Under Argentina’s New President, Fuel Is Up 60%, and Diaper Prices Have Doubled
Javier Milei warned that things would get worse before they got better. Now Argentines are living it.
I think so far this is what people wanted: end the status quo and apply shock therapy.
His supporters hope that in the long run the economy will become independent and the country would come out of the never ending crisis. My guess is that everything will simply end up owned by private interests and while (best case scenario) the economy will do better, people will suffer even more.
ugh welcome to earth where the only way to have a healthy "economy" is for people to suffer. but we cant seem to just live in peace and help eachother out without monetary benefits. so people are forced to suffer because of greedy bastards.
LETS GO WE NAILED IT GUYS
Yeah, because Friedman's free market shock doctrine shit just isn't working.
Free market regulating itself is the next bullshit argument
They privatized many of the highways and you have to pass through toll booths every so often as ownership changes. These people provide no service, there are just taking the money. Same with much of the transit—many buses and trains are privately (mafia) owned.
This is just the price the poor are going to have to pay while the rich get to loot the country.
"some of you may die, but thats a sacrifice im willing to make"
The poor are kept poor by being unable to even buy a pc... 200% import tax on electronics is the WORSE YOU CAN DO TO NORMAL PEOPLE.
Because inflation has absolutely no bearing on poor people's silver linings.
He did say he would apply shock therapy to the economy. He never mentioned if the economy would come out alive.
Tankie much?
Who could've guessed that a rightwing government wouldn't solve their issues (which were originally caused by rightwing policies)?
No, you are lying. Argentinas problems do not originate from right wing policies but from over protectionism
which were originally caused by rightwing policies
Such as...
The implosion of Argentina is a very complex issue, but, essentially, the country allowed itself to be informally dollarized and ceded control over most of its industries to international (read corporativist) interests. When Perón restructured the country, it was done with a limited scope and with relatively short term changes, causing their economy to collapse again later (it doesn't help that Brazil, a powerful potential ally, had undergone a rightwing U.S.-backed coup at the time). Then, the whole Falklands/Malvinas war happened, all rightwing bullshit, and the country still hasn't bounced back.
The previous leftist government had used complicated currency controls, consumer subsidies and other measures to inflate the peso’s official value and keep several key prices artificially low, including for gas, transportation and electricity.
Yea devaluing peso from 360 for a dollar to 790 for a dollar instantly meanwhile is such a big brain play.
there is no such thing as a 'natural' price. every price is artificial. OPEC is literally a cartel ffs. The concept of 'artificial' pricing is so libertarian brained.
The invisible hand of Chicago School pseudoscience.
A Mileista friend of mine keep complaining about 140% of inflation a year for the past government, but now that yhey had like 300% in a week suddenly is ok and is just the true price of everything. Of course he dosen't live in Argentina and dosen't has his salary cut by a third in a week so it's ok.
Always the gusanos living outside their countries that back their right-wing nutcases the hardest
I think in his bigbrain libertarian mind, the money market pricing of the peso to usd is what defined the value previously and he decided that the market's pricing is not correct for that of the Argentinian currency.
By devaluing the currency, it makes Argentinian labor and goods comparatively cheaper on the international market. This is a similar move to how China grew at such a tremendous rate in the 90's - they intentionally devalued their currency in order to use foreign investment in their relatively cheap labor pool to fund the creation of their manufacturing industries.
That solution probably won't work here, though. Corporations are scared of investing in countries with unstable political leadership that performs brash actions like his. (Libertarian economics cannot account for such beliefs though since everyone must be a perfectly rational actor that chooses price above all). They are afraid that he may unilaterally nationalize certain industries and claim all assets for the state. Or he may rugpull outside investments and say that all profits must go to the state for some amount of time. Whatever flavor of stupid chainsaw wielding antics he comes up with one day is what they will see and use as a justifiable rationalization for not investing in the devalued market of Argentina.
I think in his bigbrain libertarian mind, the money market pricing of the peso to usd is what defined the value previously and he decided that the market’s pricing is not correct for that of the Argentinian currency.
You're half right here. The idea is that the black market Peso:USD price represents the actual real value of the Peso, while the government's official rate was miles away from this and completely divorced from reality and only remotely sustainable by endless amounts of borrowing, price controls, and money printing, which just contributes to worsening the problem. The hope is that a necessary but painful adjustment to the actual economic reality will eventually provide the stability necessary for real growth.
A smart government will know that, if you want to actually pull this kind of thing off, you need to do everything possible to make the transition as minimally painful as possible and do what you can to help protect the most vulnerable. We'll see how Millei does, but I can't say I'm exactly confident.
Every time I see that phrase it makes my eye twitch. ALL pricing is artificial. Always. No exceptions.
There's a meaningful difference between a government arbitrarily mandating a price and buyers and sellers reaching an equilibrium, whatever you want to label it.
