Nicolas, a 20-year-old political science student who lives in a low-income area of La Matanza, a locality in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, starts his day at six in the morning. He uses a variety of modes of transportation to go to and from his job at a call centre in the city centre. However, he often misses one of the buses intentionally and forces himself to walk the distance to save money. After his job, Mr. Nicolas attends four hours of classes and doesn’t leave home until 11 at night. Even if this schedule repeats from Monday to Saturday, Mr Nicolas and his family struggle to make ends meet in a country facing an economic crisis reflected in an annual inflation rate of 143% and an increase in the poverty rate.
“Inflation is affecting us horribly, and it’s infuriating. Even though I have a job, my family spends time searching for the best prices, cutting expenses, and strategising such as walking extra to get slightly cheaper fruit, saving ten pesos (USD 0.01 in the informal exchange rate) on bread... All this little engineering has become normalised in my family and this country,” the young man said.
Mr. Nicolás is a supporter of Javier Milei, an economist who identifies as an anarcho-capitalist and is a prominent figure in the Argentine electoral campaign. Mr. Milei advocates for massive tax cuts and the reduction of subsidies, which he sees as the root cause of Argentina’s economic problems, along with the issuance of pesos to pay off debt and fund the state.
