I don’t see a single word in this article about how Argentinians are are benefiting.
Maybe the bit about falling rent prices, but if they’re really building that quickly, I have deep concerns about quality. The residential buildings I’ve seen in central and southern America look like deathtraps in a fire or earthquake.
It’s an opinion piece. When it all falls apart this guy will be nowhere to be found. It’s not his ass on the line.
That’s because the Telegraph is a very right wing rag
I wouldn’t dismiss the region so easily, Santiago can routinely take 5.+ earthquakes in a city of 6m people and laugh about it because their buildings are designed and built to so.
Dropping inflation?
Inflation is falling, but It hasn’t fall to prior milei times yet. The situations is strange, but in general, we are waiting (or hoping, idk anymore) that it will continue going down. Strange thing to see, bank investment rates (idk the correct term in english) are going down and are lower for longer investment periods. Some prices have skyrocketed for the working class* (gas, electricity) and other are either in the same place as 3 months ago or plummeting (food, general goods, misc.).
Most of the fuzz heard on the news are policitally guided, which is sad cause this truly means that at the end we just dont care about anything anymore.
*dont even think that the working class is the lower class here, if a real crisis really hits that lower piece of the cake, we are all done, with the lunatic of milei and the freaking nazicommunists of the kirchners included.
I can’t imagine having inflation approaching 300%. We peaked at 9% two years ago and we’re still coping with the effects. I believe “interest rate” is the term you were looking for.
With 10% annually, it just affects your long term plans. Both prices and sallaries are kind of adjusted in the way, but you still manage to think about making a small vacation or something. Here most people is not “financially formed” and would “invest” in things that just hold their value. Think of buying gold per Kg with any remaining dollars you have.
With 10% monthly you are pretty much fried cause you truly dont know what is going to happen in the next month. Prices kind of lose meaning and you start to be more attentive on basic needs. The milk is 2k AR$. Is it much? Idk, but I need it, so i buy it.
I never experienced 10% daily (my parents did), but i feel that it is still somehow better. With that rate the economy just crashes, debts are pardon, schools make exceptions, healthcare just works. Its a terrible mess, but it has an end… or so they say.
Is it common for wages and contracts get pinned to inflation rates, so, e.g., union workers get automatic raises each paycheck to keep pace?
Its common between “legal workers”. I, for instance usually get a rise per year, but if inflation rate surpases certain level, the rise is either renegotiated or just adjusted by inflation. It helps but it always falls behind inflation. 2 years ago i was earning like 200k AR$ monthly (roughly 600 US$ in black market currency), now im doing 850k AR$ (roughly 850 US$ BM, it was 600US$ pre milei) + 115k AR$ with a second job.
Im not unionized.
A big chunk of Argentina’s workers are non legal ones (usually the worker gets either a bigger pay or gets to keep universal income for non-employment and the employer avoids some taxes). I dont know what they do on those cases.
Edit: inb4, unions are great. People should be unionized. Im against unions in Argentina though, most of them have become a mafia in every sense of the word.
The guy sucks, but the previous left administration drove the economy into the ground. Poverty rose from around 45% to around 55%, and inflation went from around 25% to 288%.
We on the left need to be economically savvy. That doesn’t mean we can’t be radical. For example: A hundred different means-tested, bureaucratic welfare programs is progressive but inefficient and demeaning. A universal livable basic income is radical, liberating, and economically savvy. Rent control is another example of a popular leftist policy that is economically irrational. The goal of universal affordable housing is admirable, but the method is madness. It’s unfortunate that the left abhors anti-intellectualism everywhere except in economics.
This is not to say that we need to embrace neoliberal corporatist bullshit like charter schools, universal privatization, gutting regulatory agencies, etc, etc. It’s just recognizing that radical goals will not be achieved by ignoring hardwon economic knowledge, but by employing economic principles for the benefit of the poor instead of the wealthy.
Thank you for your nuanced take.
I know it’s the Telegraph, but considering Milei also wants to take the Falklands back, I think they’ve forgotten where their loyalties lie.
No it isn’t. Go farm sheep elsewhere.
Rude.
