Hoy en Europa, la Liga mexicana no se ve mucho, se podría ver porque hay grandes jugadores y es competitiva, pero es una cuestión de horarios", dijo.

“We’ve centralized all of our data to a guy called Mark Zuckerberg” says Pirate Bay Founder

At its inception, the internet was a beautifully idealistic and equal place. But the world sucks and we’ve continuously made it more and more centralized, taking power away from users and handing it over to big companies. And the worst thing is that we can’t fix it — we can only make it slightly less awful.

That was pretty much the core of Pirate Bay’s co-founder, Peter Sunde‘s talk at tech festival Brain Bar Budapest. TNW sat down with the pessimistic activist and controversial figure to discuss how screwed we actually are when it comes to decentralizing the internet.
Forget about the future, the problem is now

In Sunde’s opinion, people focus too much on what might happen, instead of what is happening. He often gets questions about how a digitally bleak future could look like, but the truth is that we’re living it.
Everything has gone wrong. That’s the thing, it’s not about what will happen in the future it’s about what’s going on right now. We’ve centralized all of our data to a guy called Mark Zuckerberg, who’s basically the biggest dictator in the world as he wasn’t elected by anyone.
Trump is basically in control over this data that Zuckerberg has, so I think we’re already there. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and I don’t think there’s a way for us to stop it.

One of the most important things to realize is that the problem isn’t a technological one. “The internet was made to be decentralized,” says Sunde, “but we keep centralizing everything on top of the internet.”


To support this, Sunde points out that in the last 10 years, almost every up-and-coming tech company or website has been bought by the big five: Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook. The ones that manage to escape the reach of the giants, often end up adding to the centralization.
We don’t create things anymore, instead we just have virtual things. Uber, Alibaba and Airbnb, for example, do they have products? No. We went from this product-based model, to virtual product, to virtually no product what so ever. This is the centralization process going on.

Although we should be aware that the current effects of centralization, we shouldn’t overlook that it’s only going to get worse. There are a lot of upcoming tech-based services that are at risk of becoming centralized, which could have a huge impact on our daily lives.
We’re super happy about self driving cars, but who owns the self driving cars? Who owns the information about where they can and can’t go? I don’t want to ride in a self driving car that can’t drive me to a certain place because someone has bought or sold an illegal copy of something there.

Sunde firmly believes that this is a realistic scenario as companies will always have to put their financial gains first, before the needs of people and societies. That’s why there needs to be a greater ethical discussion about technology and ownership, if we don’t want to end up living in a corporate-driven dystopia (worse than our current one, that is).
Making a shitty situation slightly more tolerable


Feeling a bit optimistic, I asked Sunde whether we could still fight for decentralization and bring the power back to the people. His answer was simple.
No. We lost this fight a long time ago. The only way we can do any difference is by limiting the powers of these companies — by governments stepping in — but unfortunately the EU or the US don’t seem to have any interest in doing this.

So there’s still some chance for a less awful future, but it would require a huge political effort. However, in order to achieve that, the public needs to be informed about the need for decentralization — but historically that’s not likely to happen.
I would say we, as the people, kind of lost the internet back to the capitalist society, which we were hoping to take it back from. We had this small opening of a decentralized internet but we lost it by being naive. These companies try to sound good in order to take over, that they’re actually ‘giving’ you something. Like Spotify gives you music and has great passion for music, and all of the successful PR around it.
But what it does to us in the long term is more like smoking. Big data and Big Tobacco are really similar in that sense. Before, we didn’t realize how dangerous tobacco actually was, but now we know it gives you cancer. We didn’t know that big data could be thing, but now we know it is. We’ve been smoking all our lives on big data’s products and now we can’t quit.

And just like with tobacco, it’s governments that need to create the restrictions. However, it’s difficult to see how any government — except for big players like US and EU — are supposed to be able to restrict the powerful tech giants.


Sunde feels that as the EU behemoth becomes bigger, it will be more difficult to pass laws that are actually for humans and that give people extended right. Which is unfortunate as the EU technically has the legislative power to make an actual difference when it comes to decentralization.
The EU could say that if Facebook wants to operate within the EU, they have to agree that all of the data has to be owned by the user, and not by Facebook. Which would be quite simple for the EU to do, but of course that would make Facebook really upset.
Then every country would be scared to be the first one to implement the law because Facebook would leave and all of its citizens would be without their tobacco. That’s the problem we’ll always have.

Sunde, however, is slightly optimistic (but not really) as he doesn’t feel that this fight has to necessarily go through monolithic governments to reach some kind of successful result. In fact, it might actually be more likely to succeed on a smaller national level.

