Hi Perry,
You are posting prices in USD from other countries as a comparison point to Argentina. However, other country currencies behave very differently depending on their economics and even demographics. Japan is an exporter country. Like China, it carries a significant trade surplus with the USA. Japan needs to do something with all those dollars. It can't covert them to the Yen or it would strengthen the Yen too much making it's exports too expensive. It instead buys US Treasuries, weakening the Yen to boost exports, and thereby allowing the US to fund it's enormous fiscal deficits with lower inflation than other countries could do. Japan also has a falling population rate, causing a deflationary pressure on their economy. The US for example has 12 different Federal Reserve districts and used to have different interest rates for their respective zones. At one point inflation on the west coast was higher because of the gold rush than the east coast. Inflation can be regional, national or even global. The OPEC oil embargo caused temporary global inflationary pressure. The war in Ukraine caused global grain price inflation due to it's export disruptions. I don't think the USD or USA should be a global metric to determine if something is "affordable". I do agree with you that Argentina is not affordable to many Argentinians based on the dynamics within Argentina. My simple minded brain thinks wage pressure is happening and many sectors are fighting to pass on those costs to an ever shrinking pool of disposable income. I too wonder just how much cost these sectors can pass on. Swiss Medical might be very happy to charge twice the amount to half the customers. It's the same margins with half the administration costs assuming their other costs aren't rising too. The half of the administrators left working there may get raises to keep up with inflation, the other half that aren't needed will be unemployed. The equality here will worsen, poverty as a whole will rise. I don't see the light at the other end of the tunnel yet or how this is supposed to equalize without a whole lot of unemployed. Unless deregulation and a desperate labor pool open up an investment boom of wage arbitrage that lifts people out of this. The government cannot sit idly by, even the IMF has mentioned this. At some point it will need to take the surplus it is generating and invest it back into the economy.
