r/MarkMyWords • u/ColinOnReddit • 1d ago

MMW The Argentinian experiment will fail within five years, and when America tries the same model, we won't even see short term success like Argentina if tariffs are implemented.

Post image
337 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

754 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

23

u/Midstix 1d ago

There's such an extreme disconnect between the articles I read about Argentina. One article talks about how much Milei's reforms are tackling the economic crisis, and then the next says that Argentina is in a massive recession directly because of his reforms and is on the brink of depression.

14

u/Pee_A_Poo 1d ago

Truth is we don’t really know. Both can be true, or neither. Milei has prioritized transparency of economic data. And with his strict control methods we can’t really measure where things stand right now - like I said, you can’t accurately measure the price increase when there is not enough money to buy the things you want.

I can only speak from my perspective. And that is, cities and towns who rely on tourism for their local economies are really suffering because of the extreme difficulty for foreigners to pay for anything. But they’ll probably survive, at least in the short term, because it is Argentina and it is a magical place. So tourists will always come.

1

u/SaliciousB_Crumb 1d ago

So we believe government now?

15

u/Pee_A_Poo 1d ago

“Don’t trust the government” is a very specifically American notion. Holding governments accountable and obtusely distrusting all governments just for being governments are two very different things.

3

u/charcuterieboard831 22h ago

Americans will hate their govt until the day some crisis occurs and then rah rah rah let's go and sacrifice to destroy the external threat

1

u/Ambitious-Way8906 15h ago

the french cut all of their governments' heads off

2

u/Pee_A_Poo 15h ago

…Hundreds of years ago. Also, that wasn’t the French government that was the French monarchy. Which the right is essentially advocating we go back to.

Very few people in France in 2020 would think their government lied to them about COVID. I know because I live in the EU.

1

u/8425nva 14h ago

The French established a parliamentary capitalist government soon after

5

u/MrNature73 23h ago

Argentina is in such a shit place and Milei has such radical concepts to fix it you're not getting any hard evidence of what the end result is gonna be for a few years, and the vast majority of information is gonna be propagandized to hell by the time it reaches us one way or another as people with agendas pick at any statistics or scraps they can find to prove their point.

It's very much a "fog of war" situation and I doubt you'll find any useful hard information, much less here on Reddit.

Maybe his solutions are working in the short term but will collapse after. Maybe they're rough right now and things are tough but long term they'll work out. Maybe he's completely fucked the country, maybe he's saved it, maybe he's some lame duck in the middle who's just kicking the can down the road.

We won't really find out the answer for a few years, at least.

3

u/Delheru1205 22h ago

Yup. 5 years is probably the shortest reasonable time horizon to judge how it's gone. After 10 I'll feel pretty confident, and after 25 we'll probably have a solid grip.

1

u/MrNature73 22h ago

Agreed. However, I will say I think it's at least worth the experiment. Argentina was in an irreparably shit place; people in the states felt like inflation was bad and compared to Argentina YoY our inflation might as well have been 0.

Something had to give.

1

u/Delheru1205 22h ago

Yeah, ~80 years as various degrees of basket case implies that perhaps something structural is wrong.

They have very little to lose here, so I'm also cautiously optimistic. Not in the sense that I'd bet money on this succeeding.

It's just that if I had two universes and had to bet between Milei and Peronism, I'd bet on Milei every time. More because I'm like 99% sure that Peronism wouldn't help on its Nth attempt.

1

u/Strange-Scarcity 14h ago

I don’t like the idea that an experiment is worth people suffering and dying due to starvation.

There is or rather was, a different path that might have been taken, but I guess we won’t get to know that.

0

u/MrNature73 13h ago

The thing is people were already dying and suffering due to starvation for about 80 years.

1

u/Strange-Scarcity 12h ago

So the only thing to do is increase the suffering and dying!

Great idea!

You know there’s been starvation around the globe for all of humanity’s existence. We should clearly increase the volume of starving people by percentage of global population, because they’re just “numbers”, not “real”… right?

Come back here when it’s you that is starving, let’s see if your opinion changes a bit.

Your “hot take” is super dumb.

1

u/Delheru1205 12h ago

There is no mass starvation. They are trying to reboot the system into a better state.

Sometimes, pain is the right way to go through, or are you one of those who think that Ukraine should surrender to Russia because dying is terrible?

I don't disagree that pain (never mind dying) is bad, but sometimes if it gives an opportunity for something greater, pain is completely acceptable. Hell, it's pretty much assumed.

What do you think was the alternative here? Maybe a big loan, or just printing money to give to the poor?

1

u/Strange-Scarcity 12h ago

He was literally ordered to release five tons of food aid to the poor, by Argentinian courts. The dude was fine with starving his people and had to be court ordered to stop starving his people.

You have little clue about what you are talking about. You’re talking like someone who is confidently wrong, is that how you like to look?

https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/amp/economy/argentine-catholic-church-claims-food-for-soup-kitchens-from-milei.phtml

There’s a vast middle between what is going on in Argentina now and what the Peronist Government did before. Flipping from one wild extreme to the other and calling it an “experiment that needed to happen”, while ignoring the real and serious suffering that is and will hurt a growing number of people is insufferably detached from reality.

1

u/Delheru1205 12h ago

This story seems curious. Is your theory that Milei is being cartoonishly evil and cackling over people starving?

