There’s an extent to which the whole “Leopards ate my face” thing is an expression of our worst impulses. Schadenfreude feels great, but man this post makes me feel terrible for Argentina. Especially after having seen The Take. (It’s been a while since I watched it, but it left an impression.)
I think people are feeling like this because the awful people that enable and drag the rest of society into these messes, never learn. Sure once shit hits the fan and it affects them deeply they’ll be complaining and calling for heads to roll, but the second the rest of society fixes the messes they created, the second they get a comfortable life again, they return with the same attitudes that lead down the dark path to begin with. They just don’t learn. Only changing their views when it affects them personally and then immediately flipping back when life is good again.
oh i think that people do learn, everybody learns, it’s just that some people are more like experimental physicists. let me explain:
In physics, there are mostly two branches: theoretical physics (which makes predictions and does mathematical calculations on paper) and experimental physics (which touches things with their hands, does experiments and observes the outcome). the same is true in politics:
Some people see a situation, think about it, do some guesswork and write articles, discuss with friends what would probably be the outcome if a certain policy is implemented, then decide whether it’s a good idea to implement that policy or not. Other people, however, take the opposite approach: implement the policy first, then wait and watch what happens. That’s the experimental approach: do things and figure out the hard way. That’s exactly what happens in politics. people vote for austerity politics, and for a while it goes well, until suddenly it doesn’t anymore. then people crash and society suffers, and people observe this and then conclude that these policies did in fact not work well. that’s when they learn. after harm has been done, and they’ve experienced it themselves.
That’s a nice sounding line of bullshit.
What actually happens is rich Conservatives, in the Edmond Burke mold, use some grievance, real or imaginary, to worm their way into power.
Once in power they start doing two main things, the first is to rob the government blind, transferring wealth from public good programs to themselves via things like defense contracts or sueing the government you control for billions of dollars.
The second thing they do is implement some sort of restrictive law or policy that is designed to hurt one group of people more than everyone else, dividing people from each other and amplifying the hatred of the worst assholes around.
Eventually the conservative is ousted, usually after crashing the economy. But usually enough conservatives remain in power to stymie any actual reforms that would actually fix all the problems that they caused.
And no, people never fucking learn.
If only we had decades and decades and decades of this “research” already done in the form of countless hopelessly failed “experiments”… Oh wait. We do.
Sorry, but no. You don’t get excused because you ignored everyone who told you that THIS SHIT HAS BEEN TRIED AND IT DOESN’T WORK.
You don’t get to ruin people’s lives simply because you’re incapable of learning something without doing it yourself.
I had to remind myself about Milei’s policies… I mean I know he’s a hapless* Trump copycat** but I was thin on the details:
Milei advocates minimal government, focusing on administering justice and ensuring security, with a philosophy rooted in life, liberty, and property, and free market principles. He criticizes socialism and communism, advocating economic liberalization and restructuring of government ministries. He opposes Argentina’s Central Bank and current taxation policies.
Economically, Milei is influenced by the Austrian school, and admires former President Carlos Menem’s policies.There we are. Austerity, the favorite cover-up for “just doing my rich donor buddies bidding”. And unfortunately I don’t even need to look up the Austrian school. And it ties back nicely to the movie you mention.
* Some time ago when the economy was already tanking he sang live in a rock band. The article was titled “Burning Down The House”
** TBF Trump did not invent Trumpism, he’s just the most prominent
PS & BTW
Donkey (and horse) meat is a relatively common ingredient in e.g. Salami. Yes the economy is fucked up but people eating donkey meat is probably not the best indicator. And as someone else pointed out, the article talks about selling donkey meat in large cities, not the eating per se.
The Argentinians were desperate for change. I wouldn’t have voted for him but the peronists were a complete failure over the last 10 years or so too.
Interesting, the director of that movie is the ndp leader in Canada now
Literally forcing people to eat ass to own the libs.
Hahaha
Love how people keep choosing right wing policies.
Propaganda is a powerful drug
Unfortunately this isn’t a left or right thing…as the last decades of leadership there have been socialist left wing.
