> government workers had the option under Kirchner to take 20% of their monthly salary in USD
It was more complicated. Something like (salary - minimun_official_salay)/some_number, but 20% is a good approximation for a middle class salary. Note that poor people didn't get the dollars with discount! And rich people had more sophisticated ways to save their money.
It was not only for government workers. Anyone with a declared salary could buy them, but many private workers had undeclared salary to avoid paying taxes.
> And this was paid at the official peg meaning it was worth roughly 5x as much as the pesos it was substituting were actually worth.
The difference was not x5, but only x1.5. Here is a random article found in Google https://www.ambito.com/economia/en-2014-dolar-oficial-subio-... (Autotransalation https://www-ambito-com.translate.goog/economia/en-2014-dolar... )(Oficial price: $8.565. Unofficial price: $13.80. And there are many intermediate variants. The article claims that a few months before, the maximum difference was x2, not x5.)
> This scheme was purely a way of ensuring loyalty to the regime among the public sector, and it virtually bankrupted the country.
In my opinion it was mostly to keep middle class people in big cities not so angry, so they don't go out to the street to protest. (I.E. Not to buy loyalty forever, just to build temporal complacence.)
I don't think this bankrupted the country. We also had a huge discount in natural gas and electricity (we paid like half of the price) and there was a lot of corruption and weird gubernamental contracts. I think the "20% in cheap dollars was a small part of the problem.
> This is why USD was under every mattress and enough was in circulation to be used in every major transaction.
Homes, cars and other very expensive stuff is bought here using dollars, but it started like 40 of 50 years before, perhaps more.
> most of it remains buried on ranches in the pampa.
I don't expect big farmers to have siphoned most of that money, but we would have to wait 50 years to have a good understanding of how money flow during that time.
I think most big farmesr don't like to keep cash because thief, and also don't thrust the banks. They save in silobolas https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_bolsa (autotranslation https://es-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Silo_bolsa?_x... ), that are a huge tube of plastic filled with the soy they harvest, and is keep in the field until they need the money and have to sell it.
And ver big players invested in subsidiaries abroad, that is better than having stored dollars.
Disclaimer: I bought my "20%" of cheap dollars and when I bought a bigger home I used them to pay the difference between the mortgage and the price of the new home.