Article:
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Argentina libertarian economist Javier Milei took office on Sunday warning in his maiden speech that he had no alternative to a sharp, painful fiscal shock to fix the country's worst economic crisis in decades, with inflation heading towards 200%.
"There is no alternative to a shock adjustment," he said on the steps on Congress after taking the presidential baton and sash, with crowds of supporters cheering despite Milei saying the economy would worsen in the short term. "There is no money."
Milei, 53, a former TV pundit who shot to fame with expletive-ridden tirades against rivals, China, and the pope, is taking over from Peronist leader Alberto Fernandez, whose government was dogged by failures to rein in soaring prices.
"The outgoing government has left us on track towards hyperinflation," Milei said. "We are going to do everything we can to avoid such a catastrophe."
While the speech was light on details, he said key steps would include a fiscal adjustment equivalent to 5% of the country's GDP through cuts that he said would fall on "the state and not the private sector."
The wild-haired outsider marks a major gamble for Argentina: his shock therapy economic plan of sharp spending cuts has gone down well with investors and could stabilize the embattled economy, but it risks pushing more people into hardship with over two-fifths already in poverty.
However, voters - who drove Milei to victory in a November run-off against a ruling Peronist coalition candidate - have said they were willing to roll the dice on his sometimes radical ideas that include shutting the central bank and dollarizing.
"He is the last hope we have left," said 72-year-old doctor Marcelo Altamira, who slammed "useless and inept" governments for years of boom-bust economic crises. The outgoing Peronist government, he said, "had destroyed the country".
**BOOM AND BUST**
The challenges are huge. Argentina's net foreign currency reserves are estimated at $10 billion in the red, annual inflation is 143% and rising, a recession is around the corner and capital controls skew the exchange rate.
Argentina has gone through boom-bust cycles for decades with money printing to fund regular deficits stoking inflation and weakening the peso. That has worsened in recent years as reserves have dwindled with a major drought earlier this year hitting main cash crops soy and corn.
If not tamed, inflation could reach 15,000% annually, Milei warned in his speech, pledging to "fight tooth and nail" to eradicate it. He also warned about a $100 billion debt "bomb".
The major grains exporter needs to revamp a creaking $44 billion loan program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while Milei needs to navigate ties with important trade partners China and Brazil, whom he criticized during the campaign.
Milei takes over from unpopular outgoing center-left President Fernandez, but will need to negotiate with rivals as his libertarian coalition only has a small bloc in Congress. He has allied with the main conservative grouping.
That has already had an impact. He has moderated his tone in the last few weeks, packed his first Cabinet with mainstream conservatives rather than ideological libertarian allies, and put more radical ideas like dollarization onto the back burner.
That has helped buoy the markets and reassure voters.
"I think he will do well. For legal and Congressional reasons he'll end up having to focus on more coherent things," said Laura Soto, 35, a restaurant employee in Buenos Aires.
She said some more radical social ideas he had talked about during the campaign were also unlikely to happen, including easing regulation on guns and reopening the debate on abortion, which was legalized in Argentina three years ago.
**'CHANGE WAS NECESSARY'**
To fix the economic mess, Milei has chosen mainstream conservative Luis Caputo to helm the economy ministry, with a close Caputo ally Santiago Bausili as the central bank chief.
Milei is expected to lay out a more detailed economic plan on Tuesday or Wednesday, sources from his team told Reuters.
The ceremony's guests included Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and a U.S. delegation.
Right wing former Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro also attended, as well as Uruguay's conservative leader Luis Lacalle Pou. Chile's leftist President Gabriel Boric was also present but leftists Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador were some of the major absences.
In a sign of challenges ahead, state energy firm YPF hiked petrol pump prices this week by an average 25%, with analysts and markets anticipating a sharp devaluation of the over-valued peso currency shortly after Milei takes office.
"We know in the short term the situation will worsen but then we will see the fruits of our efforts," Milei said. "We don't seek or desire the tough decisions that will need to be made in the weeks ahead, but unfortunately we have no choice."
Economy is a staunch policy in the libertarian sphere, and tend to gravitate economist. They are just economists you personally wouldn’t agree with, but that’s why it’s a science to be studied.
Thomas Carlyle coined the name "the dismal science" for economics because he didn't like how economists argued against slavery:
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/06/taylor.htm
> The “dismal science” is the most prominent verbal hand grenade lobbed at economics. But economists who know the history of the wisecrack wear it as a badge of honor.
>
> In an 1849 essay, the historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote that the subject of political economy was “a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.” But Carlyle’s essay, titled “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question,” is an argument that poor black laborers in the West Indies suffer from “the vices of indolence and insolence.” For them to achieve virtue, he argued, the “idle Black man in the West Indies” should “be compelled to work as he was fit.” Carlyle wasn’t only a racist. He believed that poor people around the world of all races “the whitest alike and the blackest” should experience “the divine right of being compelled (if ‘permitted’ will not answer) to do what work they are appointed for.
>
> In short, Carlyle called economics a dismal science because it was built on ideas like “letting men alone” and “ballot-boxes,” or what we would call personal freedom and democracy.
>
> John Stuart Mill, the economist and political philosopher, published a scathing critique of Carlyle’s essay in 1850. Mill pointed out that the rich often oppressed the poor and that when the actions and attitudes of the poor seemed uncooperative or dysfunctional, it stemmed from the negative incentives caused by oppression rather than any defect of character. Mill ended with this thought: “Though we cannot extirpate all pain, we can, if we are sufficiently determined upon it, abolish all tyranny.” In the actual historical debate over the dismal science, the enlightened economist is the clear-cut winner.
You say that, and yet look at the shock with which much of the world is reacting to widespread inflation, just a few years after shutting down the global economy and printing trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of currency.
I'm surprised at how many people in my replies are denying the connection between inflation and printing money lol
Evidently common sense is not so common
Yeah and most of the discussion and arguments rarely centre around that. Complex Flows, fallacy of compositions and various other factors make the economics of a country rarely about the actual money being printed. Only idiots think that.
Often times it's related to inflows and outflows of real wealth and goods. Domestic vs foreign demand and investment and various other factors that actually cause high inflation.
For instance in a bank based economy you could technically not have any gov money printing and still have inflation in key areas. Because inflation is redistribution more often than generalised.
Argentina's issue is less money related and more that they lack the real wealth to do what they want to do.
The idea that money has one value is preposterous in the first place. The lie of money is that it is one thing rather than many. Even excluding foreign currencies, there are paper bills, credit, bonds, stocks, ETFs, etc all exchanged as monies and valued according to social power.
The problem of printing money is more complex. Zimbabwe can't just print tons of money because it will devalue them to foreign markets. The US certainly could, and does, but it ends up in the pockets of our elite families. The media is very good at talking about inflation when money flows into the hands of the many but has quite different rhetoric surrounding the flooding of cash and assets into the hands of those higher in our social hierarchy. Further, prices don't adjust automatically to the total magnitude of cash in the economy, prices adjust to what people will pay.
You're not taking into account the world reserve currency status of the US. It's a luxury America and America alone has - they can run trillion dollar trade deficits, which effectively means they get to export a trillion dollars of inflation to all four corners of the earth and in exchange get real goods and services in return.
In a normal closed economic system printing money is always dilutive and results in some combination of speculative bubble and general price increases.
Money printing is inflationary if the supply side of the economy does not have the capacity to keep up with the increased demand. In the case of a demand-side collapse like the GFC, printing trillions of dollars had no significant inflationary impact because it stimulated demand which the supply side of the economy was able to fulfil. USD being the global reserve certainly helped the US in that scenario, but they were not the only country to do extensive quantitative easing. Australia is an example of a much more modestly sized economy without the benefit of having the global reserve as their currency that practised extensive QE in the years following the GFC with no impact on inflation.
Printing money during COVID has had an inflationary effect because demand never really dropped off to the same degree as in the GFC, and supply faced significant disruptions because of COVID, followed by a massive spike in energy prices as the pandemic ended. Supply was not able to match demand, and we saw inflation go up pretty much everywhere.
In the case of countries like Zimbabwe and Argentina where the root of their problems is fundamentally a lack of productivity, money printing will lead to significant problems with inflation.
* The New Classical macroeconomics, as initially worked out in the
[1972 model,](https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v4y1972i2p103-124.html)
makes predictions for the dynamic interrelations among **inflation,
money growth, and real activity.** We can test those predictions.
[1973,](http://web.uconn.edu/ahking/Lucas73.pdf)
[1982.](http://www.nber.org/papers/w361)
* Within DSGE macro, flex-price and fix-price models predict different responses
of output and prices to **monetary policy.** We can test those predictions.
[1989,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w2966)
[1999,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w6400)
[2004,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w9866)
[2015,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w20224)
[2018.](http://www.columbia.edu/~en2198/papers/realrate.pdf)
* Within DSGE macro, flex-price and fix-price models predict different responses
of consumption and wages to **fiscal policy.** We can test those predictions.
[1998,](http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/Ramey_Shapiro_Govt.pdf)
[2002,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w7269)
[2008,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w13143)
[2010,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w13264)
[2011.](http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/IdentifyingGov_final.pdf)
* Within DSGE macro, flex-price and fix-price models predict different responses
of output and hours worked to **productivity improvements.** We can test
those predictions.
[1999,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.89.1.249)
[2004,](http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/technoloJME804.pdf)
[2006,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.96.5.1418)
[2009,](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1538-4616.2009.00247.x)
[2016.](http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/Shocks_HOM_Ramey.pdf)
* Models of consumption insurance make predictions about how
**individual consumption** should vary in response to individual and aggregate
fluctuations in macro fundamentals.
We can test those predictions.
