this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
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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).
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.
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.
Poor people can be mass murdered and poverty will go down, you realize?
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.
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:
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.
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.
Can't have poverty if your poor die.
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.
So by sacrificing large chunks of the people he's supposed to serve?
I wonder if the rich elites are in that pool.
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?
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:
That's a direct quote from you.
Shit, you're right. I later said inflation is down and though you were referring to this part. Missed that sentence, sorry. Yeah, inflation is down but they are definitely not out of the woods yet. Deflationary processes tend to be volatile and no one knows which way it will go yet. On one hand it would be nice for all of it to collapse so we have another proof that right with populism doesn't work. On the other hand Argentinian people could really use a break.