Journey to the End of the Earth, Part II

Life in Argentina, from the cost of living to safety, education to healthcare and more...

(Source: Getty Images)

Joel Bowman, musing this Sunday from Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Barely a month has gone by since we returned to our little pied-à-terre down by the Rio de la Plata and yet, in many ways, it feels as though we never left. 

The morning light reflecting off the grand, cupola-crowned buildings up and down Avenida Libertador... the lively tones of the first patrons meeting at our favorite café, down on the corner... the smell from the little French bakery opposite our apartment. It’s all so... familiar. 

Maybe this is what being “home” is supposed to be like? 

Full disclosure: Hardly one to speak of the sedentary lifestyle, your walkabout editor is (at best) an incurable peripatetic. Our own wanderlusting journey has (so far) spirited us across ~85 countries, in many of which we received snail mail, paid utility bills and knew the name of our local barkeep. 

Over a quarter of a century or so “on the road,” we’ve found ourselves living in a Lucky Country/Nanny State (Australia), a Constitutional Monarchy/Jilted Empire (England), a Constitutional Republic/Corporatocracy (the USA), an Authoritarian Theocracy/Squabbling Brotherhood (United Arab Emirates), a Paper Democracy/Dragon Snack (Taiwan), a Federal Republic/Kleptocracy (Mexico), a Democratic Republic/Narcocracy (Colombia) and of course, in our present country of residence... the Constitutional Ineptocracy of Argentina...

...with plenty of other “isms,” “ocracies” and misguided debacles along the way.
 

Martyrs and Knaves

One of the upsides of living like a primitive nomad is that one gets to compare and contrast systems more responsible folk might take for granted, to see the world with childlike (many would say childish) eyes. Like someone who has stumbled out of a bizarre religious cult, only to discover there is a world outside the canon, we gaze upon each new and shiny political arrangement with equal parts awe and incredulity. 

It goes without saying that all cultural mythologies have their saints and their sinners, their high priests and priestesses, their martyrs and their knaves. Civic religions are no different. There are hymns (anthems) to sing and icons (flags) to salute, along with holy (oil) wars to be won and heathens to be converted (to Capital “D” Democracy). Each place, each population, each individual person is different. What is to one man the heavenly promise of seventy-two virgins is to another the living hell of seventy-two mother-in-laws. To each his own. 

But for all that, one still has to live... somewhere. And with macroeconomic and geopolitical trends shaping up as they are presently – deglobalization, consumer price inflation + financial asset deflation, bifurcation of the international monetary system, the rumblings of a very real energy crisis, the growing threat of nuclear war etc. – where you invest your precious time may well prove to be just as important as where you invest your capital in the years ahead. 

To that end, many dear readers have written in to question your weekend editor’s sanity, having chosen for his place of residence the literal “fin del mundo.” We addressed some of these concerns in an essay a couple of months back: Journey to the End of the Earth. A few more points we promised to meet in a future Sunday Session. 

Welcome to that Session. Please enjoy Part II of our little Ode to Argentina, below...

---

Journey to the End of the Earth, Part II

By Joel Bowman

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

During the seventy year period from 1880 to 1950, Argentina found herself among the ten wealthiest countries on the planet. Indeed, “To be rich like an Argentine,” was a phrase people used without irony... and without a tear of nostalgia in their eyes. And yet, for the past seven decades, since 1950, the country has been in inexorable, sometimes violent, decline. Her grand old buildings, broad avenidas and sophisticated older generations hint at a noble and dignified past, but the headlines at the local newsstand paint a very different picture of today. One wonders: Is it better to have had wealth and lost it, than to never have known riches at all? 

At the turn of the 20th century, Argentina was ranked as the 8th most prosperous nation on earth. Only Belgium, Switzerland, Britain and a handful of former English colonies – including the United States – were more favorably positioned, economically. In 1913, Argentina’s bustling, cosmopolitan capital, Buenos Aires, had the thirteenth highest per capita telephone penetration rate in the world. Her per capita income was, around the time, 50% higher than in Italy, almost twice that of Japan and five times greater than her northern neighbor, Brazil. 

Argentina’s industry churned out quality textiles and an extensive rail network, laid down by the British, carried her prized beef, first introduced in 1536 by the Spanish Conquistadors, from the fertile plains of the Pampas to port... where it was shipped north, off season, to the farthest reaches of the known world. The agricultural show at nearby La Rural, in which prize cattle were paraded before wealthy estancieros, was considered a “must-attend” event of the social season. And when the great Pavarotti performed Puccini’s La bohème in Teatro Colon in 1987, almost 80 years after the magnificent building was inaugurated, he told adoring fans the theater had but one flaw: “The acoustics are so perfect, if the artist should make a mistake, the whole world will notice.”

