The arguments in favor of microenterprise are multiple and diverse. Although we must not disdain them, we cannot continue living on illusions and I think that the simple and far-fetched reference to a micro-enterprise is similar and worse still, it contains much of that.
The new realities present us with new concepts for a dynamic present that is permanently redefined.
Argentina receives the XXI century fragmented, with the majority of its Argentines impoverished and postponed, mainly due to the absence of more or less forceful political decisions and reflected in the budget in terms of social investment and now with the 'corset' of the fiscal convertibility law for a zero-based budget, (Law 25152).
Development:
In this context, the Micro-Entrepreneurship Sector has proven to be an adequate channel to empower women and men, to favor their participation in the decisions that affect their lives, to allow them to increase their strengths and assets, the latter linked in a kind of economic financial analogy, to social capital, human capital and physical capital, putting capacities into operation and contributing to social integration.
In it, the term: 'associativity' is key to understanding contacts and social networks of microentrepreneurs, networks that are relevant to enhance their economic activity.
The network is the wealth or poverty of parental, friendly, socio-emotional and instrumental ties -of work, study, club, politics, neighborhood, etc..-, not being strange that the latter become friends or socio-affective.
The social network is an informal mechanism that allows: a) to survive; b) expand the universe of social and economic exchanges, (Powell and Smith-Doerr, 1994). They are also processes of reciprocal exchanges that operate on the basis of bonds of trust, making it possible to integrate into society, the economy and culture. They are 'very relevant elements of social capital' (Lomnitz, 1998; Putnam, 1995).
For an outcast, their (alternative) social network has to enable a social mechanism for daily survival.
For the simple proletariat, social networks have to provide access to the formal market.
As for the microenterprise, if it were or were conceived only linked to that permanent unit of production, trade or provision of services organized by a single person, it would not in principle be a "desirable" objective for a social employment policy or production per case. For the rest, their 'mortality' is eight out of ten.
On the other hand, we are not satisfied with the micro-entrepreneurial strategies that are being implemented by the SME and Employment Secretariats of the Nation as well as other provincial and municipal ones, insofar as they lack the information, skills, competencies and minimal and comprehensive strategies for sustained micro-entrepreneurial development, they disdain or ignore comparative advantages or indigenous wealth.
Among other reasons, ignorance in markets, which is the same as saying, absence of 'applied market intelligence', seems key to us to explain and predict this mortality and even greater, since without customers and with frenzied, capricious and extravagantly changing demands, negative results are more than predictable.
Without ruling out the sole proprietorship, we think of those urban and rural microenterprises (eg, the fifths of the green belt, enterprises such as the Lonardi workshop for incenses, plate doors, etc.; our small and more immediate minifundios) that generate jobs, production, productivity, sustained growth, social progress leaving behind poverty and marginality with successive inclusive dynamics.
Many policies have consistently made a serious mistake. In effect, they have ignored or broken incipient indigenous networks, thus causing the withdrawal of support from the local sector and the even failure of "productive and insertion or reintegration" programs and policies.
This is serious insofar as cultural patterns help to build and significantly mediate the action systems through which social capital is also invested.
For this reason, cultural models will constitute mediation factors between government intervention and the initial stock of social, economic and cultural capital that exists as a 'baseline' at the beginning of the microproject to be developed.
In light of art. 75 inc. 19 of our Magna Carta, the transformation of capital -as an asset- to invested capital must be reproduced in progress and well-being for the community and finally achieve the human development of its inhabitants, of its members.
For that, the networks, the ties of trust of the organizations are not realized as capital if there is not a social actor that 'invests' said capital through a comprehensive strategy and this means 'firing' the capacities and competences of the çapital Social.
Our bill has contemplated a Level A that represents the minimum level of subsistence income, necessary to ensure the «basic physical needs» in terms of food, clothing, medicines, housing in order to make sure of having a 'continuous survival '.
This requires an integrated method of poverty measurement that seriously makes it possible to approach its reality, diagnose deficiencies, and guide social programs with better prognoses.