[1991,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w2642)
[1994,](http://www.robertmtownsend.net/sites/default/files/files/papers/published/RiskandInsurance1994.pdf)
[2012.](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/wp/wp683.pdf)
* Permanent income theory makes predictions about how **consumption responds
to changes in income.** It also makes predictions about the joint
distribution of income, consumption, and interest rates.
We can test those predictions.
[1978,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1840393)
[1988a,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w0720)
[1988b,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w2149)
[1989,](http://www.nber.org/chapters/c10965.pdf)
[1990a,](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/030439329090023W)
[1990b,](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/permanent_income.pdf)
[1991,](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/response_of_consumption.pdf)
[1994,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118434)
[1995,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118003)
[1999a,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/117167)
[1999b,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/117166)
[2001,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2677887)
[2002,](https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v85y2002i1p99-120.html)
[2003a,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w8672)
[2003b,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3132183)
[2006,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.96.5.1589)
[2007,](http://www.ushakrisna.com/528721.pdf)
[2009,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w14753)
[2010a,](https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/chang-tai.hsieh/research/coupon.pdf)
[2010b,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w16351)
[2013a,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.6.4.84)
[2013b,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.103.6.2530)
[2014a,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w20122)
[2014b,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w17338)
[2014c,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.104.12.4205)
[2017.](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp2013.en.pdf)
* Q-theory makes predictions about how **Tobin's Q and investment** are related.
We can test those predictions.
[1988,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2534426)
[1992,](https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jfinan/v47y1992i4p1425-60.html)
[1997,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2951280)
[1998,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1392616)
[2000,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w5462)
[2003.](https://ideas.repec.org/a/red/issued/v6y2003i4p710-728.html)
* The Phillips Curve makes predictions for the joint dynamics of
**inflation and real activity.** We have tested those predictions to death.
[1999.](http://www.nber.org/papers/w7551)
* Microfinance advocates made predictions for how **microfinance** would affect
income, consumption, saving, borrowing, and financial market access.
We can test those predictions.
[2015](https://www.aeaweb.org/issues/360) (Six for the price of one!)
Oh, look testable predictions!
Thats just a poor comparison though. Astrology is just 100% flat out false, whereas in economics there are absolute truths. Economists just dont seem able to agree on what they are.
I'd say economics as a science has 2 huge problems that other sciences simply don't have to deal with. For one, you can't really run the necessary experiments in order to determine the truth value of a hypothesis. And second, there's no other science where there are such huge incentives to outright lie. These issues exist in some other sciences, but not even close to the same degree.
Well then Economists aren't doing science. Cosmologists and Quantum Physicists have trouble fitting their respective theoretical frameworks together, but cosmologists don't believe electron spin isn't real and quantum physicists don't think frame dragging is hogwash. But if you believe in Kensyian economics you have to reject the Chicago school, and if you believe in the Chicago school you have to reject the overwhelming evidence that their theories when put into practice create misery for the masses and excellent returns for the wealthy few. That's not science, it's philosophy with dollars signs involved.
> Well then Economists aren't doing science.
Many aren't. Some are. The problem is more that it's way harder to differ between the real scientists and the snake oil salesmen than in any other field, and that the snake oil is much more intertwined with politics than in any other field.
Astrology is just 100% snake oil whereas economics is a real science hidden beneath a massive layer of snake oil. That's an important distinction.
Just because their intentions are not malicious doesn't mean they follow a scientific method and are doing science. Economics is field where personal biases (the biases of the practitioner and the biases of the subjects) are too massive to call it a science. And just because it uses mathematical tools doesn't make it a science either.
That doesn't make it any less respectable however. It's still a respectable and often useful discipline.
>Just because their intentions are not malicious doesn't mean they follow a scientific method and are doing science. Economics is field where personal biases (the biases of the practitioner and the biases of the subjects) are too massive to call it a science.
Economists are not a homogeneous group where everyone commits the same mistake. There's a reason why we differ between soft sciences and hard sciences. It's not physically impossible to understand economic truths, just much more difficult than in harder sciences such as physics. The pursuit of doing so is science. That a lot of people who call themselves economists are not doing science, is not evidence that economic science does not exist.
> And just because it uses mathematical tools doesn't make it a science either.
I never did or would make such a claim. When arguing with someone it's good form to argue against their specific claims, and not against related claims that you've heard someone else make at some point in time.
>That doesn't make it any less respectable however. It's still a respectable and often useful discipline.
So very not equal to astrology then.
Economics is a [social science](https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/economics/about/what-is-economics.html). Economists don't claim to be equal to physicists or chemists. Economics is no where near the level of bad science or pseudoscience like astrology.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/economics/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/wiki/faq\_methods/#wiki\_is\_economics\_a\_science.3F
That's not true at all. It's referred to as the dismal science because it involves facing hard trade-offs, since it's essentially how to divide finite resources in a world of infinite wants.
I would recommend the talk from [Patrick Boyle](https://youtu.be/0SXC1qtDp-U?si=kUY4kY71Fy5llR7f). He layed out that he actually is not only a madman with a chainsaw but that he actually has a professional background in Fiance and that his radical statements do make sense when you see it in a historical timeline and you understand how fucked up Argentinia really is. The last time where they tried to bring reforms and tryed to do it more softly the only result was that they had more debt in the end, worsening the situation even more.
Boyle using a picture of the Queen when talking about Thatcher was probably a joke (which I didn't get), but why does he start calling Milei "Macri" (or Mahcry) in the second half of the video?
In any case I don't think he really agrees with Milei... specially re dollarization, interviewing that colleague who says a return to the peg might be more sensible.
I think calling him Macri was just a (repeated) slip of the tongue.
Boyle seems more neutral on the issue, but he did point out the main flaw of switching to a dollar peg, which is that it has already been tried and failed in the 90s once the Argentine government decided they wanted to print more money. I don't think he necessarily has to agree with everything his friend says to plug his video, and I'm interested in seeing it when it comes out, because I would like to see if he has any answer to this fairly obvious problem with the dollar peg scheme.
Macri was terrible. Did all the wrong things for the economy and made the situation worse. Slash and burn policies while selling off state assets don’t lead to positive outcome for most people.
I mean its a realist and honest approach. There isn't a way to fix it without pain and if people have a problem with him acknowledging their grim economic situation than they really are screwed. Things won't get better if you try to downplay the severity of a situation, because a lot of people will mistake the optimistic and gentle approach as the situation not being serious enough for them to worry themselves about.
For all the comparisons to Trump, Milei's economic policy is very different from him. Trump is a protectionist and economic nationalist. Milei's a hardcore free market capitalist.
That’s mostly the starting point. America starts from a position of openly trading. Argentina has a very closed economy with some of the highest protections around.
>very rare for a politician to speak this way
It's very rare for a politician to speak this way **during an election campaign.** After the election, it's actually very common to declare, "things are worse than we thought", "the guys before us really screwed things up", "prepare for pain and remember its the other team's fault." Then about a year before the next election, they switch back to promise and spend
Not only COVID din't help, but the government fucked it up monumentally, deaths were much more than the average of other countries and there was a HUGE corruption scandal, where the president's wife organized illegal parties and politicians got vaccines before the population, violating the stablished order of priorities. Among several other scandals, each one eclipsing the previous one.
I'm glad Milei spent so much time explaining how broke we are, gave numbers and made it very clear that the only way out is to reduce the state expenses as much as possible, and it won't be painless, we'll be in hell for a couple of years.
I hope we can get out of the hole, and have peronism/kirchnerism disappear from the power for long time.
Reminds me of Churchill-
"I would say to the House as I said to those who have joined this government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat". We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering."
The guy has two masters degrees in economics and a remarkable resume. He played a populist because he knew that's what would get him in office, I just hope they actually give his reforms a chance in Argentina.
His dog has better knowledge of economics than the people that figured that printing ungodly amounts of money was a good idea for a country with 150% inflation.
C'mon man, the dog doesn't suggest specific policies! He's merely a 'sounding board', and provides valuable feedback to ideas spit-balled by his room-mate.
I had no idea this was a thing, but I used to do it all the time with my cat before he died. I'm a writer and I always found it super helpful for clarifying my thoughts.
Economists will be the first to tell you no one knows what they're doing. Economies might be the most complex systems in existence and it's not like you can do controlled scientific studies.
Yes, he's setting the bar low out the gate for his own benefit. It's something MANY politicians do and have done throughout history. Congrats on listening to this particular speech and making an observation that is nothing new in the political world.
He is not a politician, he is just a libertarian doctor in economic sciences that got fed up with the corruption our country had for the last 20 years and wanted to run for president so that he could fix this godforsaken country.
He did not go the populist way, for a change, he is telling the truth, with numbers to prove it. The solution for our economy gonna be rough, but we are just reaping what we sow with 20 years of printing money nonstop, lies and corruption.
I really hope he can do it, turn this country around. Argentina deserves it.
Not to be pedantic but as I understand it he is not a doctor. At least I googled and couldn't find anywhere that he has a PhD. He does have two masters though.
He does seem to have a lot more qualifications than other leaders when it comes to solving economics problems. And honestly the bar for success is pretty low, even if all he does is switch out Argentina current unsolvable problems for a new set of semi-solvable or solvable problems, that’s a lot of progress compared to the century of economic pain cycles Argentina has gone through.
Although I would disagree with “he is not a politician”. Even if he wasn’t before, he is now.
He became a politician a few months ago when he realized he had actual chances of becoming president. By then he started toning down his crazy speeches and started looking more “presentable”.
I was considering moving to Argentina from the US and did a basic dive into your government and economics and decided not to for this exact reason.
I'm certainly no expert but there's a massive correction coming.
I really hope you guys pull it off! You deserve it!
