Why are Argentines so Angry?

[Denver]

Well, you drive the rent up in certain neighborhoods. That said, I like having a cosmopolitan city (even if it is becamoing a city for rich people, like many other capitals in the world).

-No, he doesn't. The Argentine landlords drive the prices up.

Neil

 

[perry]

Foreigners have a very small effect on rents and prices to the suprise of many here. Unfortunately in Argentina people have inflation addiction meaning that they must put up their prices twice a year . This is detrimental to all as it creates anxiety and a vicious cycle of chasing the same in your own salary. I do find Buenos Aires a frustating city to do business in as there is a level of inefficiency here defined and accepted as the status quo.

Buenos Aires is easily dearer than any USA city and I do not care if you can get 4 pesos to the dollar as this is a ridiculuos argument as most currencies like Chile , Colombia, Uruguay , Japan offer you 100s of pesos or yens to the US dollars.

 

[Denver]

'Inflation addiction' is a very fitting term. The Argentines are their own worst enemy when it comes to the subject of rising prices.

The government plays a part, -no doubt, but all the small mom & pop stores in this city with their habitual price hikes must take a large share of the blame for the runaway inflation.

Neil

 

[jp]

Eh?

Do you understand what the drivers of inflation are?

Its not mom & pop, raising the prices because "they feel like it"

 

[fedecc]

The government plays a part, -no doubt, but all the small mom & pop stores in this city with their habitual price hikes must take a large share of the blame for the runaway inflation.

This is a very common yet incorrect argument. To give you a clear example, during the 90s Argentina had practically no inflation at all, for almost ten years, what happened, did mom & pop suddenly turn good and stop raising prices? No not really, it was the confidence people had on the peso (tied 1:1 to the dollar) and to the governmet keeping this system that put a stop to inflation (wether this was good or bad is another discussion).

Inflation has to do more with government policies and people´s expectations rather than with the people´s good or bad intentions.

 

[almagestos]

Buenos Aires is the City of Fury. In no other place have I met so many bitter, unhappy, paranoid, suspicious, on-their-guard people. Their prematurely aged faces, edged by frustration, military coups, daily disappointments, scrambling for coins, years of holding their money up to a light and shaking it because they can never trust its not fake, and belching city buses and shocking street level pollution, both air and noise, speak volumes. If Buenos Aires were a book, Id put it back on the shelf and stop reading.

Si somos tan malos y agresivos, menos mal que no hicimos ninguna guerra mundial como hicieron sus países de origen (los cuales describen como amigables) sino hubieramos borrado la vida de la faz de la Tierra...

 

[marksoc]

it was the confidence people had on the peso (tied 1:1 to the dollar) and to the governmet keeping this system that put a stop to inflation

In fact it was the lack of money (given that it was forbidden to print omeny over the reserves in hard currency) the improvements in productivity and the pressure of imports. In the end it produced deflation, and the biggest economic disaster in Argentina's history.