In regards to this, Sunde names my beloved Iceland as an example, where the Pirate Party, running on a platform of groundbreaking digital policies, almost got into government. Dramatic changes on a national level, no matter how small the population is, could have great effects in the global community. Basically meaning that countries can lead by example.

Sunde, who’s half Norwegian and half Finnish, says that another good example of leading digital policies on a national level is when Finland made access to the internet a human right in 2010. By giving people these rights, the government had to define what the internet actually is and prevented future discussions about censorship — bolstering people’s rights against further centralization.

If nation states can actually facilitate further decentralization, like Sunde suggests, then we might actually be able to hamper the immense power of big corporations. Countries like Estonia have shown that politicians can come up with digital policies that actually preserve citizens’ right in a digital age.

However, we humans are illogical creatures that don’t necessarily do the things that are good for us: “It’s better for the people, but we don’t want to suffer that one single down-time second of our beloved tobacco.”

Security Policy Is Economic Policy

By Heather Hurlburt


Post-Cold War U.S. security thinking has rested on two truisms about trade liberalization: first, that countries more able to trade with us would become more politically like us; and second, that the overall consequences at home of deals abroad would be to strengthen our own society. Confident of those two theses, security planners felt free to ignore both the specific content of trade deals and any worries about their domestic impacts.

But as it turns out, the arrow of cause and effect points both ways. By ushering in a surge of globalization, international economic policies have helped reshape our society domestically over the last two decades. Perceiving international economic policy as the cause of economic and cultural changes they dislike, nationalist forces in our society have pushed back to reshape international economic policy. At the same time, one would be hard-pressed to deny that the nationalist response has had security consequences, introducing new complexities into U.S. relations both with allies and competitors, from the stresses on our alliance with South Korea to the awkwardness of Angela Merkel explaining to President Trump that no, Germany would not be ditching its EU commitments to “renegotiate” trade with the U.S.

The fundamental link around which American security policy was built in the Cold War years was simple—the flourishing of a capitalist economy meant the survival of American democracy. Weakening of a capitalist economy meant opportunity for its communist rival, and weakness for democracy in the United States and elsewhere.

As Americans stopped perceiving the United States as a contestant in a global ideological competition after the Cold War, this idea slowly lost its relevance. Much contemporary security thought simply stopped making connections to domestic economic concerns at all.

That kind of thinking was a luxury, born of the idea that we were in a unipolar moment or had reached the “end of history” with the permanent triumph of liberal democracy. This should no longer be acceptable in national security strategy.

Right now, many U.S. national security leaders are trying to shore up the system that served us well for 60 years against both shifts in global power and explicit attacks from inside our borders and beyond them. But retooling our understanding of how our physical security is connected to that of our democratic institutions and our way of life is equally urgent. It is the vital first step in proposing policies that will work in the world the Trump Administration leaves us.

Rather than see the realms of security and economics, foreign and domestic policy as separate, such an approach will recognize that our security and our institutions can be undercut by inequality or stagnation, as well as by terror attacks; and that international policy must be drawn to address these domestic problems, in addition to global ones.

This special section of Democracy, supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations, address four of the key needs a plan to promote national and community well-being must meet.

Bruce Jentleson challenges us to think about not just defending but remaking or, where needed, even replacing the institutions that have formed the core of the postwar liberal international order now so threatened by Brexit, Putin, and Trumpism.
Todd Tucker looks at reforms that would make international economic institutions—the core of the trade system—better able to address inequality and absolute deprivation.

Jennifer Harris makes the case for a new international economic agenda that can address inequality and wage stagnation at home.

Meanwhile, the remainder of this essay reconsiders the construct of national security—how we plan for it and how we talk about it. Paradoxically, those of us who have spent recent decades telling America that the world is interconnected now must go study what those connections look like to our fellow citizens.
Security and Economic Policies Are Interlinked. But How?

