Government video promoting poverty as a way of life circulates on social networks – Government says its not theirs.

Government video promoting poverty circulates on social networks – Government says it is false.

MEXICO (Times Media Mexico) – The video talks about Baja California South and the fact that the population “has found happiness in austerity.” AMLO’s statements, however, it wasn’t broadcast on the social networks of dependence.

The video lasts about a minute. The government claims it is not theirs and that the “Welfare Secretariat” did not share it on its social networks. The video was shared among social network users.

Thousands of people made severe criticisms regarding the content, which assures that “our wealth as a people must be measured in our assets as it was done in the neoliberal period,” where even a cartoon appears evoking the former president, Carlos Salinas. Some people claim the video is real but leaked. After receiving such amount of criticisms, the government decided to deny its origin.

The video says in Spanish: “People no longer find happiness in luxury, the new car, the big house, or the big tv screen. Mexico has found happiness in austerity, in what is essential, in what is worthwhile, which is the wealth of the soul. Today, South Californians are a people who fight for social justice, coexistence, and well-being what is essential and not superfluous.” the video continues. “As a people, our wealth should not be measured from our assets as it was in the neoliberal period. The South Californians are more than that; we are a people of solidarity, a people who are an example of austerity and values”. Finally, the voice-over points out. “The new reality demands that the South Californians make sacrifices that we never imagined, but that make us a virtuous people”.

The video was released after Lopez Obrador announced he is working on developing an index that measures the welfare of the population, an alternative to that which regulates the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and which, among other parameters, will include the degree of happiness of Mexicans.

This idea is not new. Hugo Chavez, in the past the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez expressed it in a broadcast of his program ‘Aló Presidente.’ “How can you not measure time, the time of life, the time that a people dedicates to culture, as part of a product? The time people devote to international solidarity. How can you not measure it? As a product of those people. Ah, no, you only measure the commodity, capitalism. We have to create a new method to measure the national product, individual product, social product, economical product; not everything is monetizable,” said the late dictator.

At a press conference, the head of the Mexican federal executive said he is developing a new index. AMLO states that after the emergency of the Covid-19 pandemic, welfare cannot continue to be measured in the same way.

“I am now working on an index to measure welfare, an alternative index to the so-called Gross Domestic Product; I will present it, a new parameter, which will measure, yes growth, but also welfare, also degrees of social inequality, it will be accepted if there is growth and there is less inequality, and another ingredient in this new parameter, in this new paradigm, the happiness of the people”.

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