Corruption is corruption, and Argentina is filled with it.
Cool story bro
2001 meme, time to update your catch phrases, bra
and twice? sad
also, there’s no story… not even an appropriate meme. do better
Insightful critique, thank you.
It was the previous left wing governments that ruined the country economically and who are responsible for the crazy inflation and corruption, but ok
That isn’t true (unless you just arbitrarily zoom into a point in time that fits your narrative - and refuse to see the bigger picture esp. wrt USA). And more importantly, it is not a counter-argument to what the other commenter said.
Cool story bro.
Argentinians making the sacrifice to prove what most of us knew already.
Anarcho capitalism is fucking stupid.It’s also not Anarcho, that word is thrown in there as a marketing term. Like using “fresh” to describe donkey meat.
What Argentina had before was pretty bad as well.
This is of course extremely biased meme. The reality is that so far Milei achieved a lot of what he planned for. The main issue in Argentina was huge inflation and out of control public spending. Both ruling parties were unable to address this for years so people got fed up and elected Milei as a kind of protest leader (“politicians can’t help us so fuck it, let the whole thing just collapse”). Just how tired of constant economic crisis running for decades everyone was is another story.
So Milei won and did what the previous governments didn’t want to do: cut spending. He got inflation under control by sacrificing big chunks of society. Old people got screwed, poor people got screwed but so far his plan of “short time suffering to achieve long term stability” seems to be working. Inflation is down, poverty is down, foreign investment and trade looks good. The question is no longer if Milei’s reforms will collapse the economy or not (they didn’t) but if the reforms will work long term or if the improvements will be short lived and not worth all the suffering it caused.
Like most people here I hoped that Milei’s politics will explode in his face and we’ll have a clear proof that the ideas sold by right wing populists are bullshit but it didn’t happen. The jury is still out on Argentina but anyway, each country is different and even if it will work there long term it doesn’t mean guys with crazy hair are good for the economy (as we can see globally now).
Are you sure you’re being honest with this review? Considering how the US had to bail him out? Without that, his policy WOULD have exploded in his face.
They said poor people got screwed and poverty is down in the same sentence. There’s no way this argument is in good faith.
Well if all the poor old and disabled people died, then yes logically poverty would be down
This is a serious economic strategy labeling people as “useless eater”, you know who called it that? Nazi Germany. They called it “Unnütze Esser”
(lit. “useless eaters” or “useless mouths”) Similar to life unworthy of life, a designation for people who dont or refuse to work, people with serious medical problems or disabilities, and other Untermenschen not deemed to be useful to Germany. It was used in the 1938 children’s book Der Giftpilz by Julius Streicher, and in Philip K. Dick’s book The Man in the High Castle and its television adaptation.
This sounds like “rich people are ok” where their “Wall Street” is doing better but skip the rest. They talked about trade and foreign investment, not generally concerns of the common or poor person.
Yeah I mean they accused the meme of being biased while ignoring the fact that people are being forced to eat donkey meat. Definitely not someone who cares about others.
Poverty went from 45% pre-Milei to 38% now
Did the definition of poverty or other data measurement change?
Poor people can be mass murdered and poverty will go down, you do realize?
What’s dishonest about it? He did lower inflation and poverty but the way he did it, including help from US, is controversial. He did need help from Trump to do it but he is exactly the guy that could get help from Trump. What if a leftist leader secured help from Europe to save his reforms? Would that also mean their reforms were bad? I also think they already paid their debt to US which help their reputation and makes other investments possible.
You have two options:
- your economic policy is such that your country can stand on its own two feet, even if barely.
- your economic policy is such that if you don’t get a bailout from abroad, everything blows up in your face.
The first one is “good, even if controversial”. The second one is “horrible enough that will blow up without a bailout”
So, yes, if a leftist leader needed a massive bailout, their reforms would be considered bad.
