What is going on in Argentina?

I've been there in 2011. Wonderful place. At the time Brazil was recovering from the 2008 crises, which was very light for us, and our economy was probably at its top. I had my first job as a programmer and was very well payed compared to locals. I saved all the money to travel there and pay all expenses for me and my girlfriend in about just 4 months; that's how strongly we were economically. At the time 1 Brazilian real was worth 2 Argentinian pesos and 1 USD was worth less than 2 BRL.

At the time, Cristina Kirchner had just won elections and BsAs was full of her posters. Being there at the time felt like being in Europe HDI with south american prices; it was that good and cheap. Cities were beautiful, clean, organized, I spent some time in La Plata which seemed designed in simcity, felt much safer than Brazil and although there were already some signs of decadence like some poor people around, it still looked much better than Brazil.

Around 2014 Argentina had already entered in crises, and so did Brazil. At my job, a new colleague was from Argentina. I think he was a level-headed liberal, he sometimes talked about something like how the situation there was. By that time, 1 BRL was worth around 4 pesos and 1 USD was worth 2.35 BRL.

Two years ago (2022) I talked with a friend. I explained him how in 2011 I could save all the money to travel Argetina in just 4 months, I couldn't do the same now even if I get twice the salary I had at the time: our prices increased a lot and even though at the time 1 BRL was worth more than 30 pesos!

Now, here we are in 2024: 1 BRL is worth around 170 pesos, 1 USD is close to 5 BRL. The article says: "We were mostly left with the impression that it wouldn’t be so bad to turn into Argentina after all.", " I felt safer in most places than I do anywhere in Brazil", "I had an incredible time in Argentina. The country is absolutely stunning, and the people are also fantastic.". Actually it is not Brazil who may turn into Argentina, but Argentina which is turning into Brazil after a long effort to keep social indexes high... artificially or not.

We in Brazil also had our own hyper-inflation period. It happened during the 80's. Prices were so volatile that my father bought things and wrote in boxes what the price was in liters of gasoline, so he could have an idea of how much it had really cost. We took a long time to reach stability, from the 90's to early 2000's, but we got there and I hope Argentina will be able to do the same.

Although Brazil and Argentina are seen as rivals, I really love that country and people and wish them the best.

I visited the Soviet Union right at the tail end, and it sounds similar. Official exchange rate (4 rubles to the dollar), street exchange rate (12+ rubles), a mix of shops and restaurants taking dollars unofficially, and people were generally ... fine with it? The economy obviously wasn't working, but everyone was housed, fed and clothed.

The most developed countries should show us an example then. I am not Argentinian or from South America at all, but we have the same problems. As long as an average American keeps their consumption levels at more than 10× of ours, I am not listening to what they think we should or shouldn't do. Same for other poor countries, I guess.

Peronism is relevant, but its an unhelpful term, as its meaning has mutated over the year with different "Peronist" leaders.

But fundamentally (if you look at the twenty tenets of Peronism) it is a populist leftwing ideology that aligns strongly with trade unions, social justice and economic nationalism. We can argue the toss as to whether this implies it is "socialist" or not, but it's certainly far from free market capitalism.

We have two problems: corruption and some organizations pushing against us.

https://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/campanas-ganadas/

Greenpeace helped ban salmon farming.

They also tried to stop offshore oil exploration, they just delayed it. This is the kind of things we cannot accept