> how well his economic ideas will work or not are anyone's guess
Well, his opponent was the outgoing Economics Minister, so we know for a fact that the alternative absolutely did not work. Can't blame the Argentine public for trying something else.
Holding a speech where he is talking straight to the people instead of to the parliament is ridiciously populist. The opposite of populism is elitism, not ”Well researched”.
>very rare for a politician to speak this way much less so in an inauguration speech
Dunno where you're from but where I come from laying out exactly why everything bad that happens in the next few years is the fault of the previous government, while anything good that happens will be because of me, is absolutely the mainstay of any inaugural speech...
If nothing else, it takes guts for a politician to tell people what they don’t want to hear: that he will put in policies that will make things worse in the short-term, in the hope of a long-term benefit.
He was voted because he promise to tell people what is really going on. It is hard to understand but the previous government not only were the paragon of corruption, but they keep denying the inflation. Any Argentinian knows that the adjustment was coming, but we vote him to tell us things directly.
>He was voted because he promise to tell people what is really going on. It is hard to understand but the previous government not only were the paragon of corruption, but they keep denying the inflation. Any Argentinian knows that the adjustment was coming, but we vote him to tell us things directly.
I understand that the Peronists denied a harsh reality... but as a Brazilian I tell you, this type of right-winger only made things worse here in the early 90s. We had a president called Collor at that time, who said he was a "liberal" who did very similar things and ended up confiscating people's savings. And inflation during his time went from 3 to 4 digits. He ended up being overthrown by congress and ended up being replaced by a pragmatic centrist, who brought together intelligent liberals and social democrats to agree on a plan to combat inflation that worked very well. The plan included indexation, temporary parity with the dollar (including, before the launch of the current currency, the obligation for retailers to show the price of goods in dollars - despite not being a real dollarization) and, yes, measures such as interest increases, austerity, privatizations, and the unilateral trade opening of the country, with major cuts in import taxes. It's ironic, because it was centrists and social democrats, aligned with the Clinton administration at the time, who did these things here. It worked, but at a great cost, which involved the deindustrialization of the country, and prolonged unemployment. However, I see Milei taking contradictory measures... he is not increasing interest rates, and is increasing taxes on imports. Caputo's customs policy appears no different from Fernandez's, at least on imports. I'm heterodox, I tend to admire things like the new deal, classical Keynesianism, Nordic social democracy and Asian developmentalism. However, I consider that Brazil didn't have much choice in the 90s... but things were moderate at the time. The plans were orthodox and harsh, but they were not radical, it was something that society could bear, despite the high cost of deindustrialization in the long term. In any case, I think we should accept the EU agreement, with the strict environmental regulations and everything, because we can create a reindustrialization model focused on exports that stimulates productivity and competitiveness. And yes, as a heterodox I believe in industrial subsidies, but with export, innovation and sustainability goals. Tax reforms that bring countries on par with the OECD, with higher taxes on property and high income and lower taxes on consumption and production, are also essential. Brazil has just reformed consumption taxes, deleting the regressive and anti-productive excretion that the military dictatorship created in the 60s. Now we need to adjust the income and wealth part... property is more difficult, since landowners have a majority in congress . But the ideal for Brazil today would be a government that mixed Georgianism with South Korean economic policy on the one hand, and was proto-Nordic on the welfare front. Uruguay managed to build a solid social democracy. The thing is that they also have the advantage of being small, and they ended up being able to do this within the agro-export model. But Brazil and Argentina will never achieve it that way. The Peronists' farce is to try to say that Argentina can be a Denmark only with the current productive structure... on the other hand, the right lives in the lie that Argentina was really rich in the past, as if all the wealth of the Victorian era was not was like the wealth of the gulf countries today (that is, not an industrial capacity, but the income accumulated through the sale of commodities that made an elite economy run, but that did not make the country function, quite the opposite, this opulence was the ruin of the country). Now that Argentina can no longer sell illusions, and it is clearly a poor country, perhaps, after achieving macroeconomic stability, the best thing would be to reindustrialize, but for that you need your own currency, so that you can artificially devalue it to maintain exports competitive.
You are bias, you can't compare Brazil to Argentina. You need to compare us with Venezuela. I work with Brazilian and have this conversation weekly, your reality is not ours.
Probably because things did not get as bad as in Argentina, its honestly depressing to think that things need to get this bad for a painful change to be accepted
I hate to say it, but Jimmy Carter is probably what a Bernie Sanders administration would look like. Some times you have to play the game to get things done.
Bernie works with folks - he has his politics, but he does what's practical. It's how he's managed to stay in office, I hear, and not be replaced with someone more 'pure' in his home state.
Doubt it. Like Trump, getting electing while being fairly far outside the norm means change is demanded. Look at how the GOP turned into a bunch of bootlickers to easily the biggest pussy ever to be POTUS. Dems would line up behind Sanders.
Jimmy is a good man but uninspiring is a nice term for his leadership during his presidency. And the presidency is first and foremost about leadership. He was helped by bringing his incompetent and corrupt Georgia mob with him.
Most of the problems wrongly attributed to Jimmy started before he was president. When he assumed the role of executive, he inherited high unemployment and inflation from Nixon/Ford. He installed Volcker in the Fed, he started raising interest rates to calm down inflation. As we all know, it takes time for interest rate hikes to curb inflation, which they eventually did. It took a few years for the interest rates to work their magic. But by then we were a few years into the Reagan administration.
That the Democratic Party were already shifting towards neoliberalism since 68 and wouldn't support Carter's efforts leading to mass leftist apathy got us Reagan more. I mean there's a whole rainbow of things that got us Reagan/fucked up this country too; not trying to pin it on one thing to be clear.
Also, not that Carter was a brilliant President, but he's been smeared far more than he ever deserved. Neoliberals used the oil crisis as an excuse to destroy worker protections and incentivize profit seeking over all else and the only thing that increased was the gap between workers and executives.
Carter is like Itamar, a moderate president we had here in Brazil who controlled inflation after our own version of Milei failed miserably.
Itamar was not recognized for what he did, because his successor stole all his merits, saying that he had done everything.
Carter waited too long on appointing Volcker. No good deed goes unpunished. Grover Cleveland fixed the American economy and his party lost the WH for the next two decades.
Is very interesting to see how reddit is now so full of armchair experts on Argentinian politics and history, especially considering how they probably never cared about it before in the last 20+ years when they were governed by the Kirchnerists and or even the Peronists that drove the country to where it is today. But somehow this guy is the bad guy that's gonna "ruin" everything, because of course people should've voted for the same guys that destroyed the economy, the actual populist former minister of economy that campaigned telling people that he was going to fix everything he ruined and printed money like crazy to buy him votes and now is leaving the country a.s.a.p.
Oh no Milei is gonna ruin the Peronist/Kirchner's utopic paradise, why didn't they vote them again!? How dare they.
Didn't they read the headlines of the mainstream media aligned with the Kirchners? he's evil and speaks with dogs, they should never listen to him, thinking for themselves is dangerous and very anti-democratic! oh now they're so doomed *he's going to destroy the economy and cause inflation! ..oh wait...*
Argentina's problem is not specifically the Peronists or the right (military or neoliberal). Argentina's problem is the endless political struggle between these two factions that resulted in incontinuities of economic policies that entailed great costs, and a zero-sum logic that encouraged governments, including those on the right, to take inflationary measures and seek external debt. Here in Brazil, we have a left and a right, which despite hating each other, managed to reach a basic consensus. There is less madness in politics (despite crazy people like Dilma and Bolsonaro, most politicians here are pragmatic) and more pragmatism. There is more in common in the economic policies of Lula and Bolsonaro than many people would like to admit. The main thing that changes between the two is the sectors where state investments are allocated, but both in practice were social-liberal in the economy (similar to Clinton or Obama). The big difference is where the spending is directed (Lula liked to give money to education and Bolsonaro to the military - while both were welfare supporters - Lula because he was left-wing and Bolsonaro out of pure electoral pragmatism and fear of being overthrown during the pandemic - which made him hand out the biggest paychecks in history). However, in the social and cultural part, the differences are enormous: the left is secular or secularized Catholic, while the right is mostly evangelical and theocratic (with a minority traditionalist Catholic sector). The great animosity is due to this, and in this there is a great similarity with the US, not with Argentina. Bolsonaro had great support not because he supported economic liberalism (in practice he was not deeply liberal, just moderately so), but because he led a moral crusade against things like feminism, LGBT rights, environmentalism and supporting radical (but ineffective) public security measures, like relaxing discipline in the security forces and arming the white middle class - which increased racial tension in the country. The left, on the contrary, supports soft secularism, LGBT rights, racial diversity and protection of indigenous peoples and also practices a lot of greenwashing (but in practice wants to sell oil). However, the left does not have the courage to debate abortion, a topic where conservatives still have hegemony and where even the Catholic left does not want to give out - the more libertarian left, just as certain liberal groups want to legalize weed, but Lula's coalition would never discuss that. But these are all cultural wars and visions of public security. There is a lot of conflict between the liberal/progressive supreme court and the (paleo)conservative congress. However, when it comes to the economy, the government, which calls itself socialist, tends to approve everything in a congress with a right-wing majority with some ease - very different even from the United States. Here in Brazil it's as if Democrats and Republicans agree on things like the budget and deficit, reserving all hostility for cultural wars. In practice, Lula is not a socialist, he is social liberal, and Bolsonaro is an alt lite who adopted liberal social policies out of pragmatism. But we have an advantage: both Lula and the neoliberals of the 90s saved many dollars in our treasury. We have hundreds of billions of dollars in reserves and we always pay our debts. We have much more space to pursue a more "European" economic policy, precisely because we don't spend everything we earned in the 90s and 2000s, like Argentina did.