But by the time the fat man had sung, the curtain was already coming down on Argentina’s glorious past. The well known Argentine investor, entrepreneur and author (and, by the by, our guest on this week’s Fatal Conceits Podcast, below), Federico Tessore, took up the story as the decline was getting underway in his excellent book, Argentina Power: How to be the Richest Country in the World Again:

The turning point was the year 1950, when we stopped starring in the ranking of the ten countries with the highest GDP per capita in the world, and we never recovered. On the contrary, we entered a long and sad decline: in 2019 we ranked 77th in per capita GDP globally. Seventy years plummeting, in which dictatorships and democracies, Peronists, radicals and independent governments ruled. None could stop the decline.

Ruin Aplenty

In Argentina Power, Sr. Tessore examines a half dozen foreign lands – Norway, Germany, Ireland, China, South Korea and neighboring Chile – all poorer than Argentina at the midpoint of the 20th century... all richer than Argentina today. What policies did the above countries adopt, what fortune did they encounter, that Argentina missed entirely? What self-inflicted wounds did Argentina suffer that these others avoided, whether by design or by chance?

War, currency debasement, civil unrest, military rule and the catalyzing agent of political aspiration, swelling the breast of the corrupt and the inept alike, all conspired to stultify this once-proud nation’s potential. The great Argentine poet and essayist, Jorge Luis Borges, described one such misadventure with characteristic flair and wit: “The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.”

And yet, as the great moral philosopher, Adam Smith, one observed: there is a lot of ruin in a nation. That is to say, despite the best efforts of the political class and their spineless apparatchiks in the academies and the media, there remains in Argentina the bones of a once-great nation. Your editor lives in a Belle Époch-style building, built around the turn of the last century, during Argentina’s glory years. In his short story, The Immortal, Sr. Borges himself alludes to the building as “a labyrinth, a house built to confuse men, its architecture lavish in symmetries, subordinated to that end.” (Rather an appropriate residence for your frequently confounded correspondent...) 

A similar residence in the “Paris of the North” (known among podean circles, simply, as Paris) would require of the inhabitant some special talent or industry or pedigree... or at least the favor of a very rich and lately deceased relative. Here, even failed novelists drift off to sleep under double-overhead ceilings, visions of well attended book signings dancing in their heads. As long as one eschews the tacky glass and steel highrises, favored by the nuevos ricos down in Puerto Madero, real estate prices here in the capital – both to rent and buy – compare very favorably with major cities regionally and around the world. 

The site Expatistan estimates the cost of living in Buenos Aires to be 27% cheaper than in Barcelona... and 53% cheaper than neighboring Santiago de Chile. And that, as far as we can tell, is taking the national currency at face value, which is to say, the official rate. The “blue market” – or unofficial rate, which can easily be obtained at any one of a thousand-plus cuevas around the city – offers roughly double that rate... effectively halving the “official” cost of living.

Of course, money is but one (albeit rather important) consideration among many when deciding where to invest that most precious of your resources: Time. What about health, safety and education, for instance? Let us address these non-trivial line items, by way of personal anecdote, in reverse...

The Three Rs

School: Your editor’s seven year old daughter attends a top tier private school in our barrio, where she takes classes in Spanish in the morning and English in the afternoon.Twice a week students take a half-day excursion to the campo, where they do physical activities and play team sports (girls: field hockey; boys: football). After school (also twice weekly), dear daughter attends violin practice with the primary school orchestra. Hot meals are served daily in the cafeteria, although mom and/or dad are usually on hand for lunch in a nearby café.

Monthly fees – including materials, meals, extra curricular activities, excursions, etc. – come to ~$85,000 pesos... or ~US$600 (official); ~US$300 (unofficial). Annually (fees are charged all 12 months of the year), this amounts to ~US$7,200 (official) or ~$3,600 (unofficial). NB: We’ve had it gently suggested to us on more than one occasion that this is an outrageous expense and that a quality, private school education here can be enjoyed for half this amount. Probably so.

