And in case you were wondering: yes, he was inaugurated at the top of the inflation rate, when they had a hyperinflation brewing up. 5 months later, inflation is well under control.
Austerity is certainly painful for the people who are affected (which is not even close to being all the people), but the culprit is not the one who is doing the austerity, but the ones who screwed up the economy in such a drastic way that it has to be done.
Unfortunately, he has only 3 years to go. That might not be long enough for people to realize all the good he will have done by then.
So he’s improved macroeconomic indicators which are in no way a predictor of how things are for people in the streets using policies which have failed long-term in other countries to which they have been applied. Got it.
The time he has left is not a problem though - if these policies and the chainsaw are indeed the panacea they purport to be, I’m sure people will elect Milei’s anointed successor by a landslide in the understanding that they’d continue with the same policies.
> I’m sure people will elect Milei’s anointed successor by a landslide in the understanding that they’d continue with the same policies.
Your abundance of faith in the people is uplifting, but I'm a bit more sceptical. I've seen various peoples around this planet do the same mistake: 1) things go bad, 2) people vote in those who can fix it, 3) things are fixed, 4) people vote the other guys again, 5) goto 1
Then again, it was (mostly) the same argentinian people who voted him in in the first place, so perhaps they can do it.
I was being sarcastic :) in reality I think he’ll be voted out at the earliest opportunity if social protests don’t topple him before then (it happened before - remember De La Rúa?)
57% sounds really bad until you read the article and see that it never went below 40 over last 5 years and last quarter is already back at 49% .
Also this gem
> "Since this government came to power, jobs have dropped away. We work twice as hard for less and we have to keep going," said Casal, who has 14 children and 42 grandchildren
Nobody cares about baity articles. There has been an absolute massive drop in standard of living and the government continues to artificially intervene in the exchange market. Real cost of living has gone up by 1/3 for the middle class at the least.
Nobody who lives here will tell you anything has gotten better in this time. I have never in my entire life seen a team of complete dimwits at the helm of this country, regardless of ideology.
Yeah, when a meme economy (i.e. Advanced/Developing/Japan/Argentina) going through huge change, sometimes number stop being useful. Sometimes you just need to see what it's like on the ground, i.e. selling morsels of prepackaged food. People can argue correction neccessary, but this level?
I literally live here. The drop in quality of public services is throughly unjustified.
A madman who believes firefighting services should be privatized and who has not shown the least concern about the fact that these policies are measurably increasing food insecurity among children has no place governing.
(Anectodal) Rent around here in europe literally doubled. Groceries shopping are way higher too. That's the consequence of globally printing our problems away and waging random wars.
The drop in standards was to be expected given the terrible situation Argentina was.
Hopefully it gets better in a few years.
My fear was that Milei would turn out to be another puppet giving hope to people and not doing anything, but it seems he's been doing some proper haircuts, which were long overdue.
Argentina was one of the wealthies countries in the world before decades of drifting into socialism.
> Argentina was one of the wealthies countries in the world before decades of drifting into socialism.
These sort of ridiculous, ignorant statements that have neither a clue of what Argentina used to be like, what it was in recent times, and what socialism actually means are the reason why Milei can lure gullible morons.
Their government was deeply unsustainable. There was no way they were going to be able to support that quality of living in the long term without defaulting on their debts or eroding away welfare through inflation.
They are choosing to rip of the bandaid all at once. And yeah it's going to suck for a while as their economy reorganizes itself.
Milei's plans are incredibly ambitious, and I don't know the chances that it will actually be pulled off, but I wish the country luck.
It is of course important to give people no time to reorganize, it will put enough stress on people to render them useless. You wont magically create jobs for everyone - all of a sudden. The logical outcome is poverty and no one to help you while you seek work as they are scrambling themselves. The end product is a person you wouldn't want to employ.
It's going to suck for much longer than it should have. He might have destroyed the potential for reorganization.
I really wanted to see the experiment work out but the data is ruined now.
-14% consumer purchases across the board over last years.
-25% in medicine purchases since the beginning of the year.
Largest drop in meat consumption ever recorded in the last 50 years.
Mass exodus of scientists due to the complete defunding of state research in critical areas.