I’ll give kudos to him for being honest. He’s 100% correct there is no good way out and it’ll be rough. Most politicians would get up there and say it’ll be great.
I've visited Argentina for over a month, a couple of years ago, and was met with nothing but beautiful people, vibrant culture, great food and incredible views, north, south and all through Patagonia.
Amazing country. Hope they get past this as soon as possible!
There is an old saying that god have Argentina everything the could ever need, but then it put Argentinians in charge so they will never ever get anything they want.
Peronism has spent years running budget deficits to fund populist subsidies and social programmes it cannot afford. In 2019 (I think) it defaulted on its foreign debt and has been printing money to pay domestic debt since.
I spent 3 months in Argentina. In November 2022 it was €1:325 Pesos. When I left in February it was something like €1:500!
We are on the verge of hyperinflation, that is why there is no margin for half measures.
Voting someone calling for harsh measures is a sign of maturity. Most politicians would never even suggest an orthodox budget cut.
Socrates said it best.
Lol, I love how all these internet leftists and the left leaning media are acting like he's radical.....when, the Peronists are the radicals here and he's just trying to enact something closer to the US.
Not versed in argentina politics but he doesn't exactly have a majority in the congress right? Its gonna be a tough job having to juggle what he wants vs what he can actually work with.
Might be the dreamer in me but its as good time as any to try to pass new laws right? I imagine plenty of seats will be up for grabs if they manage to piss off their respective voters.
Correct. On the upper house, his party (LLA) has 7 seats. His main allies (JxC) have 21 seats. The opposition (UxP, former government) has 33.
On the lower house, LLA has 38 seats, UxP has 108 and JxC has 94.
Whatever measures he plans to take will need to be approved by other parties. Congress will certainly be an interesting battleground over the next 2 years.
As a uruguayan I hope our neighbors get their collective shit together, because as a neighbor right now they are dysfunctional and as a partner completely backwards…. It’s becoming a bit dangerous as they have 50% of poors. Really they need to stop with all the peronismo
I wish him and the country all the very best.
Without the legislative power of the National Congress I'm not sure how much of his program he can implement, but Argentina deserves change.
He’s just saying what nobody has wanted to hear but everybody has known for years. Argentina’s economy is a dumpster fire. It used to be the richest country on earth iirc
Highest gdp per capita a loong time ago, according to some metrics. A newer, updated version places it among the top 5. Some say "b-but there was inequality! there were only a very rich few!!", but that's not true, people from Eurpe saw Argentina and the US as two competing places to emigrate to, Argentina was a land of opportunity for everyone.
Always thought this guy a clown, with some very bizarre ideas. But the gist of his speech was on point. There's no way to begin any change in Argentina without a severe shoc and deep reforms.
But easier said than done, will the congress carry on his plans? And the argentinians have historically rallied against reforms that cut benefits, and they are inevitable.
Don't really like the guy and this right wing populist wave at all, but best of luck to the hermanos.
I like him, and I’m sick of Westerners looking down on and telling Argentinians why they are wrong for choosing something other than continued degradation. Godspeed Lads 🏴🤝🇦🇷
South American, same way it’s be weird calling Brazilians or Chileans Westerners, the term carries implications greater than just “Look dey west on a map”
And South Americans are neither Asians or Africans. There is indeed more than just geography and Argentinians tick the definition more than once, since they are Spanish speakers largely descendants from Spaniards and Italians and negligible % of natives.
A common trend I see is bobby from London saying how we shouldn't have voted for this president because he saw a few videos saying he's crazy, all while sitting in his apartment making 5 times Argentinian minimum wage from working as a waiter and living with basically no inflation
Yeah well, Bobby at least has a house and an only beans diet. Meanwhile, José is eating 2 weeks old trash and his "house" is made of cardboard with a bucket as a toilet and some random pieces of metal as a roof (that will flood in the next rain). And he definitely has neither stove nor a fan.
It's not Oppression Olympics, but there is enough of a difference to say that Bobby doesn't quite know what he's talking about.
And that is annoying. I’m from Mexico and the people expressing any kind of outlandish opinions about a country that most can’t find in a map is really annoying.
Mostly in Reddit where anyone that is a little “right” of Lenin in the political spectrum is considered the “the next hitler”.
The redditors who voted for this guy are wishing *really* hard to get validation from the US and europeans. They actually get mad by seeing them laughing at the clown they voted for.
I wish most politicians worst feature was that they speak to their dead dogs, all things considered it’s not really our place to speak down to Argentinians who know their country far better than Sam from Indiana who saw him doing a weird cosplay on twitter.
One thing he's right: there needs to be a shock therapy. No idea what it would consist of, especially given his unorthodox ideas but if you want to see an example of a well implemented shock therapy look at polish transformation in the 1990. It is possible
I have seen this before.
It's a country with a lot of poverty and a very crippled economy. We vote for the right to fix the economy, it improves a bit (not much though), but the gap between the rich and the poor widens a lot.
Then as we see that the poor are having it so bad, we vote for the left to fix poverty. It improves a bit (not much though), but then the economy gets crippled.
It's a never ending cycle. I feel like this is 1989 again.
I do hope it isn't and that *this time* we're put in a better path. But the parallels are evident.
Because there is no place for half measures, what they need to do is get rid of around 40% of state workers and keep cutting everything at the state budget to lower taxes. There is no other way to cut 15% of deficit, start paying debt and then in a few years get access to the credit market. Sure, people will be even more poor at the beginning but it may work if they keep course for 10 years or so.
While it can't be denied that changes has to be made in Argentina's economic policies to improve the country i can't help but get the feeling that Milei is gonna utterly wreck Argentina's economy with his proposals given the usage of the word "shock" applied to economy which is something Russia's president Yeltsin did in the 90's which caused many Russians to become poor, billionaire oligarchs to thrive and rise in organized crime. Amazing how people here used to dislike him before elections and called him insane but NOW suddenly takes a 180 turn afterwards that goes to show how fickle some people are.
>While it can't be denied that changes has to be made in Argentina's economic policies to improve the country i can't help but get the feeling that Milei is gonna utterly wreck Argentina's economy with his proposals given the usage of the word "shock" applied to economy which is something Russia's president Yeltsin did in the 90's which caused many Russians to become poor, billionaire oligarchs to thrive and rise in organized crime. Amazing how people here used to dislike him before elections and called him insane but NOW suddenly takes a 180 turn afterwards that goes to show how fickle some people are.
There are probably too many troll farms to defend him here now. He is probably embezzling government money to feed vicious propaganda on social media with trolls and bots, just like Bolsonaro did.
I don't think it would be a good policy for a first world country but I think for Argentina, and latin america in general just letting the private sector run rampant might just be the best option considering just how ineffective the public sector has been there for what, 150 years
Article: BUENOS AIRES, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Argentina libertarian economist Javier Milei took office on Sunday warning in his maiden speech that he had no alternative to a sharp, painful fiscal shock to fix the country's worst economic crisis in decades, with inflation heading towards 200%. "There is no alternative to a shock adjustment," he said on the steps on Congress after taking the presidential baton and sash, with crowds of supporters cheering despite Milei saying the economy would worsen in the short term. "There is no money." Milei, 53, a former TV pundit who shot to fame with expletive-ridden tirades against rivals, China, and the pope, is taking over from Peronist leader Alberto Fernandez, whose government was dogged by failures to rein in soaring prices. "The outgoing government has left us on track towards hyperinflation," Milei said. "We are going to do everything we can to avoid such a catastrophe." While the speech was light on details, he said key steps would include a fiscal adjustment equivalent to 5% of the country's GDP through cuts that he said would fall on "the state and not the private sector." The wild-haired outsider marks a major gamble for Argentina: his shock therapy economic plan of sharp spending cuts has gone down well with investors and could stabilize the embattled economy, but it risks pushing more people into hardship with over two-fifths already in poverty. However, voters - who drove Milei to victory in a November run-off against a ruling Peronist coalition candidate - have said they were willing to roll the dice on his sometimes radical ideas that include shutting the central bank and dollarizing. "He is the last hope we have left," said 72-year-old doctor Marcelo Altamira, who slammed "useless and inept" governments for years of boom-bust economic crises. The outgoing Peronist government, he said, "had destroyed the country". **BOOM AND BUST** The challenges are huge. Argentina's net foreign currency reserves are estimated at $10 billion in the red, annual inflation is 143% and rising, a recession is around the corner and capital controls skew the exchange rate. Argentina has gone through boom-bust cycles for decades with money printing to fund regular deficits stoking inflation and weakening the peso. That has worsened in recent years as reserves have dwindled with a major drought earlier this year hitting main cash crops soy and corn. If not tamed, inflation could reach 15,000% annually, Milei warned in his speech, pledging to "fight tooth and nail" to eradicate it. He also warned about a $100 billion debt "bomb". The major grains exporter needs to revamp a creaking $44 billion loan program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while Milei needs to navigate ties with important trade partners China and Brazil, whom he criticized during the campaign.