Let us also say that due to budget deficiencies or scientific deficiencies, rural poverty tends to be overestimated. Solidarity networks beyond the family, and, in general, the action system, are not considered. Likewise, there is a tendency to equate needs that are different in geographical and socio-cultural contexts.
In addition, the traditional vision of poverty has been overcome, which now considers 'capacities', 'competences' and potentialities. For this reason, that of «empowering women and men, ensuring their participation in the decisions that affect their lives and allowing them to increase their strengths and assets (UNDP, 1997).
Indeed, 'human poverty is linked to the idea of capabilities' (A. Sen).
Income must be considered as means and not as ends.
Thus, and given the multiple and complex nature of poverty, its non-reductibility to the income dimension, it is necessary for all programming, evaluation and monitoring of social policies to be reviewed and adequate in order to assume the notions of capacities and social capital. involving the recipients themselves.
The microenterprise is in the idea of self-development (a concept associated with self-reliance), a complementary notion to which we have been referring, as a lever and spring for true human development. It assumes, as a fundamental principle, that every human being, based on their self-esteem, is endowed with energies and capacities and that their development depends on the way in which they are awakened, encouraged, stimulated, supported and increased, (art. 23 SMEs Law).
Regarding the evaluation of the project, centrally of its objective, of its impacts (social, economic, technological, landscape…), frequently, the quality of the product is at least as important as the quantity.
The evaluation guidelines must integrate the characteristics of the executor and those of the beneficiaries or of the locality, assigning its real importance to the municipality in such a case using qualitative indicators in measuring the impact on the recipients, on the territory, observing-visualizing the alternatives of offers and demands, the medium and long term, the progressive self-financing and formalization of the enterprise, the global and disaggregated benefit of each productive project.
We understand that advancing policies and programs that promote equity is an absolutely complementary imperative to programs focused on sectors of poverty.
The social costs that resulted from relying only on the market are too high and implied a clear and clear polarization between winners and losers and the deactivation of inter-class solidarity.
To face the trade-off between the level of employment and inequality, it is necessary to resort to social investment strategies with the precautions that we put in this report, as well as the permanent auditing of the spirit, characters and effective and verifiable purposes of the programs and policies.
Therefore, all social policy must be directed in favor of active programs of job creation and training, education, permanent reconversion and 'labor reintegration' as autonomously as possible to the socio-productive system.
Therefore, equity and inclusion must be the north, they are objectives for a necessary task and an ethical imperative in the face of the unequal distribution of income, goods, knowledge and power that are directly related to the reproduction of poverty.
In Córdoba, through Law 8804 it adhered to Law 24885 which has to do with a National Program for Regional Development and Employment Generation such as the implementation of the Federal Trust Fund for Regional Infrastructure. This seems to us, in principle, a useful normative tool as long as it is accompanied by the political decision and the corresponding budget item, serving in any case for a first discussion of the issue.
Indeed, despite the degree to which the emerging world forces of openness and globalization diminish national, provincial and municipal autonomy, one of the most important conclusions of the comparative studies carried out and instrumented by the Research Institute for Social Development of the United Nations Organization (UNRISD) is that the political and institutional mechanisms for the representation of diverse interests and the formation of political consensus greatly affect the management of welfare, employment and growth objectives.
Analyzing the specific and normative experiences in micro-entrepreneurship, there is an overlap of efforts and a notable lack of coordination that is highly onerous and uneconomic, a true luxury that in no way can we afford today together with the 'budget veto' on art. 23 of the SME law.
Argentina for many decades has depended to a great extent on the export of grains and meat, which has represented a more than significant percentage of the total exports of our country. This has generated a situation of vulnerability in the face of different external shocks (tequila, Asian, Russian, Brazilian crisis) that directly affect -along with protectionism and subsidies- our prices, our companies in any of their dimensions- our fiscal income, leaving us in some cases with »African indices'.
