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I visited Argentina earlier this year, and the psychological effects of years of inflation were very real. The exchange rate has gone from 5 pesos per USD, to
by datadrivenangel 3y ago
I visited Argentina earlier this year, and the psychological effects of years of inflation were very real. The exchange rate has gone from 5 pesos per USD, to 350 officially in the last 10 years. The unofficial rate is up to almost 900 pesos per USD. In March the unofficial rate was half of that, so the currency has lost 50% of its value in the last 6 months.
Everybody prefers to be paid in dollars, and if you're getting paid in cash, why pay taxes? I had an Argentinian tell me that I could pay ~25% of the list price if I paid in USD instead of credit card, because the unofficial exchange rate and not paying taxes on it would save that much. Money requires trust that you can exchange it for goods and services, which are provided by other members of society, so debasing the money supply like this is killing society in the lovely country of Argentina.
- hbossy 3y agoIs it harder to travel from abroad? I imagine that thousands of $1 bills might rise some eyebrows at customs.
- latchkey 3y agoImagine a plane full of people carrying gold nuggets in their pockets.
- datadrivenangel 3y agoYou get the best exchange rate with crisp $100 bills, and any USD that is damaged or too worn will get rejected by the money changers... Which makes you see where the demand for dollars is greatest (The wealthy).
- amjnsx 3y agoIt’s a tale as old as time unfortunately. Currencies have been debased for centuries. It won’t change until we have actual hard money that can’t be debased by leaders/bankers/politicians.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- diogenes4 3y agoSorry, is there any reason to expect money to revert to behaving like gold any time soon? Sounds suspiciously like crypto tripe. Why would that be beneficial anyway? The relative purchasing power of poor countries won't change without some serious shifting in resource distribution worldwide.
- latchkey 3y agoI saved this comment a while ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410
- futureamish 3y ago[flagged]
- rando_dfad 3y agoHard as gold, perhaps? That creates other issues. Volatility, for one.
- ImHereToVote 3y agoGold creates hoarding behavior. Bitcoin has the same down side. Currencies need to have elasticity. The problem is how the elasticity happens. It can't be controlled by private interests. This is an unsolved monetary problem. I don't think it's unsolvable though.
- HPsquared 3y agoSounds like society is continuing, on a USD basis. Society ≠ government. They're usually orthogonal, and often go against each other.
- 3seashells 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- anon1199022 3y agoLovely country of Argentina had 9 defaults in it's history. Maybe people and their parents, which certain % of them are part of government or economy. Should start taking little more responsilibity to understand how Finance works long term? Naa, let's default again, blame other things and not even understand how debt and modern monetary system works. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/photo-essays/2019-09-11/one-country-eight-defaults-the-argentine-debacles https://www.bloomberg.com/news/photo-essays/2019-09-11/one-c...
- giraffe_lady 3y agoAnything else come to mind in argentina's history that might be relevant?
- anon1199022 3y agono but I love how truth is dowvoted
- is_true 3y agoThe money is provided by that monetary system you speak of.
- anon1199022 3y agoaccepted and mismanaged several times by the different governments and public?
- is_true 3y agoJust the governments, most people are not educated enough to understand that at some point you have to pay for all that welfare. Inflation is called a "hidden tax" after all.