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What happened to Argentina?

economix.blogs.nytimes.com

1–10 of 63 posts

Re: What happened to Argentina?

#2
This is an important issue to discuss, because the bad economic ideas that hobbled Argentina's growth (protectionism) are still current in many other countries.

The graph about percentages of the population in primary schooling is quite interesting, and goes a long way to explain why Taiwan, poorer than Zambia within my lifetime, is now much wealthier than most other countries in the world.

Re: What happened to Argentina?

#4
This is another economist trying to beat the capitalistic drum. Apart from Peron's protectionist policies (which some call a drive toward self-sustenance), one shouldn't forget contributing factors like the 1948 exclusion of Argentina exports from the Marshall Plan by the Truman administration. Peron might have been mistaken on many counts, but so many things are ignored behind the veil of apparently protectionist policies, like worker protection and upliftment, social infrastructure growth, etc.

What a myopic article, so many things are ignored, he's trying to put blinders on us.

Re: What happened to Argentina?

#5

This is an important issue to discuss, because the bad economic ideas that hobbled Argentina's growth (protectionism) are still current in many other countries. The graph about percentages of the population in primary schooling is quite interesting, and goes a long way to explain why Taiwan, poorer than Zambia within my lifetime, is now much wealthier than most other countries in the world.

"protectionism" didn't kill argentina

sadly if the HN meme of "college is for LOOOSERS!" continues, and people find education only through article-length tripe, we're well on course for repeating past errors

Re: What happened to Argentina?

#6

This is another economist trying to beat the capitalistic drum. Apart from Peron's protectionist policies (which some call a drive toward self-sustenance), one shouldn't forget contributing factors like the 1948 exclusion of Argentina exports from the Marshall Plan by the Truman administration. Peron might have been mistaken on many counts, but so many things are ignored behind the veil of apparently protectionist po…

"Apart from Peron's protectionist policies (which some call a drive toward self-sustenance)"

Trade protection and autarky have long been defended by words like "self-sustenance," and the like, but such policies have never turned out well: just ask India and China before they modernized and liberalized their economies.

"Peron might have been mistaken on many counts, but so many things are ignored behind the veil of apparently protectionist policies, like worker protection and upliftment, social infrastructure growth, etc."

Maybe: but by virtually every metric, Argentina is now worse off than countries like Spain and Italy, which have (relatively) liberal economic policies and relatively high rates of education.

Re: What happened to Argentina?

#7

This is another economist trying to beat the capitalistic drum. Apart from Peron's protectionist policies (which some call a drive toward self-sustenance), one shouldn't forget contributing factors like the 1948 exclusion of Argentina exports from the Marshall Plan by the Truman administration. Peron might have been mistaken on many counts, but so many things are ignored behind the veil of apparently protectionist po…

Extremely myopic, indeed. Peron was an authoritarian and a demagogue, but he improved most social indicators of the country. Sure, GDP diminished but that was part of the cost to make Argentina an industrialized nation. Also the infrastructure of the country improved significantly.

IMHO, it's quite hard to understand a right-leaning socialist government from the point of view of a US citizen. There's no reference.

Re: What happened to Argentina?

#8

This is another economist trying to beat the capitalistic drum. Apart from Peron's protectionist policies (which some call a drive toward self-sustenance), one shouldn't forget contributing factors like the 1948 exclusion of Argentina exports from the Marshall Plan by the Truman administration. Peron might have been mistaken on many counts, but so many things are ignored behind the veil of apparently protectionist po…

i agree.

there's a lot of issues in the history of argentina that are brushed by in an attempt to make this a simple economic policy debate.

for example, they were quite politically unstable. there was a coup in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. the ruling military government died in the 80s after a brief war. a prosperous economy is difficult to foster without a stable governmental structure, regardless of what that structure is.

Re: What happened to Argentina?

#9
post #6

This is another economist trying to beat the capitalistic drum. Apart from Peron's protectionist policies (which some call a drive toward self-sustenance), one shouldn't forget contributing factors like the 1948 exclusion of Argentina exports from the Marshall Plan by the Truman administration. Peron might have been mistaken on many counts, but so many things are ignored behind the veil of apparently protectionist po…

"Apart from Peron's protectionist policies (which some call a drive toward self-sustenance)" Trade protection and autarky have long been defended by words like "self-sustenance," and the like, but such policies have never turned out well: just ask India and China before they modernized and liberalized their economies. "Peron might have been mistaken on many counts, but so many things are ignored behind the veil of ap…

Menem, a peronist president in the 90s, undid many things Peron did. His government was a poster child for deregulation and what's called neo-liberalism. They privatized almost everything in a ruthless manner. The crisis of 2001 was a consequence of all those policies.

I am against publicly owned corporations and services but I'm against raw short-sighted capitalism, too. Some of the privatized public corporations had operating surplus, were not monopolies and were worth billions. Those were given to foreign investors who bought them taking credits over the same assets bought. Then proceeded to raise prices, perform massive layoffs, and vacuum capital to service companies owned also by those same investors.

I am quite against socialism (left or right) but you clearly lack knowledge on Argentina. The country is far more complicated that you might think.

Re: What happened to Argentina?

#10
post #6

This is another economist trying to beat the capitalistic drum. Apart from Peron's protectionist policies (which some call a drive toward self-sustenance), one shouldn't forget contributing factors like the 1948 exclusion of Argentina exports from the Marshall Plan by the Truman administration. Peron might have been mistaken on many counts, but so many things are ignored behind the veil of apparently protectionist po…

"Apart from Peron's protectionist policies (which some call a drive toward self-sustenance)" Trade protection and autarky have long been defended by words like "self-sustenance," and the like, but such policies have never turned out well: just ask India and China before they modernized and liberalized their economies. "Peron might have been mistaken on many counts, but so many things are ignored behind the veil of ap…

"...just ask India and China before they modernized and liberalized their economies."

Well, modernization and liberalization of economies have increased the economic divide in India. It's not that liberal economic policies are wrong, just that their implementations are always skewed by greedy corporations. A government's responsibility is not only to cater to cash sinks but also the people they govern, which especially in India, is the poor majority. Of course the GDP goes up, there is no question about that. But at what cost?

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