All this generates cuts in 'social investment' causing strong restrictions in demand and economic recession, which lead to disastrous experiences for our economy, the recession produces deflation reducing the purchasing power of people and pressing the need - every day more forceful- of better conditions to moderate and reduce this unevenness of the economy and to satisfy the needs common to Argentines and Latin Americans, which are increasingly larger and less covered.
One strategy is the microenterprise with demonstrated capacity at different times and scenarios to reactivate the productive apparatus, the main source of work in developing countries and the origin of current medium and large companies.
This is the moment of the great warning. The microenterprise must overcome the state of affairs that accessible occupation supposes, through microenterprise programs 'scientifically illiterate, improvised, clientelistic', for those who have just entered the productive system, young people, women, migrants and immigrants and for those who must reinsert or consolidate.
The caveat, the burning question is whether these jobs do not end up becoming dead ends, that is, whether the microenterprise strategy does not ultimately promote a new type of chronically impoverished post-industrial proletariat.
In other words, we would be facing the second generation of excluded (remiseros, kioskos, greengrocers, etc…) but who, in this case, due to lack of qualification or orientation of productive programs, squandered compensation resulting from massive layoffs, 'voluntary' withdrawals, reforms, restructurings, etc.
Studies on this subject are still very rudimentary but, without a doubt, today, education and knowledge qualify and requalify, ensuring certain possibilities of labor and social mobility, ascending.
Unskilled workers are at high risk of remaining trapped in poverty.
Hence the transcendent role of a social investment strategy if it is desired to avoid the emergence of a new proletariat of destitute workers.
The recession and some 'Mercosur externalities' have had a significant impact on employment and to a lesser extent on the rate of change in prices and this has had a negative impact on consumption and public spending.
The Economically Active Population manifests itself more fully during economic downturns, due -in part- to growing participation needs to respond in some -and diverse- way to the decrease in family income.
The population employed in the formal sector is decreasing daily and the informal sector of work - officially admitted - already represents 40% and we have fallen into double-digit structural unemployment that is impossible to drill.
To this must be added that, in today's globally integrated open economies, many of the premises that supported the construction of social security systems in the postwar period no longer seem valid.
Today it is impossible to achieve non-inflationary growth driven by demand in a single country and it will be services rather than industry that should ensure full employment.
Furthermore, the rate of aging of the population is rapidly increasing, the traditional family based on the income of a male head of the family is in some decline, and life patterns in general are changing and diversifying to the point that, You can argue that today, not always, the head of the family is the main provider for the home.
The high degree of economic concentration is already considering alternatives and strategies in the face of the sharp decrease in consumption and other variables produced by the indicated recession, massive layoffs and a certain and particular engineering in the public administration that in this of 'copying' the private it has committed the most varied blunders, erring -among other things- of its own and autonomous scenarios and logics reached by bureaucracies, already true perennial informal institutions.
Thus, a large part of the economically active population is unemployed and without horizons or job prospects in the formal sector, which in turn, demands higher qualifications every day, stratifying until stigmatizing the labor market and consequently the social structure in which It could no longer be considered a logic of fuzzy sets but, rather, Aristotelian or dichotomous.
It is that the combination of high unemployment with rapid growth in the informal sector and a continuous contraction in real wages and incomes with overlapping increases in basic services, have produced significant levels of traditional and modern poverty in our country.
The decade of the 80s is pointed out as the one in which self-employment has been the form of occupation that experienced the fastest increase.
For example, the Danish government, in order to stimulate jobless work in personal services, has launched a subsidy program that covers 20% to 30% of a regular salary, that is, a guaranteed temporary minimum income for people who want to be self-employed, England, applying taxes on the profits of privatized companies, did the same and Cavallo-Beliz's proposal to access the Autonomous Municipality of the City of Buenos Aires contained a similar offer on its platform.
In a certain sense, what thus arises is also a new definition of social policy according to the life cycle, which recognizes that the current transformation of the family, jobs, migration and immigration pose new risks and needs. throughout the active adult phase of an individual's life.
Thus, it will not be difficult to find this reflected in the emergence of permanent adult retraining, education and retraining programs.
