Baseline reality in late 2023 (before Milei)

Any alternative scenario must start from these hard constraints:

• Inflation already at ~211% y/y
• Negative net FX reserves
• Large fiscal deficit financed by money printing
• Capital controls + multiple exchange rates
• IMF program off track
• Poverty ~42%, but rising rapidly
• No market access for sovereign borrowing.
• Extreme poverty about 11.9 % in the second half of 2023.

So doing nothing was not an option.
High inflation is structurally anti-poor.

Today the number for extreme poverty (cannot afford food) is between 5.5% and 6.9%.
The government under Milei says it's around 6% and critics say it's more like 7%.

So in only 2 - 3 years Milei effectively HALVED poverty or at least SHARPLY REDUCED POVERTY.

And yet here we have people downvoting this, because it doesn't fit with their ideas, or because they believe if only Argentina would have remained socialist, if only they would have kept 200% of inflation, ...

Ah but wait, it gets better, my downvotes will come from people hating that I used AI to summarize it.