What Would Dollarization Mean for Expats?

[Redpossum]

Milei's Achilles' Heel is that he has near-zero support among women, who do, after all, make up half the populace.

 

[sts7049]

Trump won the Republican nomination in a 2 party system. Milei has no chance, and all of his candidates are getting embarrassed in provincial elections on top of that. They just got 3% in Tucumán.

rationalize it however you like. but don't discount the wild pendulum swings occurring politically all over the world

 

[Alby]

Not to mention the unpredictable effect abstention will have on voting day (large abstention rates seen in the weekend voting), not to mention that, like elsewhere in the world, subnational elections are decided on subnational issues and so poor performances by Milei at that level are by no means clear pointers to what will happen at the presidential level.

 

[HectorH]

I'm once bitten, twice shy after this myself, and while the PASO voting intention surveys ≠ what will happen (let alone the election itself and a ballotage scenario), the idea that Milei isn't a frontrunner is kind of silly as he at the very least has been polling in first place.

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Regarding dollarization, things will be on fire for probably the first year as people adjust, but as Ronnie said, Milei comes with other problems as he wants to eliminate social plans and fundamentally change the makeup of the Argentine state which will plunge even more people in to poverty.

As to the original question, people with dollars will be fine, just like they are now.

These are the same polling companies that said his candidate would win in Tucuman with 43%.

He got 3%.

 

[Alfred_Arnold]

Milei's Achilles' Heel is that he has near-zero support among women, who do, after all, make up half the populace.

We have heard that line before about "women not liking the tone" of other outsiders who did in fact win, and still crediting the "non-college educated white male voter" as his base after the fact. I know a few argie women that have warmed up to him, at least in the context of the other alternatives.

 

[Redpossum]

We have heard that line before about "women not liking the tone" of other outsiders who did in fact win, and still crediting the "non-college educated white male voter" as his base after the fact. I know a few argie women that have warmed up to him, at least in the context of the other alternatives.

It's not a question of his "tone", (and where did you come up with that?)

Milei has publicly stated that he wants to outlaw abortion and abolish the Ministry of Women & Gender. I should have stated that explicitly in my first post, apologies.

 

[Alfred_Arnold]

It's not a question of his "tone", (and where did you come up with that?)

Milei has publicly stated that he wants to outlaw abortion and abolish the Ministry of Women & Gender. I should have stated that explicitly in my first post, apologies.

The "tone" was a big Trump criticism in 2015, to the point of meme status.

 

[Che1990]

I don’t understand how they think they can dollarize Argentina when the country has no dollars.

And it would be such a bad idea to do so.

 

[Redpossum]

The "tone" was a big Trump criticism in 2015, to the point of meme status.

Analogies between US politics and Argentine politics are inherently suspect. It's a different reality.

I've said this before, and I will repeat it - Argentina is to political science what Non-Euclidian geometry is to mathematics; the rules are just different.

As an aside, I do not even pretend to understand Euclid's Fifth Postulate, (aka the Parallel Postulate). I was a Political Science major, and that was in the Liberal Arts department at my university, OK? There are limits to what you can realistically expect from me when it comes to Advanced Mathematics

 

[FrankPintor]

I don’t understand how they think they can dollarize Argentina when the country has no dollars.

And it would be such a bad idea to do so.

Argentina is awash in Dollars, estimates last year were around $240 billion, mostly cash, more than any other country other than China and Russia.

However, the government doesn't have them, and the implied exchange rate if the economy was dollarized would be several thousand Pesos per Dollar, which would obviously be a huge shock to everyone with Pesos.

As you say, it would be such a bad idea to do so, for this and other reasons. The difficulties in living with a currency issued and controlled by another country shouldn't be underestimated.