Two generations of policymakers and pundits—and elites more broadly—learned that a few particular interconnections were permanent fixtures of U.S. interests and U.S. domestic politics:
The economic system we built was a weapon against a rival system—communism—whose success threatened not just U.S. economic interests, but American security, institutions, and our way of life.
U.S. international economic policies were an effective tool to strengthen the governments of American partners and allies, and their success was considered important enough that any negative economic impact at home—which economics said would be limited by sector and time, in any case—was deemed worth it. One can’t imagine the United States standing up to North Korea and competing with China, for example, without the economic strength and solid institutions of our Japanese and South Korean allies, both built on the backs of economic growth that came with easy export of heavy industrial goods to the United States.
What we popularly call “trade”—the freer movement of goods and services but also exchange rate policies, rules and practices on a host of economic issues, and the web of international economic institutions that governs disputes and sometimes constrains American options—is a net blessing for U.S. security and for the lives of the overwhelming majority of our citizens.
Sectoral or regional objections to any given trade deal could always be overcome by invoking the security threat to the U.S. if partner economies didn’t thrive and fell to communism. The loss of sedan manufacturing jobs in Flint, for example, was understood as a temporary price for maintaining global order, not as one among several major death blows to city infrastructure.

Bipartisan elites held onto those core beliefs to a remarkable degree, even as the goal of policymaking shifted from containing communism to harnessing and riding globalization and several core assumptions of the Cold War era ceased to be true. The greatest threat to workers was no longer the competing economic system of communism, but competitors within the system America had built. Security threats, too, seemed to emanate from countries that were important economic partners, like China and Saudi Arabia. And however much politicians insisted that the United States remained indispensable and a superpower, the multilateral system it had built produced less reliable returns.

Yet public opinion has always been more complex and unsettled than the elite view. Observers were surprised to see support for trade rebound in 2017 among both Democrats and Republicans. Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport has noted that public attitudes swing depending on the question asked: the more abstract “trade” or the more immediate “jobs,” the “opportunity” of exports versus the “threat” of imports. CNBC recently noted, “At any given time, as much as 10 to 30 percent of respondents have no opinion about open trade, regardless of their party affiliation, and those voters can swing one way or the other . . . ” Unusual, for our polarized times.

But now we’re in a new era. As such, it is worth summarizing the four declarative principles of international economic policy in the Trump era, working from the Administration’s national security strategy and major foreign policy speeches—because, if daily life in the West Wing is a pitched battle between the business-friendly conservative end of the American establishment and the sovereigntist wing of the GOP, those are the truce documents.
Elites are going to have to give up on the idea that there is some security argument that will save them from having to argue about trade.

Economic prowess is national security. Where previous presidents pointed to education and innovation as key to our future security, Trump narrows in on raw growth numbers, the return of manufacturing, and an as-yet undefined “National Security Innovation Base.”

Even U.S. allies must prove that trade relations benefit the United States, and the best trade negotiations are one-on-one. Deals that aim to set broader standards for groups of countries, or globally, are off the table.

Economic pressure can be applied independent of security cooperation—for example, pressuring South Korea to renegotiate its trade deal as the crisis with the North loomed, or demanding China do more to pressure Pyongyang even while threatening unprecedented trade retaliation. Typically, presidents don’t do this—and neither of these examples has produced results on trade thus far.

A winning coalition of American voters can be assembled to support this model: those for whom demonstrations of U.S. might are paramount; those with significant economic and cultural grievances against the globalist model; and those who are loyal to the GOP for other reasons.

Some of these principles were thoroughly contradicted in Trump’s first year, as the Administration seemed to raise, then put aside, trade issues with China and South Korea as concerns over North Korea’s nuclear program escalated. The Administration’s preference for bilateral deals also produced no outcomes, as Japan pointedly declined to engage, and it had to be explained to the President that Germany’s EU membership precludes bilateral arrangements.

Others will be put to the test vigorously in 2018 and beyond. The Administration faces choices about the future of Nafta and next steps on a number of trade complaints, from washing machines to intellectual property (in late January, it announced a phase in of tariffs on washing machines and solar panels). Hidden beneath the significant economic consequences are equally weighty questions about security institutions and arrangements: Can U.S.-Chinese cooperation on North Korea be sustained if we edge closer to a tariff war? What theory does the Administration have of how security and economic factors interact in our relationship with Mexico? Will the results of bilateral tariffs and retaliation against China be worth abandoning the multilateral trade institutions like the World Trade Organization whose rules such measures violate?

This likely incoherence is one of a number of obstacles facing those who would propose a better alternative—a foundation on which to rebuild U.S. international policies after the Trump Administration. Amid the attacks on institutions, policy reversals, and rhetorical bombast, the shape of our options can be hard to discern.

Yet discern we must. I propose a two-part initial framework for evaluating a strategy for the security of Americans—our livelihoods, communities, and institutions. First, we need a reconsideration of our security goals, and how they fit with our economic development —the kind of comprehensive re-think that happened in the wake of World War II but hasn’t happened since. Second, we must take a hard look at whether the words we use with our fellow Americans mean what we think they mean, and whether the tools available to us do what we think they do.
What Is Security Policy For, Again?