You can say that price controls are worth it in some cases, and plenty of economists would agree with that, but they do come with consequences compared to raw market prices, and we shouldn't ignore that, whatever label we want to use.
there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ price.
Have you seen a middle-eastern market? Of the kind where they bargain. Like in fairy-tales.
That's how markets actually look in the wild.
And the natural price is the mathematical expectation of the price you get by bargaining.
It's very simple and in this particular case "mainstream" economics and libertarian economics get along pretty well.
no. because the prices are influenced by external factors. i live in a country where markets like these exist and the price is not 'natural' in any way, in an idealized world maybe but not in reality.
firstly, transporting any commodity (and inputs such as fertilizers) requires fuel and fuel prices aren't determined by such idealized markets you mentioned, its determined by what cartels and oligopolies want it to be. you are also ignoring subsides, not just by the national governments but foreign governments. for example, developed countries provide a shit ton of subsidies which pull down prices in the international markets, without restrictions and tariffs these displace local production.
there is also the fact that food prices are very inelastic, the seller can push prices very high and the consumer will be forced to accept it because you can't live without food.
i dont really get the middle eastern market you are mentioning because in reality there is absolutely price discrimination going on.
Diaper prices have doubled
I hate to defend the libertarian, but nobody could have forseen the IDF suddenly buying up the world's supply of diapers for their troops in Gaza.
sorry, it's been a bit since i've been to the news mega
what?
There's a meme subtitle of a Hamas statement which says IDF soldiers wear diapers into battle. I speak zero Arabic, so I assume that it's just a funny subtitle and not a real statement idk.
offtopic: A bit of advice on your nickname - it's "desantnik" in Russian.
death to america
I didn’t know that this was a thing and a now horrified.
Libertarians around the world like AKTCHUALLY this is good for Argentinians! Nobody being able to afford goods and services is the cornerstone of a healthy society! I am very smart!
Idk what you're talking about my guy. Pretty sure numbers going up is a good thing for the economy 🤷
Is everything more expensive, or just fossil fuels and disposable diapers?
If a coin gets devaluation, everything else to the coin becomes more expensive, so yes.
For example: If 100 pesos was worth 1 euro, but through devaluation 200 pesos is now 1 euro, an Argentinian would have to pay up double the amount for the same thing in euro's. So international import is hard because everything from all over the world just got so much more expensive, but export 'should' be easy, because all your domestic products are worth so much less to produce.
I think fossil fuels and diapers just got even more expensive than that, but I don't know why. (I'm bad at economics)
Fossiel fuels are the base for the price of basically everything else. If gas is expensive, transportation costs are goi to be expensive and the products are going to reflect that.
I can't believe this is happening. There was no possible way to have seen this coming from a man who cosplays as "General AnCap". I'm just beyond floored that this man could do something bad to an economy.
Dude you are a moron if you think argentina was going well. They went from 4% poverty just 15 years ago to 35% (of population living on less as 5$/day) now. Thats LEFT WING GOVERNMENTS
Who would've known, the man that made it so people can get their salary in jugs of milk is a complete idiot.
Don't be so quick to judge. The people who wisely chose to get paid in diapers just had their wages doubled.
Only if they can find idiots willing to trade with them
Not correct. He's trying to undo fifteen years of lunatic tankies stealing money. The country is BANKRUPT. two times over. He's doing his best. Even tho he has old fashioned dumb religious ideas, you do NOT know what one hundred percent inflation EACH YEAR FOR A DECADE does to people. Argentinians are now waiters in Mexico and Ecuador.... They fled because of Kirchner making the country into a mud pool of corruption and freeloaders
If this keeps up I'll have to stop shitting myself.
Don't you dare
I'm guessing it will not stop him from shitting on his citizens.
You can't stopp the plopp
Install a bidet already, instead of smearing your shit all over your cheeks
It's beginning to look like Venezuela but with libertarians. It's quicker than I thought.
No it isn’t. Venezuela is one of the most sanctioned nations in the world.
Venezuela's economic crisis really began after oil prices fell drastically in 2014 and the west used Chavez's death/Maduro's election to increase pressure on the country via sanctions which for example made buying parts to maintain oil refineries difficult. Before that, it was doing about as well, or better (of course, failing to become independent from oil exports) compared to the other countries in Latin America.
Argentina was already in a crisis for the last ...20 years-ish, but this acceleration of the crisis happened in a week even as Milei backpedaled on some potentially damaging promises like cutting trade with China.
Venezueal is a locked country that's sanctioned to hell, Argentina is about to break incompetence records not ever seen before
If you think that you are under 20 or have been living under a rock.
And they are doing it all by themselves, no sanctions required.
