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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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.