First the question of goals. The fundamental goal of American national security policy is obvious—defending American safety, institutions, and way of life. With illiberal models on the rise globally and our own institutions under attack and losing popular support, it’s time to consider how our international economic choices are affecting our institutions’ ability to provide security. If sustaining and restoring the institutions of liberal democracy is a security goal, we are going to need economics to do the job.

Social science has brought forward strong evidence that economic arrangements that heighten inequality and limit middle-class mobility are bad for public confidence in liberal institutions—and good for authoritarian and populist competitors. Rising economic inequality hands more political power to the small group at the top, as political scientist Larry Bartels and others have demonstrated. It also increases lower-earners’ sense of alienation and, paradoxically, increases higher earners’ feelings of anger and disdain for the system as well, because they perceive themselves as “makers” whose taxes, innovation, and entrepreneurial energy support the “takers” who seem to contribute much less. And whether you believe economic anxieties spawn or merely reinforce racial and gender cleavages, they surely do not help a diverse society function.

The question of which economic arrangements—and specifically, which of the international policies the public lumps together under the rubric “trade”—worsen or ameliorate inequality is more complicated. It is clear, for example, that in recent decades, trade-driven growth reduced income inequality between countries—and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty, particularly in China and elsewhere in Asia.

However, critics on both the left and right have suggested that it is time to throw out the idea that international economic tools can be used to improve lives and stabilize societies that are key partners. That would be a mistake, but it is nonetheless time for small-r realism about security and trade. Trade policies have worked to strengthen governments and help societies build strong democratic institutions. When those societies also had autonomy to make important economic decisions, they made broad-based prosperity a goal, and permitted the evolution of democratic forms of governance. In the 1990s, policymakers believed that global norms would allow the market to promote broad-based economic growth and inevitably overwhelm national opposition to democracy. But the experiences of China and the Middle East in combining more open economies and autocracy, and Central America and South Asia in failing to spread the benefits of openness broadly, in some cases spurring more inequality, have proven that argument wrong.

Perhaps the simplest way to write the epitaph for the post-Cold War effort to use trade liberalization to build democratic capitalism across the globe was offered by Peterson Institute economist Chad Bone: “Legal instruments don’t change systems . . . we either need to redesign the [trade enforcement] system to recognize that China is not like us, or develop new carrots to encourage China to choose to become more like us.”

While trade and associated policies were having these mixed effects on the economies of our partners, their effects on the United States were more complicated than the “net positive” story all political science majors learned in college economics. Over the period of intense globalization, inequality within societies increased—and the incomes of middle-class people in the United States (and Europe) stagnated. More and more economists now point to China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, for example, as playing a key role in the loss not just of 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs over the next 15 years, but to the collapse of manufacturing wages in the Midwest. Even as investment returns soared and salaries took off for a new class of global managers, geographically targeted groups of workers and communities lost bargaining power. Those domestic outcomes of our international policies had social and political consequences that are still playing out—including consequences for U.S. international economic policy and who conducts it.
Much contemporary security thought has simply stopped making any connections to citizens’ domestic economic concerns at all.

National security professionals have often looked at trade deals as an end in and of themselves: another deliverable, another tie to solidify a relationship, no matter what the content. Security analysts—and the elected officials who oversee our work—shouldn’t be shy about asking what the political and institutional implications will be of any particular plank, and insisting they pass policy tests before negotiations are launched, not after. That’s a level of sophistication we expect in our analyses of other countries’ policies. Leaders who make national security arguments for trade deals must expect to be challenged on how particular initiatives will affect middle-class incomes and social cohesion here at home as well. All too many national security professionals—including this author—believed deeply in the security rationale behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) but couldn’t have offered a summary of its key provisions, let alone a prediction of its positive and negative effects on different sectors of the U.S. economy.

The same goes for other security interests that intersect with trade. If countering climate change is really fundamental to U.S. security policy, why sign on to trade regimes that promote high-carbon outputs or inhibit environmental regulation? If we are concerned about Islamist extremism gaining a foothold in a swath of countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, shouldn’t we insist on economic arrangements that promote dignified livelihoods for young men in those societies? Strategists worry about the U.S. military’s ability to retain key manufacturing technologies and access to key minerals and other raw materials. If manufacturing jobs are no longer the key to sustaining some fraction of American communities, figuring out what else can be also counts as a security worry.

