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.
