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What is going on in Argentina?

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Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#51

Argentina has been like this for a very long time. I studied abroad there in 2019 and it was exactly the same. I believe one of the reasons Brian Armstrong started Coinbase was because he saw how devastating inflation was to Argentina’s economy. Argentina was at one point a top 20 country in the world wealth wise and has obviously gone very down hill. It’s too bad, a lot of talented tech workers there.

2 small pieces of anecdotes

1) I used to work in a very large IT group in Latin America, and I worked with some EngManagers who hired and managed some folks in Argentina. One interesting dynamic was due to the inflation, we used to give to folks 'monthly' salary increases to offset. Since the company captured the inflation also in the prices, for a long time offer that offset with a small plus was a very huge retention factor for us;

2) After 2015/6, our IT director started to give 1 Bitcoin or USD 500 equivalent in Bitcoin for our argentine colleagues as part of their monthly salary, and eventually those guys ended up holding or selling it with more than 10x over it.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#52
post #41

[flagged]

Actually the Government has been Peronist (which many consider to be equivalent to socialist) in Argentina from WW2 to 1970, and then from 1989 onwards. A large government spending lots of money. Add in wage and price controls (classic authoritarian leftwing policies), and economic ruin was an inevitability Inflation has nothing to do with libertarianism and everything to do with a state that tried to run everything…

you are incorrectly conflating socialism with peronism, which is more fascist than socialist, though it certainly has socialist factions within it

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#53

Argentina has been like this for a very long time. I studied abroad there in 2019 and it was exactly the same. I believe one of the reasons Brian Armstrong started Coinbase was because he saw how devastating inflation was to Argentina’s economy. Argentina was at one point a top 20 country in the world wealth wise and has obviously gone very down hill. It’s too bad, a lot of talented tech workers there.

Argentina didn't really go down hill. Constant GDP per capita is up ~50% from 1960: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDARG The GDP of the rest of the world went up a lot more than that [1] - and Argentina never did anything besides have decent weather and a roughly constant amount of fertile land. It's kind of like a Dutch Disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org…

People didn't really need smartphones, laptops and even personal cars in 1960s in Argentine. I believe they generated that GDP while being mostly rural, where it translates to a lot of amenities.

Now they would usually be cramped in a city where the effective cost of living is much greater (leading to villas), whereas their GDP and thus income didn't grow much.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#54

They elected a freakin' maniac and they're gonna pay a heavy price for that. In Brazil we have a saying "pior que tá não fica", which translates to something like "it cannot get worse than this". Belive me when I say this: it can (and probably will) get worse. It can (and probably will) get SO MUCH worse. We tasted this poison with 4 years of Bolsonaro trying to get away from the establishment. What did we get in ret…

"700k brazilians died to COVID, we now have a huge anti-vax problem"

That sounds like a common world problem, not anything specifically Brazilian. In my country of 11 million (including Ukrainian refugees), we've had 45 thousand deaths. And anywhere where people frequent Facebook, the anti-vax movement thrives. It is not even specifically far-right, a lot of the crowd belongs to the organic green bio-mom milieu. I can't even begin to count all the middle-aged ladies in colourful ethnic clothing who hate vaccines based on very flimsy arguments.

The coup thing is fairly unique, though.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#55

Argentina has been like this for a very long time. I studied abroad there in 2019 and it was exactly the same. I believe one of the reasons Brian Armstrong started Coinbase was because he saw how devastating inflation was to Argentina’s economy. Argentina was at one point a top 20 country in the world wealth wise and has obviously gone very down hill. It’s too bad, a lot of talented tech workers there.

The Crystal language was written by gauchos!

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#56
post #27

They elected a freakin' maniac and they're gonna pay a heavy price for that. In Brazil we have a saying "pior que tá não fica", which translates to something like "it cannot get worse than this". Belive me when I say this: it can (and probably will) get worse. It can (and probably will) get SO MUCH worse. We tasted this poison with 4 years of Bolsonaro trying to get away from the establishment. What did we get in ret…

We've tested many different ideologies and organisational structures just in the last few hundred years. Currently we have a successful but pretty crappy form of capitalism. Some countries have experimented with Communism, fascism, oligarchy (ism)?), feudalism ect ect. Why not give libertarianism a shot?

>Why not give libertarianism a shot?

You'll soon see.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a pretty fair assessment of Milei. Do you feel the sex guru part adds much though? Maybe he is in an open relationship, or actually gay, or xyz... does it matter in his economic reform plans for Argentina?

He isn't a lifelong politician, so when the media describes him, they refer to his career in the private sector which as far as I'm aware includes two jobs. One was as an economist and the other as a "sex guru" of some kind. I have no idea what all that involved (mainly been following the economic reforms). If he had been an electrician beforehand they would have said economist and electrician. Some may try to use it…

tantric sex instructor

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#59
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knew this would be a bit of a contentious point! Have you seen how we do lunches in Brazil though? (search for images about 'self service brasil' for instance)

Milanesa is about simplicity. Search "milanesa napolitana a caballo". But to be honest: empanadas > milanesas

Note: I actually like milanesas quite a bit. Just struggled with the fact that lunch was either grabbing a few empanadas or milanesa con papas :D would have loved a bit more diversity!

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#60

They elected a freakin' maniac and they're gonna pay a heavy price for that. In Brazil we have a saying "pior que tá não fica", which translates to something like "it cannot get worse than this". Belive me when I say this: it can (and probably will) get worse. It can (and probably will) get SO MUCH worse. We tasted this poison with 4 years of Bolsonaro trying to get away from the establishment. What did we get in ret…

It's a shame to see people like you taking a stance on the matter without 0 knowledge speaking out emotionally
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