These questions aren’t rhetorical, and they don’t represent a blanket attack on trade agreements. What is called for, as a first step, is re-integrating international economic decision-making into security thinking—and learning from the last decade of politics that security is about what affects us as a nation.
After Trump, What Will We Have to Work With?,

Internationalists have been largely paralyzed on international economics since mid-2016, with many seeming to hope that an anti-Trump Resistance would sweep away not just the President’s calls for tariff wars and zero-sum bargaining, but also the activist antipathy that led both parties to reject the TPP. And while trade’s favorability has gone up among rank-and-file Democrats and the public at large since the election, that is not true of two other groups. The coveted Midwestern white working-class voters both parties are chasing remain as skeptical as ever. And major activist blocs of Democrats, from MoveOn to the AFL-CIO, who will be critical to the elections in 2018 and 2020, believe that the results of 2016 should push policy their way.

Instead of hoping to turn back the clock, internationalists would be well-advised to begin shaping more durable policies that match the world they inherit in 2019, 2021, or thereafter.

The toolkit of effective international engagement contains some familiar elements—a strong military, political and commercial diplomacy, market and investment access—and some that we have let lapse, such as industrial policy and competition policy, pacts between government and private sector, as Jennifer Harris enumerates. After the Trump tax cuts, seven years of the Budget Control Act, and federal workforce declines, no such pacts can be consummated without some combination of realigning public and private sector functions, re-expanding the tax base, or shifting significant resources out of military spending. Some—like re-opening the tax code, or Harris’s proposal that the corporations that have benefited most from globalized trade contribute more to sustaining American communities—will cost political capital.

Thoughtful expenditures of political capital, even more scarce than in the past, will be required on the international stage as well. Bruce Jentleson raises important questions about how functional the multilateral institutions favored by internationalists are, and how they can be strengthened. Todd Tucker challenges us to rethink what the goals of economic multilateralism could be. Americans will have to come to terms with a world in which the United States is one arbiter but increasingly not the only one—and where more and more rules will have the same consequences for us as for others.

None of this is possible without assembling a domestic coalition that will support economic multilateralism—electing internationalist candidates, putting in place the domestic policies that will support Americans in a competitive global economy and then putting legislative support behind international economic policy. To make good policy, let alone good politics, elites are going to have to give up on the idea that there is some security argument that will save them from making the retail politics case for trade—and, more fundamentally, save them from the work of making economic policies that pay off visibly for key members of their political coalitions.

For decades, political professionals have made it a truism that “nobody votes on national security,” and produced reams of data to “prove” this. But in 2016 two subsets of Americans did vote on security in ways that are intimately bound up with globalization and trade—as well as with culture and race. While one subset of GOP voters ranked national security and or near the top of their concerns—making them dramatically different from Democratic voters—many other Americans seemed not to consciously focus on national security as elites define it but to link it to other forms of insecurity. During the Obama presidency, the polling firm GQRR repeatedly documented how voters with lower partisan identification linked economic greatness to national security. If voters’ personal economies weren’t secure, neither was the country.

We also need to recognize that the connection between perceptions of economic insecurity and what might politely be called cultural insecurity, or more bluntly racism, also has national security implications. For example, Edward Mansfield and Diana Mutz found that attitudes toward jobs moving overseas were shaped by “ethnocentrism and anti-foreign sentiment, rather than occupation or direct professional experience.” Americans who perceive their values and culture under threat perceive their communities as more vulnerable to economic and security threats than do other Americans. International economic and security policies can thus form a vicious cycle, where sensationalized media coverage of one undermines support for the other.

Given the economic and cultural resistance among key swaths of voters that either party needs to construct a winning post-Trump coalition, it’s not going to be possible to rebuild a constituency for trade liberalization alone.

We’ve just established that the public means something different by “security” than policy wonks do, and the same goes for “trade.” Pollsters and canvassers note that the public discourse expands and shrinks to include tariffs, outsourcing, foreign assistance, shareholder capitalism, foreign investment, and other topics. As we reach out to voters, we need to be sure we understand what their concerns actually are. Voters, even many who express opposition to trade deals, are not classically isolationist. Few want to pay higher costs for U.S.-assembled cellphones, or return to the days when grocery stores only contained fruits and vegetables grown in the United States. Everyone wants interaction with the outside world, they want opportunities to work and travel, to consume the best of what the world has to offer . . . and to earn the respect of other nations. Likewise, in many parts of the country, voters are well aware that their livelihoods depend on foreign investment and economic integration, but may or may not make the connection between those local outcomes and the way national politicians talk about “trade.”

