Under President Milei, the worst economic crisis in decades puts Argentine ingenuity to the test

The political establishment’s failure to fix decades of crisis in Argentina explains the tide of popular rage that vaulted the irascible Javier Milei, a self-declared “anarcho-capitalist,” to the presidency. But it also helps explain the emergence of a unique society that runs on grit, ingenuity and opportunism — perhaps now more than ever as Argentina undergoes its worst economic crisis since its catastrophic foreign-debt default of 2001. To reverse the decades of reckless spending, Milei scrapped hundreds of price controls. He slashed subsidies for electricity, fuel and transportation, causing prices to skyrocket in a country that already had one of the world’s highest inflation rates. Poverty now afflicts a staggering 57% of Argentina’s 47 million people.