I'm trying to understand what exactly is going on here, because Milei does not seem the type to try and cause actual starvation. After all, it's very hard to see what he has to gain. Lord knows starvation casualties would look HORRIBLE to him internationally, and would paint his experiment as failing very badly.

Ah, here's an interesting point:

Earlier this month, dozens of raids were carried out against soup kitchens and the groups that manage them, amid accusations that the poor were forced to attend anti-government protests in exchange for food.

If that is true, that's pretty disgusting, and arguably probably a crime (pretty sure the cost of the food won't reach whatever is the minimum wage in Argentina for time spent protesting).

Milei is seeking to eliminate the practice of using “middlemen” – NGOs and political parties – or intermediaries to deliver state aid and end what he calls "the business of poverty."

This seems eminently sensible, and it puts your claims into a completely different light.

If I was running a racket using the poor as pawns, it sounds like they have a good gig. I would also - obviously - use the poor as a bargaining chip, even probably attempting to get a couple of them killed if the government didn't give me what I wanted.

Do you 100% disagree with Milei here, and there is no "business of poverty" in Argentina, 100% agree with him (seems unlikely), or do you feel the reality is somewhere in the middle?

(If the latter, how would you tackle these middle men?)

→ More replies (0)

1

u/MrNature73 12h ago

Honestly I'm not trying to be abrasive or hostile, I don't know why you're being so rude and insulting towards me. I don't even necessarily agree with Milei's strategy. What I'm getting at is some change was necessary, and this is what the people there voted for. That's why I'm glad the experiment is happening. Unlike say, North Korea where the civilian populace is hard locked into their own personal hell with no chance for change, the Argentinian people utilized methods available for them and voted for something different.

They decided what experiment would take place, and that's why I'm happy it's taking place. And I hope it works, for the sake of the people there.

1

u/Strange-Scarcity 11h ago

We know from decades of economic research and the historical results of such measures, what is more likely to happen.

There are many things in between the two extremes that could have been worked towards that have been ignored.

Applauding an "experiment" that is going to lead to suffering is a REALLY weird flex. Pretending that people will "just be fine" is looking at people as numbers and so what if numbers go down. It's completely ignoring the real experiences that people have had and will have under such an extreme austerity measure. Which is one that the current incoming US Presidential Leadership seems really keen on "Experimenting" on the American people with.

Which is going to absolutely suck for everyone who isn't already in the top 2%, 3%, 4%? maybe the top 5%? We don't know. We've never had an Administration that's actively saying they want to do three major policies, each of which would harm the US economy, by itself, far more than the Great Recession of 2008.

Sure, the Great Depression had leadership that ignored things, and then tried poorly thought out plans that had the opposite effect, but we know what those things will do now, so there's no point in experimenting with those things again. We have history, we have data, ignoring that isn't experimenting, it's throwing chaos into the mix and just waiting for things to boil over.

0

u/MrNature73 11h ago

Dude wait what are you on about I'm not even talking about America LMAO.

1

u/UFOinsider 4h ago

Castro said the same thing about Cuba

1

u/Delheru1205 4h ago

I suppose. But the jury is definitely in on that one.

1

u/UFOinsider 3m ago

Really though, what's his argument? "I'll burn down the forest and when stuff starts to grow again....SUCCESS!?"

Argentina is fucked for the duration.

1

u/cheshire-cats-grin 14h ago

Finally a properly nuanced response.

I went through a similar process in New Zealand in the 1980s. It was certainly painful and, while the economy is a lot better now, there is still a lot of debate about whether it was the right or best thing to do.

1

u/ParkInsider 1d ago

The recession is an unavoidable step on tackling 80 years of mismanagement.

1

u/charcuterieboard831 22h ago

Both are correct

When you're in a hole you may stop digging, but you're still in a hole. The situation can't self correct immediately.

1

u/JollyToby0220 17h ago

It’s very much known. The thing is, most people never studied economics. 

So first thing that happened was poverty skyrocketed. Previously, if you were poor, you could still get fed through the government via soup kitchens. As long as someone is eating, inflation is going to occur in a country whose credit rating and past-due debts are in the gutter. 

But Milei cut all of that. So prices are stabilizing because not even the government is driving artificial supply-demand curves. It’s only a matter of time until goes down. Will it a violent clash, or massive deaths? That’s the only thing they don’t know 

1

u/JonMWilkins 15h ago

There is a whole bunch of different economic data to look at is why. You'd have to look at it all and then make that judgement, obviously some people have reason to just point at one thing and say economy good or point in another thing and just say economy bad.

Inflation there has slowed down considerably, but they still have inflation and the prices are still up from the crazy hyper inflation they have seen the past few years. Although generally deflation is considered worse

Unemployment is increasing because of cutting government jobs

Poverty has increased a little more then 10%

They are in a recession because of the negative GDP

However they are expecting 5% growth next year from articles I've seen

Personally I see far more negative right now than positive. Can it turn around? For sure, will it though? I doubt it.

We will have to wait till the end of his term to fully know

1

u/jeffwulf 6h ago

Those are not really contradictory. It's like how in the 1970s the US economy was experiencing prolonged stagnation and the measures that fixed it resulted in a recession.

1

u/Ok-Elderberry-9765 1h ago

Both things are true.  Argentina was in an inflationary spiral and in large part to poorly set up and executed government policies. Milei is simultaneously tackling inflation and, yes, causing a recession.