Winning messages will acknowledge what voters already know—that economic openness helped some and hurt others, and that programs intended to mitigate negative effects failed. Winning programs will combat those failures comprehensively, and from the start, rather than as a later add-on.

Trump and his 2016 cohort set a precedent by dwelling heavily on the negative interactions between economics and security, and playing on fears and prejudices around dwelling in an interconnected world. Internationalists from both parties should not abandon international economic policy—indeed, they mustn’t. But a new internationalism will stand or fall based on how it addresses not just physical security, but the safety and well-being of Americans, as well as their institutions and communities.

Para Magario, "la unidad del PJ es un hecho" y Duhalde coincide

La intendente de La Matanza, Verónica Magario, se refirió a la cumbre del PJ bonarense de ayer (21/02): "La unidad del peronismo claramente es un hecho y vamos a tener un único candidato o candidata que va a surgir de esa unidad. Ahí va a estar la esperanza para esa sociedad que tanto nos lo está pidiendo". En tanto, el ex presidente Eduardo Duhalde coincidió: "Hay que hablar con todos".



La intendente de La Matanza fue una de las pocas voces que se animó a confirmar oficialmente que en Provincia de Buenos Aires el PJ irá unido de cara a las elecciones 2019.

"Claramente es un hecho y vamos a tener un candidato o candidata que va a surgir de esa unidad", resumió al Letra P.

"Cuando hablamos de unidad, hablamos de un gran frente donde vamos a estar todo juntos (incluído Alternativa Federal). El límite es Macri y Vidal", agregó.

En tanto, el ex presidente Eduardo Duhalde estuvo presente en la apertura del Congreso Internacional de Ajedrez que se realizó ayer (21/02) en el Congreso Nacional, disparó: "¿Somos estúpidos los argentinos que, como está el país, tenemos que seguir peleándonos? Es una ridiculez, un absurdo, así no sale. Hay una forma distinta de gobernar. Hay que hablar con todos".

Cristina decidió apoyar a Perotti en la pelea contra María Eugenia Bielsa, que se negó a bajarse

Bielsa desoyó los pedidos para que compita por Rosario y favorezca la unidad. La ex presidenta bajó los tres precandidatos de su espacio y se queda con los dos primeros lugares de la boleta de diputados nacionales.



El esfuerzo que está haciendo Cristina Kirchner por cerrar listas de unidad en todas las provincias, se cruzó en Santa Fe con un muro infranqueable: María Eugenia Bielsa. La hermana del ex DT de la Selección rechazó de plano todas las sugerencias para que decline su postulación y compita por la intendencia de Rosario, una pelea en la que le auguraban grandes chances de triunfo.

Luego de bajar las candidaturas del camporista Marcos Cleri, la senadora Marilin Sacnún y del rossista Leandro Busatto, para dar señales de unidad, Cristina Kirchner habló con los dos candidatos del peronismo que disputarán la interna: Omar Perotti y María Eugenia Bielsa.

Finalmente, a Cristina la convenció más su compañero en la Cámara Alta con quien acordó los dos primeros lugares en la lista de diputados provinciales y se sospecha que habría reservado el primer nombre para las de diputados nacionales, como viene haciendo en otras provincias.


A su vez, el rafaelino confirmó a la ex jueza Alejandra Rodenas como compañera de fórmula manteniendo su alianza con los senadores departamentales que lidera Armando "Pipi" Traferri: "Yo quiero ganar, no quiero conseguir un lugar", sostuvo este jueves Traferri  y agregó, en relación a los intentos por correr a Rodenas de la candidatura a vice: "es mujer, de Rosario y conocida, si hay alguien mejor que lo pongan en la mesa".

Perotti también acordó llevar como primer candidato a diputado provincial al kirchnerista Leandro Busatto, cercano a Agustín Rossi.



En cuanto al espacio de María Eugenia Bielsa, sigue siendo una incógnita el nombre que la acompañará en la fórmula como tampoco se conoce la lista de diputados y no ha dejado trascender un solo nombre: "lo sabe solo ella y lo terminará de definir a último momento", afirmó a LPO un allegado a la arquitecta.



A pesar de los intentos que hizo Perotti y importantes dirigentes nacionales del peronismo para que sea candidata a intendenta de Rosario -una pelea en la que le auguraban altas chances de triunfo- Bielsa se afirmó en su carrera a la gobernación e insistió para llegar a un acuerdo de unidad que no prosperó y el peronismo será el único frente que defina candidatos en las PASO.

