nytimes.com Under Argentina’s New President, Fuel Is Up 60%, and Diaper Prices Have Doubled Daniel Politi, Lucía Cholakian Herrera ~3 minutes
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Javier Milei warned that things would get worse before they got better. Now Argentines are living it. An aerial view of crowded city square. Protesters are holding large banners. Protesters on Wednesday in Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires during the first demonstration against the new government of President Javier Milei.Credit…Luis Robayo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images An aerial view of crowded city square. Protesters are holding large banners.
Daniel Politi and Lucía Cholakian Herrera
Reporting from Buenos Aires
Published Dec. 23, 2023Updated Dec. 24, 2023
Over the past two weeks, the owner of a hip wine bar in Buenos Aires saw the price of beef soar 73 percent, while the zucchini he puts in salads rose 140 percent. An Uber driver paid 60 percent more to fill her tank. And a father said he spent twice as much on diapers for his toddler than he did last month.
In Argentina, a country synonymous with galloping inflation, people are used to paying more for just about everything. But under the country’s new president, life is quickly becoming even more painful.
When Javier Milei was elected president on Nov. 19, the country was already suffering under the world’s third-highest rate of inflation, with prices up 160 percent from a year before.
But since Mr. Milei took office on Dec. 10 and quickly devalued the Argentine currency, prices have soared at such a dizzying pace that many in this South American country of 46 million are running new calculations on how their businesses or households can survive the far deeper economic crunch the country is already enduring.
“Since Milei won, we’ve been worried all the time,” said Fernando González Galli, 36, a high school philosophy teacher in Buenos Aires.
Mr. Galli has been trying to cut back without making life worse for his two daughters, who are 6 years and 18 months old, including switching to a cheaper brand of diapers and racing to spend his Argentine pesos before their value disintegrates even further. “As soon as I get my paycheck, I go buy everything I can,” he said.
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A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 24, 2023, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Under New President, Argentines Walloped by Eye-Watering Inflation. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Mr. Galli has been trying to cut back without making life worse for his two daughters, who are 6 years and 18 months old, including switching to a cheaper brand of diapers and racing to spend his Argentine pesos before their value disintegrates even further. “As soon as I get my paycheck, I go buy everything I can,” he said.
During the hyperinflation times in Zimbabwe, workers were paid twice a day. Wives would come to their husband’s work and collect the mornings wages at lunch time and spend it immediately on food and necessities. Waiting to the end of the work day would mean an steep decline in buying power meaning it would buy less.
I truly hope this isn’t the future for the people of Argentina.
Omg I hope this ends better than that 😶 both peoples found themselves in such terrible challenges.
Do would they renegotiate their pay rate twice a day too? Otherwise their hourly after work would be worth significantly less
The hyperinflation affected employers too. Where do you think the employers would get extra pay to overcome that inflation? What is the worker’s other choice? Quit and work somewhere else. Where pays better? Everyone was in the same situation.
who would’ve thunk that a fascist maniac ain’t an economic mastermind
I think he is a fascist but I also think you shouldn’t judge him on his first days in office for shit like this.
He was given a pretty awful situation to deal with. It would be a surprise if he actually fixes it.
It was going to happen eventually, our inflation is more than 100% year over year and several goods and services have not been amended in years, the prices are simply being allowed to catch up to their real value.
Make no mistake, every politician here understands this is what needs to be done to stop inflation, Peronists/Kirchnerists simply let the right do it so they don’t have to do it themselves.
You, this was already happening and bound to happen with or without Milei. The difference is that, while Milei’s approach is to deregulate the economy, Kirchnerism/Peronism’s way was to hide the head underground and pretend it never happened.
At least now there’s a plan to do it.
He will blame the British
What else is he supposed to do? Be mature and accept the consequences of his rhetoric???
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Fascists require an enemy to blame while they consolidate power and strip away the rights of the people. It doesn’t have to make sense.
Are you sure you’re not just parroting a tired outdated and racist trope out of English propaganda?
I had dinner with some friends the other night and the new partner of one of them is Argentinian. We briefly discussed politics and it turned out he was quite positive about Milei. We didn’t linger on it because it would have ruined the evening but he was basically saying that things were so bad at home that he viewed any change as positive.
Being from the UK it reminded me of talking to Scottish independence and Brexit supporters. It’s a shame that so many voters around the world feel so hopeless.
I’d shit myself over the fuel price increase but I don’t want to soil my also expensive diaper.
Yea, that happens when you dismantle your country’s fed and then adopt the money (and therefore fed) of the country that helped create a brutal fascist dictatorship
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So you’re telling me that the series of extremely brutal fascist dictatorships that began with Operation Condor had nothing to do with their current problems? Or the fact that Milei is literally going to disband the Argentinian Federal Reserve to adopt the US dollar? Or Milei’s extremely harsh austerity politics?
Personally, I think Argentinas problems started long before and has its roots from having had an oppressive landowner ruling class that never really invested in industrialization which left the political territory ripe for populism.
Yea, that certainly is a factor as well. Iirc, Operation Condor in Argentina was to preemptively interfere with Argentina to prevent any populist socialists from rising to power like Allende in Chile, and they would have redistributed the land
Argentina economic woes are due to economic policies that their elected officials picked… yes…
Lending money to idiots to do stupid stuff is still the idiots decision
I think you missed the point. Operation Condor was a US operation to specifically prevent the people from electing anyone that was further left than a conservative liberal. This goal is why the Argentinian Junta occurred.
The US didnt really care much for argentinian leftists tbh.
Argentina moved right mostly on their own.
From an undergrad thesis guy, but the sources are pretty solid here
The Argentinian economy declined well before Us intervention was even considered, and the US intervention was mostly failures. The successful changes in administration (coup) came almost entirely from argentinians themselves.
You might have an argument if you were discussing bolivia, nicaragua, el salvador, colombia, venezuela, mexico or panama. But Argentina? They did that shit on their own.
Well… Actually, they are. They were poor money lenders, and gave money to the neighbourhood junkie, expecting he would not buy crack. It is Argentina’s fault to be in the position it is, but it’s also the money lenders’ to enable it.
This shitbag is going to drain the last dregs of anything valuable from the country, destroy any chance of recovery by dividing the country with extremist social policies, then duck and run with his ill-gotten fortune. The cost of the bullet that this asshole deserves isn’t equal to the value of his life.
All he did was bring the official rates in line with the real forex rates.
Fuck yo kids
He’s an extreme right winger and libertarian. His views are racist and show no tolerance.
He warned people that pain would come, before he was even elected. But he also promised better days, that I doubt they will come.
I wish the best for Argentina
Presidents don’t control the gas prices, not here at least.
You know what they do control? Social welfare, which he doubled because he knew things would get worse before they could get better.
The presidents absolutely control the price of gas when they unilaterally decide to remove the subsidies for that gas, instantly raising the price on that gas.
Then that was not the real price of gas and was being paid by everyone else, including the poor, not through tax money(as they should) but by having an over 10% monthly inflation.
So, inflation is down
America: “First Time?”
He’s a fascist, but blaming him for the economy which has been in freefall for decades when he just took power last month is a bit of a stretch.
