He went to kiss the wall. Prosperity is coming. For him at least.
Here in the states, we will soon be eating Rats-a-Roni, pigeon parmigiana, and weeds for fiber.
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.
Big “and then the bears came” energy.
just bought this book can’t wait till i get to that part
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.
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.
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.
No
Math is hard -xta
Donkey meat is delicious tho
Getting to vs having to.
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.
I think it was a line of credit and it they already paid off this debt.
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
That’s the British usage of the word. Possibly elsewhere, but when the US uses that word we refer to 1000 × a million. Still entirely uncertain as to how that linguistic difference came about.
Literally no English squeaking country uses the British long scale anymore. It was nonsensical and problematic. The US short scale has been adopted as the English standard in every country on earth for the purpose of English measurement.
So if a country even if their native language is not English. When using English for official reasons uses the short scale. It’s only when using non English languages does the old long scale get used. Which is mostly a relic of British imperialism.
Even then a number of countries have started using us short scale even in their native language.
Us short scale is simpler and more understandable. It’s the same reason countries use metric. It makes more sense.
The Brits use short scale nowadays like every English speaking country.
In Canada we see US billion sometimes. It gets confusing.
For which use case? Is the billion = a million million standard, or is the thousand million standard?
Also how did we end up with two standards of such a basic numerical name?
Edit: their original comment read “Non-English Anglosphere,” hence my first question not making much sense any more.
English->English
French->American
Due to US market size, theirs is becoming more standard.
Like metric, the US swapped to the French version because of their hate of the British following the split.
Ok, see I knew French and Latin used the 1000 of the previous magnitude word is the next magnitude word, I wasn’t sure if that was standard or not. Seems that it is the Brits who changed things.
Possibly because Americans were so keen to call themselves billionaires they lowered the requirement.
Similar to how they pronounce “Aluminium” the same as “Platinum” to make it sound like a precious metal.
This isn’t a criticism. If I’m being kind the real reason is that less separation between “million” and “billion” is functionally more useful, as well as aspirational.
We spell that word aluminum, not aluminium. That’s why we pronounce it that way. Why we spell it differently? No clue.
Also it’s not just a billion. A trillion is a thousand billion on this side of the pond, and has been since well before any Americans were even close to being billionaires. We just use a smaller standard for counting, but that’s also the standard French and Latin used, so I don’t think it has anything to do with us.
Funfact the British USE to say that word the way Americans do now. Then changed later. Americans way of say aluminum is actually the original and accurate way that the British invented.
Why y’all changed is beyond me. We are using it the way YOU wanted us to originally.
In part it was because it was named out of standard through a misunderstanding but then it wasn’t corrected…
You spell it differently so that you can pronounce it differently, as I say, to make it sound like a rare and valuable metal.
It is pure marketing.
Aluminium used to be hard to obtain. It was a rare metal and then some smart bastard worked out how to extract it using electrolysis and it became as common as dirt.
Some people had invested heavily in it as a precious metal and overnight their investment was worthless, so hence the reluctance to rebrand.
Ok, I can see that. There are a couple of State Capitol Buildings whose domes are covered in Aluminum Leaf, which would now be called aluminum foil, and I have square yards of the stuff in my kitchen and garage. At the time they were built aluminum was still difficult to get, less than two decades after they were built electrolysis guy did his thing, lol.
I knew that at one point King Louis the somethingth or other, had a full set of aluminumware to serve extremely important guests with. Like, not just cutlery. Plates, saucers, bowls, cups and goblets. The less distinguished guests had to eat and drink out of platinum, gold, or (gasp) silver.
I didn’t know that about King Louis (n) … That’s a great fact!
It’s ten thousand lakh actually, or a hundred crore.
Quit throwing these fake Star Trek currencies around!
To be fair, Milei was handed an absolute shit show
(correct me if wrong, but it seems pretty bad)
“Pesada herencia” strikes again. Literally every government has claimed that.
Indeed. and they always say “vote for me” and a thousand other things. This has been well established, no need to repeat universal political slogans any further.
So is it your claim that Argentina was in decent shape before Milei took office? It wasn’t a shit show? It wasn’t pretty bad? What shape do you think it was in? Decent?
Nope, it wasn’t. My claim is that all recent governments received the country in “bad shape”. In this case, while some metrics improved, he did a lot of harm as well. All in all, I think the balance is negative.
My other claim is that this donkey meat story is bullshit. Find me a butcher shop that’s actually selling this, I’ll wait. I’ve literally never seen or heard of this type of meat being sold in Argentina.
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).
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”)
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.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.
Old people and poor people got screwed, but poverty is down? How does that work?
Can’t have poverty if your poor die.
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.
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 do 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.
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.
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?
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.
Literally forcing people to eat ass to own the libs.
Hahaha
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.)
Interesting, the director of that movie is the ndp leader in Canada now
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.
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.
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?
Running out of beef would absolutely a good thing. It’s among the highest producers of CO2.
Running out of food in general not so great.
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.
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.
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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
