Living With 50% Inflation
What it’s like, how it developed, and will it happen in the United States.
I moved to Argentina in October 2009, when the country’s inflation rate had just started to rise. Through the following decade, the inflation has usually hovered between 25% and 30%, rising to around 50% in the past couple of years. Just this September, the inflation was 3.5%. In one month.
Now, it’s been a major issue in elections for both populist and non-populist governments, and the only consensus seems to be that it’s impossible to fix. It’s become a structural problem, a part of the economic reality everyone accepts as a given.
I’ve seen this become an issue in the American political world lately, as well. The reactivation of the economy has taken US inflation to 5.4%, stoking fears of the situation getting out of control. But is this going to happen in the United States, and what is it like to live in a country with runaway inflation?
Here’s a little taste of the populist hellscape we live in here, and the reasons why it’s happened. I’ll also give you my reasons to why I don’t think something like this would happen in the US.
