In the United States of America we’ve lately been whipped into near hysteria about double digit inflation. In Argentina, they laugh dismissively. “First Time?” Meme
Argentina as a country has defaulted nine times in its history, most recently in 2001, 2014, and 2020. The Argentine peso was pegged to the US dollar in the 90s, but today is worth less than a penny. Double digit inflation is common in Argentina, and at points has hit as high as 5000%.
Of course, official statistics are difficult to rely on because the government has an “official” rate which may be quite different from the lived experience. In 2007, hyperinflation prompted the creation of the independent Inflación Verdadera, or “True Inflation,” project.
This project scraped the actual prices of real consumer goods into a database to compute an alternate inflation index. Surprise, surprise, it turns out the actual inflation was quite a bit higher than the reported numbers. The project would get swallowed up by MIT, evolving into the award winning Billion Prices Project which measured inflation rates in over 70 countries at peak.
Daily Life
What does life in the land of hyper-inflation actually look like?
To our delight, our hotel sat in the chic Palermo neighborhood on the north side of Buenos Aires, life was good. Daily life recalled our former experiences in the more glamorous parts of New York City. Trendy cafes were packed in the mornings, leisurely eaters lingered in restaurants long past sundown, and the bars bustled into the wee hours. If there was hyperinflation occurring, it didn’t appear to have slowed down their enjoyment of life in the slightest.
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