Brazil: imagine needing to …

[Riobard]

… engage in the hassle of price-comparing in order to try to survive on a basic subsistence income. Maybe they could take some playbook pointers on other nickel-and-diming price-fix scenarios. It could be that the example stated is an extreme outlier, but the reality holds. 

[Latbear4blk]

Welcome to Argentinean lifestyle. 

[Vanbcanthony]

20 hours ago, Latbear4blk said:

Welcome to Argentinean lifestyle. 

I always wonder how Argentinos deal with this high level of inflation. All these constant price changes. 

[scott456]

38 minutes ago, Vanbcanthony said:

I always wonder how Argentinos deal with this high level of inflation. All these constant price changes. 

High price items are priced at USD there, not the local Argentina pesos.  So if you want to buy an expensive jewelry, you'll be paying the current amount of pesos equivalent to the set USD price.  Same with cars and real estates.  Better yet, they would just rather take USD than pesos.

[Latbear4blk]

Sometimes, prices would go up really fast. In my 4 decades in Argentina, I lost the count of how many zeros were dropped out of the currency.

The worst is that most of the population is paid their salary once a month, and not everyone has access to purchasing dollars. Now it is easier, but imagine back in the last decades of the 20th Century, before online banking.

During the 80s and the first half of the 90s I was working in a Federal Office right by Plaza de Mayo, a few blocks away from the City where banks and currency exchange agencies are concentrated. On the first Monday of the month we would get our salary in an envelope, all cash, sometimes a huge packet. We would immediately run to the City to buy dollars. Otherwise, our money would worth significantly less on the next day. But in the country side and in the poorer areas of Buenos Aires the access to dollars was very limited.

[davet]

I've been in Argentina during hyperinflation. Everyone seems shell-shocked. "Cobra y compra": You get your money and you go shopping immediately. If you can't trade for dollars, buy steaks, oil, flour, anything, because it will be more expensive tomorrow. When people cut back when prices go up, inflation gets tamed. When people accept higher prices, inflation becomes a part of life. But when people are racing against prices, that's when it turns into hyperinflation.

[njalondon]

Or buy hard currency, if it's possible.

[Vanbcanthony]

That seems to be a common theme in Latin America, in which citizens have lost faith or confidence in their local currencies and instead opt to park their wealth in major foreign currencies. This again illustrates how unreliable fiat currency is and how your "wealth" could be wiped out overnight.

On a side note, does that mean paying guys in dollars in Argentina will give you more bargaining power? Or do you still recommend one pay in pesos?

[bucknaway]

The US is considering minting a 1 trillion-dollar coin to deposit at the fed to pay our debt.  We're about to spend $3 trillion and interest rates are at zero.  

Here in the USA we can't point a finger and giggle at anybody...

[wncdemcub]

On 10/6/2021 at 8:39 PM, bucknaway said:

The US is considering minting a 1 trillion-dollar coin to deposit at the fed to pay our debt.  We're about to spend $3 trillion and interest rates are at zero.  

Here in the USA we can't point a finger and giggle at anybody...

No we aren’t stop spreading lies: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/yellen-wont-support-minting-a-trillion-dollar-coin-2021-10%3famp

[bucknaway]

10 hours ago, wncdemcub said:

No we aren’t stop spreading lies: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/yellen-wont-support-minting-a-trillion-dollar-coin-2021-10%3famp

And Biden said he doesn't have the athority to mandate vaccine injections and yet...