When governments spend more money than they can afford and plan a budget based on unsustainable growth, collapse is inevitable. This is what we are currently witnessing in Argentina where officials can no longer pay all of the government employees’ salaries. Yahoo! News reports on the current debacle in a small Argentinian town where only the lucky will receive their paychecks:
A raffle will determine which civil servants in a small Argentine town will receive their pay first, due to insufficient funds, its mayor announced Monday.
“We will draw lots to decide the (order) of payment,” said mayor of Bialet Masse, Gustavo Pueyo, in a broadcast from Buenos Aires private radio station Radio Mitre.
Pueyo said the raffle was approved by national mayoral authorities and the first draw took place Friday, with 23 of the town’s 92 employees receiving their pay. A second raffle is slated for Monday.
Pueyo attributed the city’s insufficient funds to a drop in the funding usually received from the provincial government.
Growth slowed by half of one percent in May compared with the same period last year, marking the first downturn since 2009, according to official figures.
Argentina’s GDP has grown by an average eight percent per year since 2003, but analysts expect the economy will grow by less than half that in 2012.