Hell no. For Argentina to look like Venezuela, inflation must be 100,000%. I wish I was exaggerating. 1 USD is 40 trillion of the old Venezuelan currency pre-Chavez, the one the government has cut 9 zeroes to hide inflation ever since.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the situation in Argentina isn't looking dire.
Argentina isn't sanctioned at all lmao. Thinking Venezuela is a failure is exactly what the US and its allies want you to think with the ridiculous amount of sanctions. Can't have people see Socialism succeeding.
Argentina has been doing the venezuela way for fifteen years, WHY DO YOU THINK IT'S SO BAD NOW?
If you have never lived in a place with a DECADE of ONE HUNDRED PERCENT INFLATION PER YEAR, you should just shut up already.
That will make EVERYONE poor. No joke!
I lived in Argentina for five years. I’ve spent much time since then trying to convince people in the US that you have more rights and freedoms in Argentina. This might be changing now.
hopefully circumstances worsen quickly enough that it'll be noticable for everybody so that the general public can clearly identify it as a direct consequence of this maniac being elected. If its deteriorating too slowly people might just not notice it as much and might go along with all the coming explanations ( probably immigrants, leftists, blahblah). If there's a quick look into the abyss people might wake up and get into action.
"He also devalued the peso by 54 percent, putting the government’s exchange rate much closer to the market’s valuation."
It looks like the situation was worse all this time. The government just stopped pretending.
If there’s a quick look into the abyss people might wake up and get into action.
And vote for the politicians that gave them slow decline again...
This is the standard political cycle in Argentina, like a giant pendulum. Someone starts screaming about how they will fix everything and gets voted in. Their incompetence makes things worse and the cycle repeats with someone new.
I knew he was going to hurt Argentina badly, but I didn’t expect him to be this quick
I’m so glad Argentina pulled out from BRICS+, it would have been a drain on it
Brics hahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Where nobody trusts each other enough to even talk about one single deal.
China and India are almost at war. China will invade Russia as soon as they can to take back kamtsjatska (and they should) Etc
Look, theres a lot of reasons this guy sucks.
Increasing the costs of two things that are causing the most damange to our planet is not a reason to criticize him tho.
sure it is. removing subsidies on commodities like gas doesn't change the demand for gas, it just puts more of a burden on poor people, and doesn't matter at all to the rich who use it most. that path will only lead to backlash against green policies in general, see the yellow vest protests. in order to reduce consumption you actually need to reduce demand by giving people sustainable alternatives.
Demand elasticity is a thing. Demand won't shrink by the same ratio prices rose after removing subsidies, but it will shrink.
Response to that I can't predict, but there are places in the planet where prices are lower because of the general poverty of population and the need to still sell it, and places where prices are even higher, but most of the population can't afford fuel, I can't name.
EDIT: This was incomprehensible, sorry. I meant that in the long term prices for the consumer are going to become closer to what they were with subsidies, likely, thus the real prices - lower. The question is how bad it gets before that happens.
How the fuck do they afford subsidies? Why do you think they have been in this crisis for 30 years? It is a well educated and fairly modern society. But if you think socialist programs can be paid by borrowing money or printing money indefinitely and won't result in cronic poor outcomes then you have little understanding of basic economics.
Diapers are straight up more valuable and less dangerous than the phone you type on. Do you like Cholera outbreaks?
diapers bad
this reads like the reddit mayobrain take where they pat themselves on the back for not eating octopus because it's "smart"
You're not doing anything, you're just stretching and reaching for a bright side to make yourself look good/feel good. Plastic literally-everything-fucking-else usage (ziploc bags, garbage bags, cups, spoons, forks, condiment packets, takeout containers, grocery bags which still exist despite having been banned) is so astronomically higher than diapers that it probably makes the CO2 differential between Africa and Europe look small
diapers bad
Let me guess, you've never raised small children while also having to work full time?
Washing, boiling and drying poopy diapers is something people had the time to do back when women were expected to be full-time housewives. Unless you're proposing a drastic reduction of work hours for parents, something "just raise the price of everything" is the direct opposite of doing, you're simply cheering for life becoming harder for ordinary working class people.
You're not going to avert climate change by making things suck more for working class people. All that is going to lead to is ecofascism. A socialist alternative to climate change has to offer actual justice and a better future than the present.
I wish I could update this twice.
Increasing the costs of two things that are causing the most damange to our planet is not a reason to criticize him tho.
Common Ancapistan W
and by W he means the shape of the roads
Totally out of context title
Tankies love it.
GASOLINE was soooooo cheap with subsidies. It needs to quadruple again, at the very least. REMINDER THEY DO NOT HAVE ANY CRUDE!
Fifteen years of left wing policies printing money have left the place in literal SHAMBLES.
The official exchange rate was half of the real one.
That is NOW being FIXED.
