Demographic suicide and capital flight, results of two decades of masismo

Hugo Marcelo Balderrama

By: Hugo Marcelo Balderrama - 21/05/2023

Guest columnist.
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A large part of the rural population of Bolivia, for many years now, tends to leave their homeland, going to urban centers, especially Santa Cruz, or abroad. In 2019, just before the resignation and subsequent flight of Evo Morales, the Jubilee Foundation showed that moderate rural poverty affects 53.9% of the population and extreme rural poverty affects 34.6%. For its part, ECLAC, an institution that cannot be classified as "neoliberal", stated that in rural areas people are 18.9% poorer than in cities and remarked that 48.8% of aborigines share this condition, not very encouraging data for a government that championed indigenismo for several decades.

Back in 2014, the dictatorship boasted of Tupac Katari, the first Bolivian satellite put into the air and the country's entry into the digital age. However, a study by the We are social page indicated that only 6% of the rural population has access to the Internet. Another reality is that 90% of households in rural areas do not even have a computer. In other words, the millions of dollars spent on the satellite ended up in another of the great wastes of Evo Morales and García Linera.

Things are not better for the inhabitants of urban areas, since even the millennial generation has many difficulties to join the productive activity. For example, according to the Youth and Employment study, prepared by the Network of Leaders for Democracy and Development (Relidd), 41% of young people in Bolivia do not have stable employment, 85% of those who have jobs do not contribute to the AFP for their retirement and 78% have had to look for a job for more than six months.

Although 60% of the Bolivian population is young, in addition to having a university education, even postgraduate, they are joining the informal sector of the country or migrating beyond the borders.

The Training School for Democracy and Development (ESFORDD), in a study entitled: Panorama of urban youth employment in Bolivia (March 2023), affirms that Urban youth employment is characterized by high informality, low-skilled jobs employment that affects low income and no social security. But this comes with a worrying phenomenon: the brain drain.

Normally, countries invest part of their budgets in training the population. However, the brain drain means that the Bolivian State loses the invested capital, other countries are taking advantage of this productivity for free. The consequences of depopulation (whether due to brain drain or reduced birth rates) are negative for the economy and the future prospects of the affected geographical areas, by losing consumers, labor, attractiveness for investment, critical mass and economies of scale for the provision of all kinds of goods and services, private and public. In short, the country began with, thank God, still a slow demographic suicide.

However, young talents are not the only ones to leave. The economist, Carmen Ang, financial analyst at Visual Capitalist, explains that in the last five years 88,000 millionaires left Latin America (a person with a net worth of more than one million dollars is considered a millionaire). Australia and the United Arab Emirates are the favorite destinations to settle their families and assets. I'll make it simple for you, the owners of big capital are not stupid to stay in countries governed by socialist gangs, that includes the mara that has kidnapped Bolivia since 2003.

It seems that our country is doomed to see its best sons leave, you hurt Bolivia!


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