Clearly, the poverty problem associated with the "low-wage" strategy is concentrated in easily vulnerable clienteles such as unskilled workers and single-parent households.
In the short term, risk can be lessened by propping up income maintenance programs, but if low wages remain the only option in the face of dependency on care, this will undoubtedly nourish poverty traps.
It seems obvious then that an active social investment strategy will be needed in the long term if it is to prevent a spiral of growing poverty from taking place. Thus, a flexible salary strategy could be much less damaging if systematically associated with an active program of training and continuous productive retraining.
They are not isolated events that both men, men and women, are in the unavoidable and urgent obligation, very difficult to work 'on their own' and forge the necessary mechanisms to cover basic physical needs.
In this way, it is for this very reason to rethink strategies to reduce the level of unemployment and unemployment, promoting instruments suitable for such purposes.
Conclusion:
Our 'academic offer' is "the micro-enterprise for the countryside and the city."
The objective of the project is to detect and promote entrepreneurs, it is also to contribute to the reduction of poverty and peripheral and rural smallholder postponement, particularly that of women and young people.
For this, it is essential to overcome discourse, short-termism and avoid unfair competition with medium and large sectors by implementing positive discriminations of promotion for small enterprises, administrative simplification, municipal tax and service recategorization, promoting reciprocal guarantee societies or funds for facilitate access to productive credit in a reasonable and responsible way to ensure that the Municipality gradually, gradually and in an orderly fashion finally provides the microenterprise sector with a productive space, park or pole with all the necessary infrastructure and links with the external sector.
Otherwise, it will not be possible to generate serious social employment policies directed at the center of social capital, capital that is the capacity of a group, a family to undertake joint works pursuing common objectives, revaluing the human dimension of development.
We must comply with the fiscal convertibility law (25152), which prohibits the creation of new funds or organizations not contemplated in the budget. For this, it is inescapable to recover large funds such as those of the Federal Solidarity Program 'Pro-Sol', those of Foncap, etc., as long as they have been distorted, distracted or loaned for patronage.
The current National Administration without spending a penny will be able to decisively boost urban and rural microenterprises; You can also complete the mandatory mandate of art. 23 PYMES Law 24467 which prescribes: "The national State will continue to implement and develop credit and training tools specifically aimed at micro enterprises." (Sic).
The urban and rural microenterprise will then be a complementary and interactive strategy with the still pending 'public social investment'. This is so because the development of micro-enterprises is only one way -not the way- to attack unemployment and alleviate social policies, having manifested itself as a satisfactory instance to solve the unemployment -also- of professionals, technicians and skilled labor. The latter and nothing else is the current 'national Gordian knot': what to do with the unemployed, the excluded, the marginalized, the excluded, which is the same as saying, what to do with internal vulnerability.
Within the elements of an active economic policy to articulate the informal sector with the regular economy of the country and the region, measures should be found aimed at improving access to productive resources, including credit and the training that constitute the central point, the key to microenterprise programs.
In our case, it is to activate art. 23 of the SMEs law with strong political decisions.
Indeed, one of the main problems that artisans, smallholders, and small entrepreneurs face is the lack of resources to finance their projects. However, the Inter-American Development Bank has launched an initiative called Micro 2001, to invest US $ 500 million in projects until 2001, the objective of which is to improve microfinance programs (for example, those of the Federal Investment Council, of some national and provincial NGOs) and develop new financial programs for microentrepreneurs.
This initiative seeks to absorb the greatest possible unsatisfied demand of the unemployed and provide them with the best levels of occupation and employment.
Our legislative offer aims to create legal standards and optimal conditions to generate legal certainty and financing plans so that those economic units whose levels of assets and the number of employees require help to grow as entrepreneurs are also strengthened, overcoming the approach merely social until reaching one of human-economic development.
This makes municipal, provincial and national support absolutely pertinent for a necessary and satisfactory initiative in critical moments of structural unemployment, marginalization, the excluded and destitute and the true bankruptcy of traditional social policies.
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