How's everyone hanging in there with the cost of living these days?

[LuckyLuke]

it works like this; imported products are double the price. this allows the great big ugly industria argentina to sell things at a lower quality and higher price than otherwise would be able to. yay "protectionsim"! it just means, the consumer is screwed and the corporations get rich! don't you enjoy all the half green dry lemons? impossible to find a normal lemon? well thats because all the good lemons get exported! and the argentine gets to buy the crap that isn't export grade at the same price or more expensive than a grade A argentine lemon found on the shelves of a different country! yay! how do they get awaty with it? well, what are you going to do, import a lemon for twice the cost? nope! hey why hasn't melei removed the tarrifs and opened argentinas economy? well its because he's not with the people.

Except that now Argentine lemon producers are barely getting any orders because brazil had a blow-out lemon season and export them cheaper... It's a lose-lose for everyone here.

 

[on the brink]

I was in Colonia a few weeks ago and got some outstanding lemons at the local TaTa. They were imported - from Thailand.

What are Argentine lemon producers thinking about?

 

[Che1990]

Hmm, yes, the subsidies being lifted will have raised the prices but for me that does not explain why things produced in Argentina are more expensive here as the same product produced and purchased in the US. Why does Argentine produced cheese cost more here in a grocery store or corner deli than an American cheese cost in an Acme or Trader Joes? Bug spray, cleaning products, cereal, peanuts, petrol, printing paper.... all are more expensive in Argentina than the US, certainly the wages for the people working to produce those products are not keeping pace with what the products are selling at. IMO
Secondly, why is worrying whether Argentine workers wages are keeping up with the cost of living "Commie Talk?" Empathy = Commie?

I think it’s 3 things…

1. Overvalued exchange rate. I saw that when I went to Uruguay, products imported from Argentina are cheaper there than they are here.

2. Protectionism means there are monopolies in the local market and very high costs on imported goods, meaning local businesses can charge whatever they want as there is no competition.

If you go to a supermarket to buy beer, basically pretty much everything on offer is owned by Quilmes. They can charge whatever they want.

It’s also why everything is such poor quality here. They don’t have competition.

3. High costs due to bureaucracy and inefficiency. There are lots of taxes, social charges, etc that get passed onto costs. I’m from the UK, there I paid less than $15 USD a month for a decent gym. The membership you buy online, you enter with a code and there are no staff on site. Here, gyms charge more than $40 USD per month. Where I go, there are always 5 staff not doing anything in receptions and another 5 teachers not doing anything upstairs. The labour cost gets put into the price. Labour costs are expensive too in Argentina.