María Eugenia Bielsa cuando anunció que disputaría la candidatura peronista gobernadora de Santa Fe.

Quienes patearon el tablero y decidieron presentar lista de legisladores por su lado fue el Movimiento Evita y la UOM que se enojaron con Perotti en una reunión caliente donde no faltaron los insultos.


Como resultado, la actual diputada nacional Lucila de Ponti encabezará la nómina de la Cámara Baja secundada por el secretario general de la UOM, Antonio Donello y con idéntico esquema para la categoría de concejales en Rosario con Eduardo Toniolli a la cabeza seguido por una delegada metalúrgica.


En el Frente Renovador tampoco hay definiciones aunque los rumores ubican al massismo más cerca de Perotti que de Bielsa, aún no han confirmado en qué armado participarán.


En el peronismo rosarino el candidato mejor posicionado es Roberto Sukerman (todas las encuestas lo ubican por arriba del resto) quien espera definiciones de Ciudad Futura si se presentará disputándole la interna por el mismo frente.


Es que Bielsa estaría cerrando el acuerdo con la joven agrupación de centroizquierda que lidera Juan Monteverde quien podría enfrentar a Sukerman en las PASO y que el mismo concejal peronista prefiere que así sea.


Sin embargo, Ciudad Futura presentará su lista a concejales por afuera del peronismo y para cumplir con el requisito legal de que cada candidato a intendente tenga su nómina de ediles dentro del frente que integra, la formalidad la salvaran con candidatos de agrupaciones afines.


Las negociaciones para que Iniciativa Popular junto a Nuevo Encuentro sean la lista formal de Ciudad Futura se cayeron y la concejal Fernanda Gigliani se presentará con lista propia junto a la agrupación de Sabatella.

Cayó más de un 10 por ciento la cantidad de gente que viaja en colectivo

El secretario general de la UTA, Roberto Fernández, aseguró que dicha baja está directamente relacionada a la falta de trabajo.

El precio del transporte se volvió un dolor de cabeza para los trabajadores.


El boleto de colectivo, y de los otros medios de transporte, se incrementó en el mes de febrero generando un nuevo golpe al bolsillo. Pero esa es sólo uno de los factores por los cuales la gente viaja menos: la falta de trabajo producto de la fuerte recesión que atraviesa el país, es la principal.

O al menos así lo determinó el secretario general de la UTA, Roberto Fernández, quien afirmó que "se redujeron los servicios" de colectivos generando, en los últimos meses "cayó más de un diez por ciento" la cantidad de gente que utiliza el servicio.

"Nosotros transportamos a la gente con menos recursos y hoy se nota que ha caído más de un diez por ciento, esto es gente que no va a su trabajo", dijo Fernández quien también advirtió que "hay cada vez más recesión, aparte ahora se ve la falta de trabajo que es lo que más preocupa también".

"Un país que está paralizado es como un negocio que no vende. Nos preocupa que cada vez más la falta de trabajo donde nosotros somos testigos diariamente: cada vez se cierran más negocios y fábricas", dijo en declaraciones a FM Millenium.

Además, contó que le propusieron realiar una medida de fuerza extrema, a lo que dijo que le parecía en vano: "me hablaban de hacer un paro, si ya está parado el país...". En ese contexto además, pidió "cambiar la dirección del país" a través de "un gobierno de concertación, un gobierno de coalición".

"No valen las ambiciones personales, así no camina la Argentina o ningún país", enfatizó el gremialista, quien no habló de personalismos: "acá no es Cristina, ni Pedro, ni Juan. Necesitamos una mesa de concertación donde se acuerden cuatro o cinco puntos, una políticas de Estado". "Acá no hay magos", cerró.

San Luis ya tiene candidatos

Habrá tres frentes electorales y se enfrentarán los Rodríguez Saá




Ya está armado el tablero político de cara a las elecciones en San Luis, donde tres frentes se disputarán la gobernación en las elecciones primarias del 21 de abril y las generales del 16 de junio. Los hermanos Rodríguez Saá se enfrentarán en los comicios y la oposición puntana que se identifica a nivel nacional con el presidente Mauricio Macri estará representada por el senador Claudio Poggi.

El actual gobernador Alberto Rodríguez Saá encabeza el frente “Unidad Justicialista de San Luis”, con el apoyo del Partido Justicialista puntano y otros 15 espacios, muchos de ellos de extracción kirchnerista. La alianza la integran Mas San Luis, Movimiento de Integración Latinoamericano, Partido de la Victoria, Movimiento de Acción Vecinal, PUL, Es Posible, Compromiso Federal, Movimiento Vecinal Fortín el Patria, Vecinal de Carpintería, Socialismo Merlino, Nuevo Encuentro, Lealtad Sanluiseña, Éxodo Puntano, MOCOMER, Malvinense, MODIN, Vecinalistas de San Luis.