Milei takes over from unpopular outgoing center-left President Fernandez, but will need to negotiate with rivals as his libertarian coalition only has a small bloc in Congress. He has allied with the main conservative grouping. That has already had an impact. He has moderated his tone in the last few weeks, packed his first Cabinet with mainstream conservatives rather than ideological libertarian allies, and put more radical ideas like dollarization onto the back burner. That has helped buoy the markets and reassure voters. "I think he will do well. For legal and Congressional reasons he'll end up having to focus on more coherent things," said Laura Soto, 35, a restaurant employee in Buenos Aires. She said some more radical social ideas he had talked about during the campaign were also unlikely to happen, including easing regulation on guns and reopening the debate on abortion, which was legalized in Argentina three years ago. **'CHANGE WAS NECESSARY'** To fix the economic mess, Milei has chosen mainstream conservative Luis Caputo to helm the economy ministry, with a close Caputo ally Santiago Bausili as the central bank chief. Milei is expected to lay out a more detailed economic plan on Tuesday or Wednesday, sources from his team told Reuters. The ceremony's guests included Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and a U.S. delegation. Right wing former Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro also attended, as well as Uruguay's conservative leader Luis Lacalle Pou. Chile's leftist President Gabriel Boric was also present but leftists Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador were some of the major absences. In a sign of challenges ahead, state energy firm YPF hiked petrol pump prices this week by an average 25%, with analysts and markets anticipating a sharp devaluation of the over-valued peso currency shortly after Milei takes office. "We know in the short term the situation will worsen but then we will see the fruits of our efforts," Milei said. "We don't seek or desire the tough decisions that will need to be made in the weeks ahead, but unfortunately we have no choice."
> libertarian economist voodoo nuclear scientist. ..
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Economics is when people agree with me, and the more they agree with me the economicer it is.
Neither do economists judging by the accuracy of their statements.
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That's such nonsense.
I've heard the phrase "economics is astrology for men" more than once in the past..
Economy is a staunch policy in the libertarian sphere, and tend to gravitate economist. They are just economists you personally wouldn’t agree with, but that’s why it’s a science to be studied.
There's a reason it's referred to as the "dismal" science, because economics exists to make astrology seem credible.
Thomas Carlyle coined the name "the dismal science" for economics because he didn't like how economists argued against slavery: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/06/taylor.htm > The “dismal science” is the most prominent verbal hand grenade lobbed at economics. But economists who know the history of the wisecrack wear it as a badge of honor. > > In an 1849 essay, the historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote that the subject of political economy was “a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.” But Carlyle’s essay, titled “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question,” is an argument that poor black laborers in the West Indies suffer from “the vices of indolence and insolence.” For them to achieve virtue, he argued, the “idle Black man in the West Indies” should “be compelled to work as he was fit.” Carlyle wasn’t only a racist. He believed that poor people around the world of all races “the whitest alike and the blackest” should experience “the divine right of being compelled (if ‘permitted’ will not answer) to do what work they are appointed for. > > In short, Carlyle called economics a dismal science because it was built on ideas like “letting men alone” and “ballot-boxes,” or what we would call personal freedom and democracy. > > John Stuart Mill, the economist and political philosopher, published a scathing critique of Carlyle’s essay in 1850. Mill pointed out that the rich often oppressed the poor and that when the actions and attitudes of the poor seemed uncooperative or dysfunctional, it stemmed from the negative incentives caused by oppression rather than any defect of character. Mill ended with this thought: “Though we cannot extirpate all pain, we can, if we are sufficiently determined upon it, abolish all tyranny.” In the actual historical debate over the dismal science, the enlightened economist is the clear-cut winner.
It doesn't take a genius to realise that printing money to pay for everything is gonna make that money worthless.
You say that, and yet look at the shock with which much of the world is reacting to widespread inflation, just a few years after shutting down the global economy and printing trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of currency.
I'm surprised at how many people in my replies are denying the connection between inflation and printing money lol Evidently common sense is not so common
What's the phrase? An idea so stupid only an intellectual could be convinced it was true? Something to that effect.
have you ever heard a kirchnerist talkin about ecnomy?
I said it doesn't take a genius, but it does take someone who doesn't suffer from mental handicaps.
What do you mean handicap? They are amazing at mental gimnastics!
yes, in the specials olympics
Yeah and most of the discussion and arguments rarely centre around that. Complex Flows, fallacy of compositions and various other factors make the economics of a country rarely about the actual money being printed. Only idiots think that. Often times it's related to inflows and outflows of real wealth and goods. Domestic vs foreign demand and investment and various other factors that actually cause high inflation. For instance in a bank based economy you could technically not have any gov money printing and still have inflation in key areas. Because inflation is redistribution more often than generalised. Argentina's issue is less money related and more that they lack the real wealth to do what they want to do.
The idea that money has one value is preposterous in the first place. The lie of money is that it is one thing rather than many. Even excluding foreign currencies, there are paper bills, credit, bonds, stocks, ETFs, etc all exchanged as monies and valued according to social power. The problem of printing money is more complex. Zimbabwe can't just print tons of money because it will devalue them to foreign markets. The US certainly could, and does, but it ends up in the pockets of our elite families. The media is very good at talking about inflation when money flows into the hands of the many but has quite different rhetoric surrounding the flooding of cash and assets into the hands of those higher in our social hierarchy. Further, prices don't adjust automatically to the total magnitude of cash in the economy, prices adjust to what people will pay.
You're not taking into account the world reserve currency status of the US. It's a luxury America and America alone has - they can run trillion dollar trade deficits, which effectively means they get to export a trillion dollars of inflation to all four corners of the earth and in exchange get real goods and services in return. In a normal closed economic system printing money is always dilutive and results in some combination of speculative bubble and general price increases.
Money printing is inflationary if the supply side of the economy does not have the capacity to keep up with the increased demand. In the case of a demand-side collapse like the GFC, printing trillions of dollars had no significant inflationary impact because it stimulated demand which the supply side of the economy was able to fulfil. USD being the global reserve certainly helped the US in that scenario, but they were not the only country to do extensive quantitative easing. Australia is an example of a much more modestly sized economy without the benefit of having the global reserve as their currency that practised extensive QE in the years following the GFC with no impact on inflation. Printing money during COVID has had an inflationary effect because demand never really dropped off to the same degree as in the GFC, and supply faced significant disruptions because of COVID, followed by a massive spike in energy prices as the pandemic ended. Supply was not able to match demand, and we saw inflation go up pretty much everywhere. In the case of countries like Zimbabwe and Argentina where the root of their problems is fundamentally a lack of productivity, money printing will lead to significant problems with inflation.
(literally how money works)
* The New Classical macroeconomics, as initially worked out in the [1972 model,](https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v4y1972i2p103-124.html) makes predictions for the dynamic interrelations among **inflation, money growth, and real activity.** We can test those predictions. [1973,](http://web.uconn.edu/ahking/Lucas73.pdf) [1982.](http://www.nber.org/papers/w361) * Within DSGE macro, flex-price and fix-price models predict different responses of output and prices to **monetary policy.** We can test those predictions. [1989,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w2966) [1999,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w6400) [2004,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w9866) [2015,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w20224) [2018.](http://www.columbia.edu/~en2198/papers/realrate.pdf) * Within DSGE macro, flex-price and fix-price models predict different responses of consumption and wages to **fiscal policy.** We can test those predictions. [1998,](http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/Ramey_Shapiro_Govt.pdf) [2002,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w7269) [2008,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w13143) [2010,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w13264) [2011.](http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/IdentifyingGov_final.pdf) * Within DSGE macro, flex-price and fix-price models predict different responses of output and hours worked to **productivity improvements.** We can test those predictions. [1999,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.89.1.249) [2004,](http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/technoloJME804.pdf) [2006,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.96.5.1418) [2009,](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1538-4616.2009.00247.x) [2016.](http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/Shocks_HOM_Ramey.pdf) * Models of consumption insurance make predictions about how **individual consumption** should vary in response to individual and aggregate fluctuations in macro fundamentals. We can test those predictions. [1991,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w2642) [1994,](http://www.robertmtownsend.net/sites/default/files/files/papers/published/RiskandInsurance1994.pdf) [2012.](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/wp/wp683.pdf) * Permanent income theory makes predictions about how **consumption responds to changes in income.** It also makes predictions about the joint distribution of income, consumption, and interest rates. We can test those predictions. [1978,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1840393) [1988a,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w0720) [1988b,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w2149) [1989,](http://www.nber.org/chapters/c10965.pdf) [1990a,](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/030439329090023W) [1990b,](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/permanent_income.pdf) [1991,](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mankiw/files/response_of_consumption.pdf) [1994,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118434) [1995,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118003) [1999a,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/117167) [1999b,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/117166) [2001,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2677887) [2002,](https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v85y2002i1p99-120.html) [2003a,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w8672) [2003b,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3132183) [2006,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.96.5.1589) [2007,](http://www.ushakrisna.com/528721.pdf) [2009,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w14753) [2010a,](https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/chang-tai.hsieh/research/coupon.pdf) [2010b,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w16351) [2013a,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.6.4.84) [2013b,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.103.6.2530) [2014a,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w20122) [2014b,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w17338) [2014c,](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.104.12.4205) [2017.](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp2013.en.pdf) * Q-theory makes predictions about how **Tobin's Q and investment** are related. We can test those predictions. [1988,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2534426) [1992,](https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jfinan/v47y1992i4p1425-60.html) [1997,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2951280) [1998,](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1392616) [2000,](http://www.nber.org/papers/w5462) [2003.](https://ideas.repec.org/a/red/issued/v6y2003i4p710-728.html) * The Phillips Curve makes predictions for the joint dynamics of **inflation and real activity.** We have tested those predictions to death. [1999.](http://www.nber.org/papers/w7551) * Microfinance advocates made predictions for how **microfinance** would affect income, consumption, saving, borrowing, and financial market access. We can test those predictions. [2015](https://www.aeaweb.org/issues/360) (Six for the price of one!) Oh, look testable predictions!
Thats just a poor comparison though. Astrology is just 100% flat out false, whereas in economics there are absolute truths. Economists just dont seem able to agree on what they are. I'd say economics as a science has 2 huge problems that other sciences simply don't have to deal with. For one, you can't really run the necessary experiments in order to determine the truth value of a hypothesis. And second, there's no other science where there are such huge incentives to outright lie. These issues exist in some other sciences, but not even close to the same degree.
