Before civil war in my old country a quarter a century ago, people were doing the same thing: buy something big and expensive in installments. First couple would suck. Last few were negligible.

Another story that seems surreal to me now (having lived in Canada 25 years): My grandma and virtually everyone her age was habitually 3 order of magnitude off when it came to money. She'd give me a 2 million dinar note and say "here's 2 thousand".

Every now and then there was a reset - basically you'd print new money and lop of some digits.

I was <12 years old through this so only have vague memories but man, what a crazy way to live -- and yet it was fairly... "normal". Is what it is. Human brain adjusts to anything (including to a certain degree the civil war that followed).

> […] our inflation index goes hand to hand with our USD:ARS, even even below that (intuitevly it may be a problem).

The solution seems so simple to me: drop the ARS and use USD as the national currency. Your inflation is just trying to pay for goods and services using an eternally depreciating asset (the Argentinian peso).

The reason this doesn’t happen is because it would mean that the Central Bank of Argentina (CBA) would no longer be able to, at will, monetize the debt of the Argentinian government and favored corporations. Ie. the CBA would lose its ability to purchase a government bond in exchange for crediting the government’s account with the face value of the bond — convert debt into money.

At the end of the day it’s a conflict of interest: the people want a stable medium of exchange and the government wants to finance its activities without balancing its budget.

The economist Melchior Palyi explained this phenomenon in his 1962 book “An Inflation Primer” following the high US inflation of the 1940s: https://cdn.mises.org/An%20Inflation%20Primer_2.pdf

Argentinian here, 37 years old, middle-class. I known a lot of people who bought all the non-perishable food they can like tuna, and others good because the rampant inflation. Myself included.

Is the Argentinian inflation being "fought" by any government program? I've studied a lot of Brazil's hyper-inflationary period, and boy was it difficult to overcome it. Basically, once the industrial growth went below the inflation-rate everything went (slowly) belly up. It happened at two distinct times: one at Kubitschek's presidency, and the other during the military junta. Trouble is that our economy became "indexed" everywhere, so people would mark-up their prices at inflation+x%, then the _actual_ inflation would be the forecast+x%, which is an exponential process. After two decades of failed attempts, the solution was found via a financial reform, done all throughout the 90s, and then a modern copy of Germany's anti-hyper-inflation Rentenmark program, which created the Real. The solution (or so the mainstream history says) was to create a price "anchor" for everyone, which was pegged to the dollar (one of the main culprits were the large devaluations vis-a-vis the USD, a vicious cycle of inflate->devalue->inflate->...), and at the same time attracting foreign investment via a large real interest rate (far above the remaining inflation). What we are going through now in Brazil is a slow reversal of that, inflation is picking up again, and the central bank's actions are seemingly slowing down the economy and not being able to control inflation (so long, Phillips Curve).

> In fact, anyone who would do that wouldn't be smart at all, would be pretty stupid

Can you expound on why this would be "stupid"?

Holding dollars to exchange for later incurs a 7% (current dollar purchasing power loss rate) loss on top of exchange fees. The can of tuna retains its food value exactly as-is for years, with no currency exchange costs. Seems to me that the tuna beats holding dollars handily.

Venezuelan here: I have personally bought tuna and flour by the case as a way of hedging against inflation and scarcity. Of course, this last factor was the most important.

Argentinian here. I buy coffee, canned tuna, cleaning products, etc in installments without interest whenever I can.

Let's hope for you guys that some government genius doesn't come up with the system Chile has: Inflation adjusted loan and contract payments, obviously excluding salaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidad_de_Fomento

The issue is relying on a foreign currency, one which the official exchange rate is like 50% marked up from its real black market value, which is how the economy reaaaally works there. I worry for Argentines (I am one), because the usd is having the same problems the peso has every 7 years, its being printed into inflation oblivion.

I would be buying that canned tuna, and also using bitcoin, etc like the surging numbers of people are, because escaping one fiat submarine for another fiat sinking ship is not something I could sleep well with. Besides, the politicians down there are nuts and could easily make holding dollars totally illegal, infact they already do with strict capital controls, withdrawal limits, etc. Its a cash economy.

Argentinian here, 34 years old middle-class with a family of 3 children. I buy lots of pasta and canned food among others goods in wholesalers.

I’m trying to understand how would it work for mortgages. I guess that you have no fixed interest mortgages and they are all tied to the inflation rate + some spread, otherwise I don’t see how the banks would want to lend you money for a house.

Hi! I'm really curious about the wages. What are the average wages now with inflation? In USD terms per hour.

I had some people trying to hire they're, but most people request 15usd/hour for basic va skills. I'm impressed how high.

So I'm not sure what's the problem and I'm wondering if you could provide some insight.