One of the largest forest fires going on with the national government not providing any assistance, something that no historical precedent, because the president doesn't believe in the state doing anything about it.
The theory is rent control tends to reduce the desire for building more units. Not unfounded as who would build more and you ability to move with the market is hindered. Thus creating in a weird way more scarcity. If there is one that can drive prices up very nicely, its scarcity.
Not only that, it also creates an incentive for renters to hold on to units they do not need anymore, because if they forego the lease then the next renter will get much higher rent (and so will they, at their new place). So they keep it, just in case.
It should be noted that the rent control laws in particular were pretty egregious. Mandatory 3 year terms. And inflation was so high that landlords had to set insane numbers to justify the contracts.
I suspect that what you saw was a lot of "informal" housing inventory that was being kept off-market was put on the market for the first time.
I wouldn't expect this to be stable in the long run. This is a more efficient market now, and if it's cheaper and easier to find housing in the city... that's going to bring more people to the city.
28 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 63.5 ms ] threadAnd in case you were wondering: yes, he was inaugurated at the top of the inflation rate, when they had a hyperinflation brewing up. 5 months later, inflation is well under control.
Austerity is certainly painful for the people who are affected (which is not even close to being all the people), but the culprit is not the one who is doing the austerity, but the ones who screwed up the economy in such a drastic way that it has to be done.
Unfortunately, he has only 3 years to go. That might not be long enough for people to realize all the good he will have done by then.
The time he has left is not a problem though - if these policies and the chainsaw are indeed the panacea they purport to be, I’m sure people will elect Milei’s anointed successor by a landslide in the understanding that they’d continue with the same policies.
Your abundance of faith in the people is uplifting, but I'm a bit more sceptical. I've seen various peoples around this planet do the same mistake: 1) things go bad, 2) people vote in those who can fix it, 3) things are fixed, 4) people vote the other guys again, 5) goto 1
Then again, it was (mostly) the same argentinian people who voted him in in the first place, so perhaps they can do it.
https://apnews.com/article/argentina-poverty-levels-uca-stud...
> Winter deepens misery for Argentina's poor following Milei's financial cuts
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/winter-deepens-misery...
Yeah, real "great". As long as you don't care about your fellow humans.
Also this gem
> "Since this government came to power, jobs have dropped away. We work twice as hard for less and we have to keep going," said Casal, who has 14 children and 42 grandchildren
Nobody who lives here will tell you anything has gotten better in this time. I have never in my entire life seen a team of complete dimwits at the helm of this country, regardless of ideology.
https://www.tiktok.com/@metatktk/video/7411728372771900677
A madman who believes firefighting services should be privatized and who has not shown the least concern about the fact that these policies are measurably increasing food insecurity among children has no place governing.
The drop in standards was to be expected given the terrible situation Argentina was. Hopefully it gets better in a few years.
My fear was that Milei would turn out to be another puppet giving hope to people and not doing anything, but it seems he's been doing some proper haircuts, which were long overdue.
Argentina was one of the wealthies countries in the world before decades of drifting into socialism.
These sort of ridiculous, ignorant statements that have neither a clue of what Argentina used to be like, what it was in recent times, and what socialism actually means are the reason why Milei can lure gullible morons.
They are choosing to rip of the bandaid all at once. And yeah it's going to suck for a while as their economy reorganizes itself.
Milei's plans are incredibly ambitious, and I don't know the chances that it will actually be pulled off, but I wish the country luck.
It's going to suck for much longer than it should have. He might have destroyed the potential for reorganization.
I really wanted to see the experiment work out but the data is ruined now.
-25% in medicine purchases since the beginning of the year.
Largest drop in meat consumption ever recorded in the last 50 years.
Mass exodus of scientists due to the complete defunding of state research in critical areas.
One of the largest forest fires going on with the national government not providing any assistance, something that no historical precedent, because the president doesn't believe in the state doing anything about it.
Some more discussion earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41659220
I suspect that what you saw was a lot of "informal" housing inventory that was being kept off-market was put on the market for the first time.
I wouldn't expect this to be stable in the long run. This is a more efficient market now, and if it's cheaper and easier to find housing in the city... that's going to bring more people to the city.