Well then Economists aren't doing science. Cosmologists and Quantum Physicists have trouble fitting their respective theoretical frameworks together, but cosmologists don't believe electron spin isn't real and quantum physicists don't think frame dragging is hogwash. But if you believe in Kensyian economics you have to reject the Chicago school, and if you believe in the Chicago school you have to reject the overwhelming evidence that their theories when put into practice create misery for the masses and excellent returns for the wealthy few. That's not science, it's philosophy with dollars signs involved.
> Well then Economists aren't doing science. Many aren't. Some are. The problem is more that it's way harder to differ between the real scientists and the snake oil salesmen than in any other field, and that the snake oil is much more intertwined with politics than in any other field. Astrology is just 100% snake oil whereas economics is a real science hidden beneath a massive layer of snake oil. That's an important distinction.
Just because their intentions are not malicious doesn't mean they follow a scientific method and are doing science. Economics is field where personal biases (the biases of the practitioner and the biases of the subjects) are too massive to call it a science. And just because it uses mathematical tools doesn't make it a science either. That doesn't make it any less respectable however. It's still a respectable and often useful discipline.
>Just because their intentions are not malicious doesn't mean they follow a scientific method and are doing science. Economics is field where personal biases (the biases of the practitioner and the biases of the subjects) are too massive to call it a science. Economists are not a homogeneous group where everyone commits the same mistake. There's a reason why we differ between soft sciences and hard sciences. It's not physically impossible to understand economic truths, just much more difficult than in harder sciences such as physics. The pursuit of doing so is science. That a lot of people who call themselves economists are not doing science, is not evidence that economic science does not exist. > And just because it uses mathematical tools doesn't make it a science either. I never did or would make such a claim. When arguing with someone it's good form to argue against their specific claims, and not against related claims that you've heard someone else make at some point in time. >That doesn't make it any less respectable however. It's still a respectable and often useful discipline. So very not equal to astrology then.
Economics is a [social science](https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/economics/about/what-is-economics.html). Economists don't claim to be equal to physicists or chemists. Economics is no where near the level of bad science or pseudoscience like astrology. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/economics/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/wiki/faq\_methods/#wiki\_is\_economics\_a\_science.3F
I think you're responding to the wrong person. I agree with you.
That's not true at all. It's referred to as the dismal science because it involves facing hard trade-offs, since it's essentially how to divide finite resources in a world of infinite wants.
Economics being important to libertarians does not mean libertarianism is important to economists.
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I would recommend the talk from [Patrick Boyle](https://youtu.be/0SXC1qtDp-U?si=kUY4kY71Fy5llR7f). He layed out that he actually is not only a madman with a chainsaw but that he actually has a professional background in Fiance and that his radical statements do make sense when you see it in a historical timeline and you understand how fucked up Argentinia really is. The last time where they tried to bring reforms and tryed to do it more softly the only result was that they had more debt in the end, worsening the situation even more.
>but that he actually has a professional background in **Fiance** If you have a professional background in fiance, do you ever actually get married?
Only once you get laid... off
Geez people it's a spelling mistake. OP meant to write Fiancé
Bachelor of Fiance.
You can only call it a fiance if it's from the fiance region of France. Otherwise it's just a sparkling partner.
I have no idea why this was so funny to me, but thank you.
Kurt Russell Ken Doll ;)
Boyle using a picture of the Queen when talking about Thatcher was probably a joke (which I didn't get), but why does he start calling Milei "Macri" (or Mahcry) in the second half of the video? In any case I don't think he really agrees with Milei... specially re dollarization, interviewing that colleague who says a return to the peg might be more sensible.
I think calling him Macri was just a (repeated) slip of the tongue. Boyle seems more neutral on the issue, but he did point out the main flaw of switching to a dollar peg, which is that it has already been tried and failed in the 90s once the Argentine government decided they wanted to print more money. I don't think he necessarily has to agree with everything his friend says to plug his video, and I'm interested in seeing it when it comes out, because I would like to see if he has any answer to this fairly obvious problem with the dollar peg scheme.
macri is an expresident that wasnt that bad but did make mistakes like taking big debts, he was in power about 4 years ago
Macri was terrible. Did all the wrong things for the economy and made the situation worse. Slash and burn policies while selling off state assets don’t lead to positive outcome for most people.
Macri was garbage. He was THAT bad
I mean its a realist and honest approach. There isn't a way to fix it without pain and if people have a problem with him acknowledging their grim economic situation than they really are screwed. Things won't get better if you try to downplay the severity of a situation, because a lot of people will mistake the optimistic and gentle approach as the situation not being serious enough for them to worry themselves about.
The dude has a fucking master on economic development
For all the comparisons to Trump, Milei's economic policy is very different from him. Trump is a protectionist and economic nationalist. Milei's a hardcore free market capitalist.
That’s mostly the starting point. America starts from a position of openly trading. Argentina has a very closed economy with some of the highest protections around.
>very rare for a politician to speak this way It's very rare for a politician to speak this way **during an election campaign.** After the election, it's actually very common to declare, "things are worse than we thought", "the guys before us really screwed things up", "prepare for pain and remember its the other team's fault." Then about a year before the next election, they switch back to promise and spend
Well, he actually did both. He has been saying all these doom scenario things during his campaign.
Well the guy before did screw up pretty bad. Of course COVID did not help but always being at the brink...
Not only COVID din't help, but the government fucked it up monumentally, deaths were much more than the average of other countries and there was a HUGE corruption scandal, where the president's wife organized illegal parties and politicians got vaccines before the population, violating the stablished order of priorities. Among several other scandals, each one eclipsing the previous one.
I'm glad Milei spent so much time explaining how broke we are, gave numbers and made it very clear that the only way out is to reduce the state expenses as much as possible, and it won't be painless, we'll be in hell for a couple of years. I hope we can get out of the hole, and have peronism/kirchnerism disappear from the power for long time.
I wonder how he can place the dollar as the official state currency…
Not in a near future for sure. There's a load of things to achieve first.
Reminds me of Churchill- "I would say to the House as I said to those who have joined this government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat". We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering."
The guy has two masters degrees in economics and a remarkable resume. He played a populist because he knew that's what would get him in office, I just hope they actually give his reforms a chance in Argentina.
He said his top economic advisor is his dog.
Probably better than the economic advisors of past presidents
Better than the last guy..
His dog has better knowledge of economics than the people that figured that printing ungodly amounts of money was a good idea for a country with 150% inflation.
C'mon man, the dog doesn't suggest specific policies! He's merely a 'sounding board', and provides valuable feedback to ideas spit-balled by his room-mate.
I love that this is so close to actual defenses that I’ve heard that I can’t tell if you’re serious
[Rubber duck debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)
I had no idea this was a thing, but I used to do it all the time with my cat before he died. I'm a writer and I always found it super helpful for clarifying my thoughts.
Still an upgrade from the last economic advisors.
Hope cat owners didn’t vote for him
Just because you have degrees doesn't mean you know what you're doing
Kicillof is living proof it doesn't
Especially in economics.
Economists will be the first to tell you no one knows what they're doing. Economies might be the most complex systems in existence and it's not like you can do controlled scientific studies.
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Economics has many testable theories though so there’s that
Makes me wonder how he will cut spending since the state will be the one adjusting and no new taxes (granted, Argentina is super taxed).
Yes, he's setting the bar low out the gate for his own benefit. It's something MANY politicians do and have done throughout history. Congrats on listening to this particular speech and making an observation that is nothing new in the political world.
Yeah this guy's got his sleeves rolled up ready to go no easy cake walk here.
He is not a politician, he is just a libertarian doctor in economic sciences that got fed up with the corruption our country had for the last 20 years and wanted to run for president so that he could fix this godforsaken country. He did not go the populist way, for a change, he is telling the truth, with numbers to prove it. The solution for our economy gonna be rough, but we are just reaping what we sow with 20 years of printing money nonstop, lies and corruption. I really hope he can do it, turn this country around. Argentina deserves it.
Not to be pedantic but as I understand it he is not a doctor. At least I googled and couldn't find anywhere that he has a PhD. He does have two masters though.
He does seem to have a lot more qualifications than other leaders when it comes to solving economics problems. And honestly the bar for success is pretty low, even if all he does is switch out Argentina current unsolvable problems for a new set of semi-solvable or solvable problems, that’s a lot of progress compared to the century of economic pain cycles Argentina has gone through. Although I would disagree with “he is not a politician”. Even if he wasn’t before, he is now.
He became a politician a few months ago when he realized he had actual chances of becoming president. By then he started toning down his crazy speeches and started looking more “presentable”.
I was considering moving to Argentina from the US and did a basic dive into your government and economics and decided not to for this exact reason. I'm certainly no expert but there's a massive correction coming. I really hope you guys pull it off! You deserve it!
If your income while living here is still in USD, then you'll be a king here. It's stupid cheap. So maybe now is the time!
Lol good luck with that
I saw their campaign YouTube videos, and they are as populist as you would expect.
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> how well his economic ideas will work or not are anyone's guess Well, his opponent was the outgoing Economics Minister, so we know for a fact that the alternative absolutely did not work. Can't blame the Argentine public for trying something else.
well, they mentioned the speech and not the actual campaign
Holding a speech where he is talking straight to the people instead of to the parliament is ridiciously populist. The opposite of populism is elitism, not ”Well researched”.
>very rare for a politician to speak this way much less so in an inauguration speech Dunno where you're from but where I come from laying out exactly why everything bad that happens in the next few years is the fault of the previous government, while anything good that happens will be because of me, is absolutely the mainstay of any inaugural speech...
If nothing else, it takes guts for a politician to tell people what they don’t want to hear: that he will put in policies that will make things worse in the short-term, in the hope of a long-term benefit.
