Poverty in Argentina hits 20-year high at 57.4%, study says | Hacker News Reader

Poverty in Argentina hits 20-year high at 57.4%, study says

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46 pointsAlgoRitmo25 comments

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2019-03-01: 1 United States Dollar equals 39.82 Argentine Peso

2024-02-20: 1 United States Dollar equals 837.11 Argentine Peso

A 2002.23% increase in 5 years

https://www.reuters.com/markets/argentine-shoppers-face-dail...

> Argentina inflation hits 124% as cost-of-living crisis sharpens

I think this 837 figure is the official rate but I don't understand what real-world significance it can have when pesos are actually being bought and sold at something north of 1100 to the dollar.

The black market rates only apply to private households. Businesses must have clean accounting books. The problem is that this official rate is inherently a subsidy for those who have access to it for the purpose of exchanging peso into dollars and a punishment for people who want to exchange dollars into peso.

The only benefit an exchange rate policy has is that it makes a countries' exports competitive on the international market. This is relevant for developing countries intending to build up a trade surplus. A floating exchange rate is better for developed countries with balanced trade. The previous exchange rate policy in Argentina didn't really serve any purpose other than to paper over domestic problems. There was no "grand strategy" behind it, so it needs to go.

Kurt Kaz went there last year. I got the impression that it's a desperate time to be there. You would think that some travel blogger's visit would make the place look better than it is. If he did, it would be dire.

There is a whole lot of “I visited the WORST place on Earth” style clickbait content on YouTube now.

And Argentina is FAR from being “the worst place on earth”. Feels like San Francisco tbh

I watched some of this video and the guy admits that that's exactly the type of content he tries to create.

I just watched that video after reading this post, and Villa 31 is definetly not representative of Buenos Aires (nor is it the worst in Buenos Aires - that's Villa 1-11-14 - but most these slums seem to have non-Argentinians based on accents, restaurants, and flags)

That's like assuming all of SF is a hellhole like Jones or Turk in Tenderloin

He went straight for the slums of Buenos Aires, very far from trying to make the place look nice.

Can anyone on the ground there speak to this? That seems crazy high.

We left the country in January, in part because we saw this coming as far back as the first election. Things are not going well there.

Where did you move to and how difficult is it for other Argentinians to do a similar move?

The United States, where I am a citizen and my wife a new immigrant. The process took us about 2 years and around $5,000USD between the lawyer and processing fees.

As with anything, the difficulty for anyone trying to move countries is having sufficient income. Most Argentinians don't, and those who do have already left.

To clarify, we didn't intend to move until March or April, but given the decrees Milei is trying to pass (like making it illegal to protest, and legal for police to assault civilians), we decided to expedite things.

I have never seen this many people flee a country that isn’t engaged in some kind of war. They’re largely educated.

They’re sending goods home.

The stories you hear are awful.

Are you talking about firsthand accounts? Because Venezuela in the last decade has seen close to 20% of their population leave [1]. Argentina's emigration is nowhere near those numbers (yet).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_refugee_crisis

This is my account of Argentine immigrants in Australia. A country with, for most of my life, few immigrants from Argentina. Quite far from South America.

I still see more Colombians here than Venezuelans.

I live in Peru and the Venezuelan diaspora is enormous. We don't even border Venezuela but around 10% of our capital city are illegal immigrants from there. They're on every street corner, camping in tents by every hospital, etc. They've even made it to small remote towns 12 hours from the nearest city. I haven't met an Argentine except at Machu Picchu.

What are their metrics? Are 60% of Argentinians living on less than $3/day?

Does anyone know how much of Argentina's debt is deminated in US dollars?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_debt_restructuring cites a lot of sources, though many in Spanish.

"The Ministry of Economy reported in June 2005 that the total official Argentine public debt was down by $63.5 billion from the first semester to $126.5 billion as a result of the restructuring process; of this, 46% was denominated in dollars, 36% in pesos, and 11% in euros and other currencies."

I would like it if more people knew that large economies have most of their debt in sovereign, floating currency, so that "fiscal responsibility" would not be the thing that stops nice things from happening. (AKA modern monetary theory)

Libertarian paradise.

Peron economic ideas have been applied in Argentina for 70-80 years, while Milet has been in power for less than 6 months. Very few people trust he will manage to improve things, but it's a bit of a stretch to blame him for "now".

Peronism is a strange beast and I don't defend it, but it was outlawed from the 1950s-1970s and it seems like peronist is just what every political group wanting legitimacy has called itself in Argentina whether liberal or conservative.

Typically it doesn't make sense to blame a freshly elected leader for features of the economy, but most leaders don't jump headlong into hardcore economic shock therapy right away either.

Talk about failing history class

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