If you do NOT KNOW ANYTHING, SHUT UP PLEASE (this is meant for the other commenters, not you)
Finally someone that understands the real situation of my devastated homeland. Liberal or not (I don’t follow any political view, I hate them, I follow the common sense and empathy) this guy was the ONLY person with enough balls to change the devastating history and future of my loved country. I don’t know what’s going to happen, I not sure what this guy is going to do in the future, but at least he is doing something. To understand the level of crisis, that’s more than enough.
Picture me surprised, he looked like a calm and rationale person
looks like someone needs to take econ 101
Yes, you.
You can't just keep printing money unless you're the USA.
The REAL exchange rate was wayyyyyy different as the official one.
GASOLINE IS IMPORTED AND WAS SOLD WITH SUBSIDIES. that can't last, as your teacher will explain in econ 101
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Mr. Galli has been trying to cut back without making life worse for his two daughters, who are 6 years and 18 months old, including switching to a cheaper brand of diapers and racing to spend his Argentine pesos before their value disintegrates even further.
“I prefer to tell you the uncomfortable truth rather than a comfortable lie,” he said in his inaugural address, adding this past week that he wanted to end the country’s “model of decline.”
The economic turmoil paved the way to the presidency for Mr. Milei, a political outsider who had spent years as an economist and television pundit railing against what he called corrupt politicians who destroyed the economy, often for personal gain.
The previous leftist government had used complicated currency controls, consumer subsidies and other measures to inflate the peso’s official value and keep several key prices artificially low, including for gas, transportation and electricity.
With the chronic high inflation, labor unions often negotiate large raises to try to keep up, yet those wage increases are quickly eaten up by sharp price hikes.
“I always say that we are at university, and every day we sit for a difficult exam, every five minutes,” said Roberto Nicolás Ormeño, an owner of El Gauchito, a small empanada shop in downtown Buenos Aires.
The original article contains 1,384 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 84%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Well, I suppose it is technically a change
For the better, since obviously the REAL EXCHANGE RATE was already around a thousand for a while.
ALL HE DID WAS MAKE THE OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL RATE MORE SIMILAR. so effectively making the illegal money changers obsolete! (and telling people to start buying food for next fw months and use the money changers to start saving in usd.
THE PESO WAS ALREADY DEAD.
ALL MILEI IS DOING IS PREPARING TO KILL IT COMPLETELY.
I LIVE IN ECUADOR. WE USE SOLELY USD.
NO INFLATION HERE!
ARGENTINA HAS HUNDREDS OF PERCENT OF INFLATION EACH YEAR!!
Makes sense, if stuff is subsidized, the government has to pay for it. If the government doesn't have money to pay for it, they'll just print it out of thin air, devaluing the currency (and thus taxing the working class).
There's gonna be a lot of pain for Argentinians in the months and years to come, hopefully it'll all be worth it...
Neoliberalism is a zombie ideology. Read a book: The Shock Doctrine
Printing money only devalues a currency when there’s no taxation to subsequently shred the money.
Second Thought: Why the Government has Infinite Money
That is not the idea that he had in mind when devaluing the currency. Instead of respecting the international money market exchange rates for USD to the Peso, he has unilaterally declared a new value which is about half of what it was before. The idea is to make Argentinian goods and labor competitive on the international market so the country can vacuum up huge sums of money from greedy investors.
That idea is dumb though because investors tend to want some kind of political stability. They will not just say "Oh I can build my widget for 30% cheaper in Argentina because of this money woo" - they will say "Oh, Argentina will probably seize my assets if we invest there because they're being run by a nutjob dictator."
The black market rate was around 1000 pesos per dollar and the official was 400. They devalued it to bring it closer to the black market one.
If the official rate meant anything, the black market one wouldn't be so drastically different.
Instead of respecting the international money market exchange rates for USD to the Peso
You're completely ignoring the black market Peso : USD conversion rate, which is even lower than what Millei has shifted things to at about 1000 pesos per dollar. The aim is to try to get the rate to actually reflect reality.
He has been in office for 2 weeks I can't imagine this is a result of his policies yet.
Those actually sound like good things, but not because this guy is good
Diaper fetishists in shambles.
It os the same with the demagogues populists.
Ffs stop trying to spread hate on this guy, at least try harder, biased articles and no context titles are not helping your dumb agenda either
firefoxes?
#fuckcars! A bad day for humanity a great day for public transit!
Yeah. Environmentalism, workers rights, social justice. Totally Milei's core issues /s.
You understand that Milei is creating a libertarian Bartertown hellscape that absolutely will not be investing in public infrastructure, but is in fact privatizing the existing public infrastructure, right?
Private services are so much more efficient! Just look at British rail!
Expensive, unsafe, unreliable, and probably paying fantastic dividends to their shareholders.
You do realize that fuel prices also impact the prices of food, clothing, and medicine, right?
yeah i'm sure the west bootlicker libertarian is going to build a lot of public transport