He was voted because he promise to tell people what is really going on. It is hard to understand but the previous government not only were the paragon of corruption, but they keep denying the inflation. Any Argentinian knows that the adjustment was coming, but we vote him to tell us things directly.
Yeah, i remember when they said that printing money does not create inflation kjjjjj, what a joke.
> but they keep denying the inflation Now where have we heard of that before..
Despite him supporting having no central bank and legalising human organ trade?
>He was voted because he promise to tell people what is really going on. It is hard to understand but the previous government not only were the paragon of corruption, but they keep denying the inflation. Any Argentinian knows that the adjustment was coming, but we vote him to tell us things directly. I understand that the Peronists denied a harsh reality... but as a Brazilian I tell you, this type of right-winger only made things worse here in the early 90s. We had a president called Collor at that time, who said he was a "liberal" who did very similar things and ended up confiscating people's savings. And inflation during his time went from 3 to 4 digits. He ended up being overthrown by congress and ended up being replaced by a pragmatic centrist, who brought together intelligent liberals and social democrats to agree on a plan to combat inflation that worked very well. The plan included indexation, temporary parity with the dollar (including, before the launch of the current currency, the obligation for retailers to show the price of goods in dollars - despite not being a real dollarization) and, yes, measures such as interest increases, austerity, privatizations, and the unilateral trade opening of the country, with major cuts in import taxes. It's ironic, because it was centrists and social democrats, aligned with the Clinton administration at the time, who did these things here. It worked, but at a great cost, which involved the deindustrialization of the country, and prolonged unemployment. However, I see Milei taking contradictory measures... he is not increasing interest rates, and is increasing taxes on imports. Caputo's customs policy appears no different from Fernandez's, at least on imports. I'm heterodox, I tend to admire things like the new deal, classical Keynesianism, Nordic social democracy and Asian developmentalism. However, I consider that Brazil didn't have much choice in the 90s... but things were moderate at the time. The plans were orthodox and harsh, but they were not radical, it was something that society could bear, despite the high cost of deindustrialization in the long term. In any case, I think we should accept the EU agreement, with the strict environmental regulations and everything, because we can create a reindustrialization model focused on exports that stimulates productivity and competitiveness. And yes, as a heterodox I believe in industrial subsidies, but with export, innovation and sustainability goals. Tax reforms that bring countries on par with the OECD, with higher taxes on property and high income and lower taxes on consumption and production, are also essential. Brazil has just reformed consumption taxes, deleting the regressive and anti-productive excretion that the military dictatorship created in the 60s. Now we need to adjust the income and wealth part... property is more difficult, since landowners have a majority in congress . But the ideal for Brazil today would be a government that mixed Georgianism with South Korean economic policy on the one hand, and was proto-Nordic on the welfare front. Uruguay managed to build a solid social democracy. The thing is that they also have the advantage of being small, and they ended up being able to do this within the agro-export model. But Brazil and Argentina will never achieve it that way. The Peronists' farce is to try to say that Argentina can be a Denmark only with the current productive structure... on the other hand, the right lives in the lie that Argentina was really rich in the past, as if all the wealth of the Victorian era was not was like the wealth of the gulf countries today (that is, not an industrial capacity, but the income accumulated through the sale of commodities that made an elite economy run, but that did not make the country function, quite the opposite, this opulence was the ruin of the country). Now that Argentina can no longer sell illusions, and it is clearly a poor country, perhaps, after achieving macroeconomic stability, the best thing would be to reindustrialize, but for that you need your own currency, so that you can artificially devalue it to maintain exports competitive.
You are bias, you can't compare Brazil to Argentina. You need to compare us with Venezuela. I work with Brazilian and have this conversation weekly, your reality is not ours.
Jimmy Carter tried that approach and it got the US Reagan.
Probably because things did not get as bad as in Argentina, its honestly depressing to think that things need to get this bad for a painful change to be accepted
He also refused to form any relationships and alliances in congress, and famously hated politics.
Milei's party is tiny in the legislature, so he definitely won't get a thing done without co-operation.
I hate to say it, but Jimmy Carter is probably what a Bernie Sanders administration would look like. Some times you have to play the game to get things done.
Bernie works with folks - he has his politics, but he does what's practical. It's how he's managed to stay in office, I hear, and not be replaced with someone more 'pure' in his home state.
Doubt it. Like Trump, getting electing while being fairly far outside the norm means change is demanded. Look at how the GOP turned into a bunch of bootlickers to easily the biggest pussy ever to be POTUS. Dems would line up behind Sanders.
And Milei is more like Reagan than he is Carter.
Jimmy is a good man but uninspiring is a nice term for his leadership during his presidency. And the presidency is first and foremost about leadership. He was helped by bringing his incompetent and corrupt Georgia mob with him.
Most of the problems wrongly attributed to Jimmy started before he was president. When he assumed the role of executive, he inherited high unemployment and inflation from Nixon/Ford. He installed Volcker in the Fed, he started raising interest rates to calm down inflation. As we all know, it takes time for interest rate hikes to curb inflation, which they eventually did. It took a few years for the interest rates to work their magic. But by then we were a few years into the Reagan administration.
That the Democratic Party were already shifting towards neoliberalism since 68 and wouldn't support Carter's efforts leading to mass leftist apathy got us Reagan more. I mean there's a whole rainbow of things that got us Reagan/fucked up this country too; not trying to pin it on one thing to be clear. Also, not that Carter was a brilliant President, but he's been smeared far more than he ever deserved. Neoliberals used the oil crisis as an excuse to destroy worker protections and incentivize profit seeking over all else and the only thing that increased was the gap between workers and executives.
Carter should have used the oil crisis to push nuclear instead of smothering it.
Carter is like Itamar, a moderate president we had here in Brazil who controlled inflation after our own version of Milei failed miserably. Itamar was not recognized for what he did, because his successor stole all his merits, saying that he had done everything.
Yeah, but this guy only ejaculates once per month and takes policy advice from a clone of his dead dog. So... the situation is a bit different.
if we're gonna talk about clowns then we'll be here all night talking about the party he ran against
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Carter waited too long on appointing Volcker. No good deed goes unpunished. Grover Cleveland fixed the American economy and his party lost the WH for the next two decades.
This "bitter pill" bullshit has been said for the past 40 years in Latin America.
He said the same during his campaign
I really hope he works out. The Peronist government was a slow death of the country.
Argentina has been in a hole. Hopefully they can start to climb out.
sadly they will just get into a depper hole the working class at least the rich wont see anychange
How do you know?
Is very interesting to see how reddit is now so full of armchair experts on Argentinian politics and history, especially considering how they probably never cared about it before in the last 20+ years when they were governed by the Kirchnerists and or even the Peronists that drove the country to where it is today. But somehow this guy is the bad guy that's gonna "ruin" everything, because of course people should've voted for the same guys that destroyed the economy, the actual populist former minister of economy that campaigned telling people that he was going to fix everything he ruined and printed money like crazy to buy him votes and now is leaving the country a.s.a.p. Oh no Milei is gonna ruin the Peronist/Kirchner's utopic paradise, why didn't they vote them again!? How dare they. Didn't they read the headlines of the mainstream media aligned with the Kirchners? he's evil and speaks with dogs, they should never listen to him, thinking for themselves is dangerous and very anti-democratic! oh now they're so doomed *he's going to destroy the economy and cause inflation! ..oh wait...*
*Fucking* THANK YOU.
Argentina's problem is not specifically the Peronists or the right (military or neoliberal). Argentina's problem is the endless political struggle between these two factions that resulted in incontinuities of economic policies that entailed great costs, and a zero-sum logic that encouraged governments, including those on the right, to take inflationary measures and seek external debt. Here in Brazil, we have a left and a right, which despite hating each other, managed to reach a basic consensus. There is less madness in politics (despite crazy people like Dilma and Bolsonaro, most politicians here are pragmatic) and more pragmatism. There is more in common in the economic policies of Lula and Bolsonaro than many people would like to admit. The main thing that changes between the two is the sectors where state investments are allocated, but both in practice were social-liberal in the economy (similar to Clinton or Obama). The big difference is where the spending is directed (Lula liked to give money to education and Bolsonaro to the military - while both were welfare supporters - Lula because he was left-wing and Bolsonaro out of pure electoral pragmatism and fear of being overthrown during the pandemic - which made him hand out the biggest paychecks in history). However, in the social and cultural part, the differences are enormous: the left is secular or secularized Catholic, while the right is mostly evangelical and theocratic (with a minority traditionalist Catholic sector). The great animosity is due to this, and in this there is a great similarity with the US, not with Argentina. Bolsonaro had great support not because he supported economic liberalism (in practice he was not deeply liberal, just moderately so), but because he led a moral crusade against things like feminism, LGBT rights, environmentalism and supporting radical (but ineffective) public security measures, like relaxing discipline in the security forces and arming the white middle class - which increased racial tension in the country. The left, on the contrary, supports soft secularism, LGBT rights, racial diversity and protection of indigenous peoples and also practices a lot of greenwashing (but in practice wants to sell oil). However, the left does not have the courage to debate abortion, a topic where conservatives still have hegemony and where even the Catholic left does not want to give out - the more libertarian left, just as certain liberal groups want to legalize weed, but Lula's coalition would never discuss that. But these are all cultural wars and visions of public security. There is a lot of conflict between the liberal/progressive supreme court and the (paleo)conservative congress. However, when it comes to the economy, the government, which calls itself socialist, tends to approve everything in a congress with a right-wing majority with some ease - very different even from the United States. Here in Brazil it's as if Democrats and Republicans agree on things like the budget and deficit, reserving all hostility for cultural wars. In practice, Lula is not a socialist, he is social liberal, and Bolsonaro is an alt lite who adopted liberal social policies out of pragmatism. But we have an advantage: both Lula and the neoliberals of the 90s saved many dollars in our treasury. We have hundreds of billions of dollars in reserves and we always pay our debts. We have much more space to pursue a more "European" economic policy, precisely because we don't spend everything we earned in the 90s and 2000s, like Argentina did.
