Apple iPhone price is now half a year’s average rent in Argentina
When prices rise fast enough for long enough, consumers can lose any sense of what they should’ve been paying in the first place. That’s an extreme case of what’s known in economics jargon as “unanchored expectations” –- and in Argentina, it’s the daily reality. With inflation at 58% and accelerating, the $500 billion economy is an outlier even in a world where prices are taking off almost everywhere. It’s not just a pandemic-era problem: while the historical statistics are suspect, Argentina hasn’t had single-digit inflation in at least a decade.
The upshot: as prices soar and scatter, people are losing their bearings. No wonder, when a two-hour domestic flight costs the same as a month of college tuition, a pair of sneakers is equal to the minimum monthly social-security payment, and a new iPhone goes for half a year’s average rent or more. Price-tags also vary wildly from store to store, and tracking down the daily essentials at the least-unaffordable rates is a drain on time and energy for working Argentines.
“Nobody knows how much something costs,” says Federico Moll, director of economic research at consulting firm EcoLatina in Buenos Aires. “Talk to any Argentine of a certain age and they probably can tell you how much something went for in the 1990s, but they don’t remember how much something costs today compared to yesterday.”
Few countries are likely to suffer a melt-up in prices on that scale. It took decades of seesawing politics and zigzags in economic policy for Argentina to get here. Politicians repeatedly failed to keep government spending under control, central bankers kept changing their monetary plans, and the country suffered a currency crisis in 2018 amid a wider flight from high-risk emerging
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