Su hermano y rival político, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, presentó la alianza “Frente juntos por la Gente” que reunirá a los partidos: MoViPro, Sanluiseños por el Cambio, Mercedinos por el Cambio y el MID.

En tanto, en representación de Cambiemos competirá el frente San Luis Unido, que reúne a Avanzar San Luis, San Luis Somos Todos, la Unión Cívica Radical, el PRO y Libres del Sur.

Si bien los candidatos de cada alianza ya fueron anticipados, tienen como fecha límite el próximo 2 de marzo hasta las 23.59 horas para oficializar su postulación, casi 60 días antes de las Primarias.

Rubro por rubro, el listado de las empresas afectadas por la crisis

Según datos del Ministerio de Producción y Trabajo, el año pasado fueron 108 los trámites abiertos para recortar personal y achicar operaciones. El 2019 también arrancó con decenas de pedidos.



En 2018 se duplicaron la cantidad de pedidos de apertura de Procedimientos Preventivos de Crisis (PPC) en las empresas.

Según datos del Ministerio de Producción y Trabajo, el año pasado fueron 108 los trámites abiertos para recortar personal y achicar operaciones.



Sin embargo, el 2019 también arrancó con decenas de compañías afectadas por la crisis, que no necesariamente solicitaron los PPC, sino que resultaron igualmente perjudicadas por la coyuntura económica actual.

Por inestabilidad cambiaria, habrá remarcaciones en los alimentos de hasta 12%

Empresas trasladan la suba de costos de 2018

Sube el dólar y los alimentos no se quedan atrás




Rápidos de reflejos y a las pocas horas del alza del dólar, diversos empresarios de la alimentación comenzaron a informar ayer a cadenas de hipermercados, supermercados provinciales, autoservicios, almacenes y centros mayoristas que -en principio- la harina, fideos y productos como la polenta subirán hasta 12% en las próximas horas.

"En los supermercados la situación es grave porque los proveedores nos matan con los aumentos", dijeron desde una cadena. El resultado de la "dolarización en las góndolas" se vería desde hoy, según afirmaron en exclusiva a BAE Negocios fuentes de distintos canales comerciales que ayer recibieron llamados de la industria (Arcor elevará sus precios de 10% a 12%).

Además, aunque la información no pudo ser confirmada anoche, las versiones indicaban que los productos de limpieza e higiene personal aumentarían, como lo hacen siempre cuando el dólar sube. La remarcación de bienes tan sensibles resulta un "mazazo" a las expectativas oficiales que esperan una baja de la inflación y consecuentemente, de los precios finales para el consumidor.

Otras fuentes del retail señalaron que las empresas apuestan todavía por mayor rentabilidad, a pesar de la baja en el consumo, un fenómeno que se observa muy especialmente en el mercado argentino. El economista Mariano Kestelboim expresó que "hay una inercia inflacionaria". "La culpa es del Gobierno y no de las empresas, que más allá de algunas avivadas de siempre, tienen que aumentar los precios para sostener sus grandes estructuras, el peso de los costos, la inflación de costos", sostuvo.

Asimismo, sostuvo: "hubo muchos aumentos en cuatro meses, y tenemos la inflación interanual en un 50%. Los costos de las empresas se trasladan porque estaban pendientes. Acá no tiene que ver si el consumo está en caída o no".

Seguros, costos administrativos y financieros tienen hoy un peso mucho mayor y las empresas en general, y en especial en alimentación, "por escala tienen que sostener los costos vía las remarcaciones", dijo Kestelboim. Por su parte, en cuanto al segmento del retail, Jorge Barisonzi, CEO de IMS Compañy, proveedor de Jumbo, COTO, Walmart y Carrefour, consideró que frente a la crisis comercial, los supermercados deben lograr que "el público se quede más tiempo en el súper para que consuma más". "Como dijimos, se trata de un consumidor on the go que compra distinto, que tiene otros hábitos, que cuenta con menos tiempo y que cada día es más joven", enfatizó.

En la visión de Barisonzi, para capitalizar mejor una coyuntura como la actual las cadenas deberían reforzar tres opciones de venta de productos: "ready to eat" (listo para comer), "ready to heat" (listo para recalentar) y "ready to cook" (listo para cocinar).