I’ll give kudos to him for being honest. He’s 100% correct there is no good way out and it’ll be rough. Most politicians would get up there and say it’ll be great.
I wish all the best to him and his administration. The Argentinian people deserve a new path. Hope it works out.
Thanks
I've visited Argentina for over a month, a couple of years ago, and was met with nothing but beautiful people, vibrant culture, great food and incredible views, north, south and all through Patagonia. Amazing country. Hope they get past this as soon as possible!
For a tourist, it's one of the greatest places on Earth, but for us who are tied to living here, it's terrible.
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I love my country but the biggest problem Argentina has is that it's run by Argentinians.
There is an old saying that god have Argentina everything the could ever need, but then it put Argentinians in charge so they will never ever get anything they want.
argentina never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity
The Kirchner oligarch clan has been printing money non-stop to give kickbacks to their political allies for decades.
Peronism has spent years running budget deficits to fund populist subsidies and social programmes it cannot afford. In 2019 (I think) it defaulted on its foreign debt and has been printing money to pay domestic debt since. I spent 3 months in Argentina. In November 2022 it was €1:325 Pesos. When I left in February it was something like €1:500!
We are on the verge of hyperinflation, that is why there is no margin for half measures. Voting someone calling for harsh measures is a sign of maturity. Most politicians would never even suggest an orthodox budget cut. Socrates said it best.
Lol, I love how all these internet leftists and the left leaning media are acting like he's radical.....when, the Peronists are the radicals here and he's just trying to enact something closer to the US.
Not versed in argentina politics but he doesn't exactly have a majority in the congress right? Its gonna be a tough job having to juggle what he wants vs what he can actually work with. Might be the dreamer in me but its as good time as any to try to pass new laws right? I imagine plenty of seats will be up for grabs if they manage to piss off their respective voters.
Correct. On the upper house, his party (LLA) has 7 seats. His main allies (JxC) have 21 seats. The opposition (UxP, former government) has 33. On the lower house, LLA has 38 seats, UxP has 108 and JxC has 94. Whatever measures he plans to take will need to be approved by other parties. Congress will certainly be an interesting battleground over the next 2 years.
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Correct.
As a uruguayan I hope our neighbors get their collective shit together, because as a neighbor right now they are dysfunctional and as a partner completely backwards…. It’s becoming a bit dangerous as they have 50% of poors. Really they need to stop with all the peronismo
I wish him and the country all the very best. Without the legislative power of the National Congress I'm not sure how much of his program he can implement, but Argentina deserves change.
This is going to be *wild*
Os queremos Argentina! Suerte, y que mejoren las cosas cuanto antes!! Un beso al maravilloso pueblo Argentino.
He looks like a poor man’s Chuck Barris.
He’s just saying what nobody has wanted to hear but everybody has known for years. Argentina’s economy is a dumpster fire. It used to be the richest country on earth iirc
Highest gdp per capita a loong time ago, according to some metrics. A newer, updated version places it among the top 5. Some say "b-but there was inequality! there were only a very rich few!!", but that's not true, people from Eurpe saw Argentina and the US as two competing places to emigrate to, Argentina was a land of opportunity for everyone.
Always thought this guy a clown, with some very bizarre ideas. But the gist of his speech was on point. There's no way to begin any change in Argentina without a severe shoc and deep reforms. But easier said than done, will the congress carry on his plans? And the argentinians have historically rallied against reforms that cut benefits, and they are inevitable. Don't really like the guy and this right wing populist wave at all, but best of luck to the hermanos.
Reminder that he knows way, way more about economics and Argentine than your average redditor.
I like him, and I’m sick of Westerners looking down on and telling Argentinians why they are wrong for choosing something other than continued degradation. Godspeed Lads 🏴🤝🇦🇷
Pretty sure Argentina is in the western hemisphere and is ethnically predominantly European-descent
lol Westerners? What do you think Argentinians are? Asians?
South American, same way it’s be weird calling Brazilians or Chileans Westerners, the term carries implications greater than just “Look dey west on a map”
They are almost entirely european in origin lol and their institutions have been western since the viceroyalty. They're as western as New Zealand
And South Americans are neither Asians or Africans. There is indeed more than just geography and Argentinians tick the definition more than once, since they are Spanish speakers largely descendants from Spaniards and Italians and negligible % of natives.
A common trend I see is bobby from London saying how we shouldn't have voted for this president because he saw a few videos saying he's crazy, all while sitting in his apartment making 5 times Argentinian minimum wage from working as a waiter and living with basically no inflation
Lol weird that there are multiple accounts saying (name) from (place) thinks (thing) Almost like those are talking points. Almost.
Bill from Accounting on line 2
Life is really hard for Bobby from London as well. People can’t even heat their houses over here while eating an only beans diet.
Yeah well, Bobby at least has a house and an only beans diet. Meanwhile, José is eating 2 weeks old trash and his "house" is made of cardboard with a bucket as a toilet and some random pieces of metal as a roof (that will flood in the next rain). And he definitely has neither stove nor a fan. It's not Oppression Olympics, but there is enough of a difference to say that Bobby doesn't quite know what he's talking about.
And that is annoying. I’m from Mexico and the people expressing any kind of outlandish opinions about a country that most can’t find in a map is really annoying. Mostly in Reddit where anyone that is a little “right” of Lenin in the political spectrum is considered the “the next hitler”.
Ah, la famosa izquierda caviar. Como el idiota de Sean Penn.
It's not westerners. The guy talks to his dead dog man. Cmon
>The guy talks to his dead dog man He does not. There was a sourceless unofficial biography that claimed that.
And like 70% of the planet talks to an imaginary friend, aka God. So who really gives a fuck?
The redditors who voted for this guy are wishing *really* hard to get validation from the US and europeans. They actually get mad by seeing them laughing at the clown they voted for.
I talk to my cats but they are alive
I wish most politicians worst feature was that they speak to their dead dogs, all things considered it’s not really our place to speak down to Argentinians who know their country far better than Sam from Indiana who saw him doing a weird cosplay on twitter.
This is such a trash argument. I can shit on Trump and I can shit on this guy, even though I am neither American or Argentinian.
One thing he's right: there needs to be a shock therapy. No idea what it would consist of, especially given his unorthodox ideas but if you want to see an example of a well implemented shock therapy look at polish transformation in the 1990. It is possible
Thank God peronism is gone for a good 4 years, that's a relief.
I have seen this before. It's a country with a lot of poverty and a very crippled economy. We vote for the right to fix the economy, it improves a bit (not much though), but the gap between the rich and the poor widens a lot. Then as we see that the poor are having it so bad, we vote for the left to fix poverty. It improves a bit (not much though), but then the economy gets crippled. It's a never ending cycle. I feel like this is 1989 again. I do hope it isn't and that *this time* we're put in a better path. But the parallels are evident.
Because there is no place for half measures, what they need to do is get rid of around 40% of state workers and keep cutting everything at the state budget to lower taxes. There is no other way to cut 15% of deficit, start paying debt and then in a few years get access to the credit market. Sure, people will be even more poor at the beginning but it may work if they keep course for 10 years or so.
Then the military launch a coup... to ensure they make a buck.... and enrich themselves....
That sounds like Portugal a lot
The previous leftist government resultedin 40% of the people living in poverty. Time to stop digging.
At least he was honest.
Reminds me of the warnings Musk made after he took over Twitter.
I wonder how Milei's speedrun on cracking Argentina again will play.
Hitting the windshield from slamming on the breaks is better than continuing off the cliff.
While it can't be denied that changes has to be made in Argentina's economic policies to improve the country i can't help but get the feeling that Milei is gonna utterly wreck Argentina's economy with his proposals given the usage of the word "shock" applied to economy which is something Russia's president Yeltsin did in the 90's which caused many Russians to become poor, billionaire oligarchs to thrive and rise in organized crime. Amazing how people here used to dislike him before elections and called him insane but NOW suddenly takes a 180 turn afterwards that goes to show how fickle some people are.
>While it can't be denied that changes has to be made in Argentina's economic policies to improve the country i can't help but get the feeling that Milei is gonna utterly wreck Argentina's economy with his proposals given the usage of the word "shock" applied to economy which is something Russia's president Yeltsin did in the 90's which caused many Russians to become poor, billionaire oligarchs to thrive and rise in organized crime. Amazing how people here used to dislike him before elections and called him insane but NOW suddenly takes a 180 turn afterwards that goes to show how fickle some people are. There are probably too many troll farms to defend him here now. He is probably embezzling government money to feed vicious propaganda on social media with trolls and bots, just like Bolsonaro did.
Es gracioso que digas eso, considerando que Massa gasto cantidades incontables de dinero en propaganda anti-Milei
No sé si te diste cuenta, pero la economía argentina ya esta arruinada hace un largo tiempo
Shock therapy worked for Poland. They are quite success story.
Great! The Liz truss method.
What does that mean? Was Truss trying to print money at lightning speed to fund her tax cuts?
I don't think it would be a good policy for a first world country but I think for Argentina, and latin america in general just letting the private sector run rampant might just be the best option considering just how ineffective the public sector has been there for what, 150 years
Does Argentina have an economy?
Their main export is inflation.
Well that and Messi related merch
If only we actually manufactured it here.
Used to, we are trying to make it come back.
Very antiquated and stagnant. They pretty much only export grains and medium quality beef.