Wake-up call: ‘We are withering our economy’

Friends are important for many reasons, one of them being the ability they have to call us out forcefully when we are not on the right path.

Throughout my career I have met all kinds of people, most of them serious, determined and intelligent. Nowadays many make important decisions in the public sector, This hard writing is addressed to them.oblivious to diplomatic filters in which I hope as a friend, to draw your deep attention.

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Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to seem pretentious, I have probably made the same or worse mistakes than you, rather the approach has to do with deep contrition and the sincere interest that we correct course.

The first thing to say is that our country, like so many other Latin American latitudes, is in the current unfortunate situation due to the decisions we have been making in recent decades, although at the moment, when each of them is faced, they may seem correct, in retrospect it is evident that they have not been.

That said, the first wake-up call goes, It is too naive and disconnected from reality to assume that a country with our indicators in terms of poverty, murders, competitiveness, inequality, disintegration and internal disunity, security, mobility, urban and rural deterioration to name a few, has made the right decisions.

The second call for attention is more forceful than the previous one, accept that the State, that organization in which you have made decisions, does not work well. Stop romanticizing the obvious, Any intelligent person realizes how rudimentary their operation is., how contradictory and ineffective its culture is, how little everything that is done within it really contributes to the citizens. Now, let’s stop promoting that whoever expresses this type of concerns is related to a particular ideology, in that case you are only deceiving yourselves, if you do not realize this and do not accept it, you will continue to be separated from reality so The problem can never be solved.

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How many scandals, mistakes, entity liquidations, restructurings, dissatisfied citizens, lawsuits and guardianships are necessary to recognize an obvious condition?

The third, stop playing with homes, with their stability and well-being, with the passage of time they have modified the rules of the game as they please and have irresponsibly appropriated the income of these people, the value generated by their hours of work. Within the framework of an attitude similar to that of a child in a candy store, they propose taxes as if it were a game; All of you from mayors, governorates, national government and entities, propose new charges and lose sight of the fact that they all fall on the same ones, those you call “rich” who are nothing more than a precarious middle class, who with this non-technical attitude and irrational you become more and more precarious.

With all their master’s degrees and studies, it is unthinkable not to realize that through such a way of acting over the years they have been withering the economy, the signs are evident in the macro and microeconomic indicators, the truth is that we are going backwards. in the world rankings of global competitiveness, of competitiveness of the tax system, even, after the pandemic, the middle class was reduced by millions of people, not to mention the gradual deterioration of small and medium-sized businesses.

What else do you want to see to convince yourself of such a mistake?

They never think there are enough resources, but our income and public spending are above the OECD average. The truth is that anyone who has been part of this framework and has some intellectual honesty, accepts that this money is lost, wasted on through errors, improvisation, disorder, inexperience and corruption. That is to say, their decisions take away from households, in a childish way, the possibility of having a house, access to better education, health, vacations, among other things, ultimately making their lives difficult, to simply end up throwing those resources away. trash and stay so calm.

The fourth call for attention is related to changing your way of thinking, stop believing that the citizen is at your service, those who are obliged in this case are you, you serve someone who takes a relevant part of what you are paid for your work and transfers them to him so that you can solve problems that he cannot face on his own, so it is better that you accept that your role should focus on making his life easier, not on making decisions to make life easier for yourself and then pretend that people assume the costs of such action.

Finally, I close this determined call with the fifth point, my friends, asking you to learn from the past, it is not possible that you continue making decisions that lead us down paths that do not work, over the years you have decided to deliver subsidies everywhere, but what? Do they see any real structural improvement in the conditions of our society, despite these subsidies becoming greater and greater? Doesn’t this tell you something? What do you hope to see to recognize that the world is not improved through subsidies? but taking those resources and converting them into very high quality public services: high-level education for all, facilitating infrastructure for all, security, health and justice for all, in short, in an environment that facilitates the most drastic development of all, without differences.

The truth is that their decisions, regardless of whether they are right, left or center, are evidently deteriorating the lives of many, It is assumed that in the hope of improving that of others, That has been their controversial bet, but at the end of the day, the second has not been achieved structurally precisely because the decisions have not been correct, therefore, it is well worth correcting course and concentrating on leading our society by the known and proven path, focused on responsibility, fiscal rigor, public effectiveness, economic and human development; that have traveled through so many developed countries and that have structurally removed them from the situation similar to ours in which they once were.

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ARMANDO ARDILA
Founding Partner Teknidata Consultores/ Strategy Professor.