I think that’s a very simplistic view. Argentina had 300% inflation in 2024. It was 30% when US bailed them out. Argentina got the bailout because their currency fell. Peso fell because Milei’s party lost local elections and investors lost confidence. For me this shows that Milei’s strategy was very risky and the situation was volatile. Previous governments didn’t have risky strategies and the inflation hit 300%… Most analyst say the bailout wasn’t urgent and it was more about politics than economy. Trump wanted to show that he will support Milei and help him politically. We don’t know what would to Argentina’s economy without the bailout. Saying that lowering inflation and poverty is meaningless because of some political play by Trump is dishonest.
The US “bailed Argentina out” because international investors were afraid of the old politicians coming back to power (the K risk, they call it here). Just a few billion were lent out for a few months, all paid back.
He might have found a different source of money if not from Trump.
Source of external money is irrelevant.
When your country is incapable of handling its own finances and needs a bail-out, it’s not a good fiscal policy.
Look up the history of Argentina. Getting bailed out by foreign money is a regular occurrence.
tbis.
It’s unfortunate that it’s always the poor and the elderly, the rich rarely get thrown under the bus…alas they’re always welcome in some other shit country, like the US, so they have a way out, the poor, not so much.
Old people and poor people got screwed, but poverty is down? How does that work? And if it’s going well, what’s this about donkey meat? That’s a sign of underlying food price inflation. Not all of that can be traced back to global factors.
If enough poor people die, I suppose the poverty rate will go down.
I’m not an economist so I don’t know the details but I know he froze pensions when the inflation was still high so pensioners in practice saw lower pensions. He also cut funding to food banks so people relying on them got hit. Inflation affects everyone in the country so I imagine when it went down salaries caught up with prices for a lot of people taking them above poverty levels. Donkey meat is only a sing of red meat prices going up which may just mean that a lot of meat is being exported which brings money to the country. I’m not saying that’s what happening, just that it’s possible to see lower pensions and donkey meat while people are being lifted out of poverty.
I love how you just quickly glazed over the part about closing food banks.
Nothing says helping the poor like taking away their only source of food!
From the very begging I’m saying that Milei cut spending by sacrificing the poor and that his plan was short term sacrifice for long term stability. Did you miss that? Yes, he scarified the poor. I’m not glazing over this, I’m saying what he did.
Old people and poor people got screwed, but poverty is down? How does that work?
Can’t have poverty if your poor die.
As an amateur economist I do feel like he made a lot of right decisions though he’s clearly corrupt. Dunno if this will work out in the long run as corruption will outweigh the gains of right economic decisions.
Absolutely. Everyone was expecting the corruption but I think most people didn’t expect any of the right decisions. No one knows what will happen long term but so far things went surprisingly well. Or course all the suffering he caused is terrible but at least for now there’s something to show for it.
Did anyone expect the rockabilly?
He got inflation under control by sacrificing big chunks of society.
So by sacrificing large chunks of the people he’s supposed to serve?
I wonder if the rich elites are in that pool.Most people criticizing Milei have no concept of what 300% inflation looks like. That means prices are going up about 25% every month. There central bank had a 133% peak interest rate, compared to the 3.5-3.75% rate in the US that Trump desperately wants cut.
Argentina was staring down hyperinflation like Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany. Bad things were coming either way.
I’ve been there when inflation was still around 100%. Stores looked full but when you started browsing it was all full of couple local products. No imports so no choice. Shrinkflation was also terrible. Candy bars were the size of single square of chocolate. To pay for a couple of days in a hotel you had to carry stack of bills that didn’t even fit in the wallet. Paying with card was not an option because the government established some fake exchange rates that made everything 2x more expensive as when paying with cash. You could tell everyone was resigned and only expecting things to get worse.
Oh he absolutely does not have inflation under control, and his approval rating is plummeting as it gets more obvious that his fire-selling the economy of Argentina is a band aid on a gunshot wound: https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/milei-approval-falls-argentina-inflation-181705477.html
What data are you looking at?
(I said it’s down, not “under control”)
You literally said under control bro
Do you think 32.6% inflation isn’t high?
I think 3-4% is usually considered healthy for growth. They’re at 10x that.
I think it’s lower than 300%. Isn’t it?
32% isn’t even close to “under control” my dude
Read the previous comments. Check who said it’s “under control”. Reply to that person.
You literally did:
So Milei won and did what the previous governments didn’t want to do: cut spending. He got inflation under control by sacrificing big chunks of society.
That’s a direct quote from you.
Libertarianism fails faster than communism. It has been well documented and people still think it’s a better system of government
The core purpose of libertarianism is to enhance trickle-up economics. The wealthy 1% benefit and make off like gangbusters, everyone else loses.
Isn’t Argentina a major producer of beef? Are they exporting most of it instead of selling it domestically because exporting brings in more money?
there’s a meat monopoly, few companies decide where most of the production goes
Ah so the Irish potato famine, Indian famine caused by the East India company, or Holodomor sort of thing where it is better economically for the eliet to let the locals starve and sell all the food abroad type of thing I see.
Yes, ripe for revolt
Last Fall when our own citizens were going hungry in a government shutdown, Trump sent Argentina $40 billion, and instead of buying meat, they bought donkeys they could fatten up to eat later?
No wonder Argentina’s economy crashes every 2 years.
you are using the word billion incorrectly, a billion is a million million, and it was 20 thousand millons, not 40.
They are speaking English so a billion is a thousand million. There is no English speaking country anymore that uses long scale. So no English speaking country uses miljard for a thousand million.
So for context, in English billion is thousand millions, but in Spanish is a million millions (so, an English trillion)
They gave using the English definition.
Actually, it was a million million in english as well. It’s a thousand million in simplified (american) english, and for some reason, we just ended up kowtowing to their bullshit.
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-61424,00.html
It was a weird false friend, but now it’s even weirder they (US) just changed the definition of a number.
The us system of counting was generally considered easier and more reasonable and it had less quirks. The logic behind adopting it is literally the same one people use to argue the metric system is better. And it also was a fuck you to the British that no body liked at the time.
So in most of western Europe and most of South America, you’d be right as they use the long scale, but none of those are natively English-speaking nations. UK and Ireland use the short scale, as does the US, NZ, AU. Canada uses both, I’d assume the French speaking part uses long scale. Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, the Gulf states, and NW Asia actually use short scale with milliard instead of billion, and as you go towards south or east in Asia, you’ll run into completely different number systems, such as the funky Indian one that goes by hundreds rather than thousands as groups starting with 1,00,000 (1 lakh) and 1,00,00,000 (1 crore).
TL;DR: There’s no unified worldwide standard, but for pretty much all English language usage, you’d be wrong.
No
Math is hard -xta
I think an article in Swedish news ran about chicken becoming more popular in Argentina following the extended economic hardship under Miles.
To be honest, this is maybe the only silver lining of an otherwise fully shit Milei regime. They eat way too much beef in Argentina - they are the country that eats the most beef per capita by a large margin.
I’m confused, are you saying people running out of food is a good thing if it’s more environmental?
No, I’m saying that Argentinians adopting chicken as a staple in their diets to replace their beef consumption is a good thing for the environment. I don’t wish any economic hardship on any of them.
the world is not black and white. bad things can have positive consequences and vice versa
People looked at genocide in Gaza and would say: that good we don’t see anyone fat. This must be good for them.
deleted by creator
Big “and then the bears came” energy.
just bought this book can’t wait till i get to that part
What about that shitload of money his buddy trump gave him? Wasn’t that 40 billion?
He is a Catholic, converted to Judaism, and fully Zionist. Most likely he funnel that money back to trump through deals with Israel.
Less than $900 per person.
you are using the word billion incorrectly, a billion is a million million, and it was 20 thousand millons, not 40.
In English, “billion” means " a thousand million". “un billón” in Spanish is “a trillion” in English
It’s ten thousand lakh actually, or a hundred crore.
Quit throwing these fake Star Trek currencies around!
Why the hell are people posting this BS now.
I think it was a line of credit and it they already paid off this debt.
And this is after the bailout.
“Hee-Haw and Merry Christmas,
Sam Wainright-DJT”Anyone who thought the capitalist in bed with Washington and even Musk was gonna do anything good for anyone besides himself and whoever makes him richer is seriously detached from the world/intellectually challenged.