You can make your own comparisons as you like. We were shocked when we looked up the price of primary school education in our native Australia. According to one website, fees at the top 30 private primary schools in Sydney ranged from about AUD$16,000 (US$11,000) per year to over AUD$31,000 (US$21, 250) on the top end. Other Australian capital cities were more or less in line. In the UK, the average came in at about £14,940 per year (US$17,300) for private day students. In the USA, this might be considered a bargain. 

Fair warning: Price aside, Argentine schools are mercifully “behind the times,” meaning they focus on old fashioned things like reading, writing and arithmetic in lieu of more fashionable programming in equity, diversity and antiracism. Among other quaint anachronisms... teachers still hug the kids when they fall and bump their knees... on sports day, only the winning team gets a trophy... and on birthdays, students are encouraged to bring cakes and snacks to share... even ones that (gulp!) may contain peanuts. 

Healthcare: Family coverage at Swiss Medical, arguably the best private provider in the country (although there are others to choose from), runs about $70,000 pesos per month, or ~US$500 (official),  ~US$250 (unofficial) for a family of three for the highest plan offered. It’s worth mentioning that comprehensive coverage here includes things like full dental, Lasik and even certain elective surgeries, depending on the plan. It’s not uncommon for people to use their private care to cover rhinoplasty, for example, or even augmentation mammoplasty. Again, to each his (or in this case, her) own.

Care, in our experience, is absolutely top notch. We live within a 5-7 minute drive to three private Swiss Medical clinics, and there are plenty more throughout the city and around the country. Whether you arrive for a routine consultation or scheduled test, or you’re delivered by ambulance to the emergency room, you don’t have to fear what’s in (or not in) your bank account – there is no copay. Simply present your medical card and the rest is taken care of. Many plans also cover international travel, including to the US (and is why ours is about double the price of most others). 

Safety: Government websites are practically designed to scare citizens into cowering invalids, convinced the big bad world is full of danger and menace at every turn. And certainly, risk management is part of life. The truth is, crime is very much like real estate in that, even within a given city, it is all about location, location, location. There are parts of Buenos Aires your editor would not dream of walking, even during the daytime. So it goes for practically every major metropolis on the planet. We’ve lived in New York, London, Mexico City. We’ve seen a gang of teens attack a group of Chinese shoppers on the Paris metro... witnessed a young woman mugged outside a tapas bar in Madrid... and heard gunshots echo across the night when we lived in Baltimore. (While residing in Charm City, we even had an intruder break into our 5th floor apartment via the fire escape... while we were still home!) 

Every city has its desirable areas... and its not so desirable ones. Oftentimes, as is the case in Baltimore, the difference is measured by a matter of blocks. And yet, the best neighborhood of a “dangerous” city is often much safer than the seediest neighborhood of a “safe” one. As anyone who has visited many metropolises will know, a little common sense goes a long way. We’ve lived in Argentina’s capital now (on and off) for over a decade and never had any problems. The few times we’ve heard of someone running into trouble, it’s usually because they were playing on the proverbial train tracks. Of course, a man might never leave his bunker, bolt the doors, monitor every delivery, isolate himself from society entirely... and still slip in the shower and crack his lonely skull. 

For the most part, crime in Buenos Aires happens unseen. You're more likely to get ‘robbed’ with a counterfeit note, or lose an unseen bag (Note: don’t hang purses or backpacks from the back of your chair). 

There are myriad other considerations one must take into account when choosing one’s own paraíso (to the extent that it even exists); language, climate, culture, lifestyle, etc. Uncertainties abound, to be sure, but they must not become so stifling that one forgets to live. “Nothing is built on stone,” Borges once wrote, “all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.”

After seventy years in the sun...and seventy years in darkness...one wonders whether Argentina will ever rediscover her lost fortune. Either way, at this strange moment in our life, it feels like home. 

---

And now for some more Fatal Conceits...

What happens when you go to the bank and discover your savings have been “revalued” by your government? When the retirement nest egg you carefully saved all your working life is suddenly worth half… a third… a quarter of what it was just yesterday?

How do you invest when your money is losing not “merely” 7… 8… 9 per cent annually… but 70… 80… 90 per cent… and more?

Earlier this week, we sat down with serial entrepreneur, investor, author and founder and CEO of Inversor Global, Sr. Federico Tessore.

No stranger to extreme market volatility and political uncertainty in his home country of Argentina, Fede has nevertheless built his financial research business into one of the most successful in the Spanish speaking world (don’t worry… the conversation is in English), with hundreds of thousands of readers across multiple countries up and down Latin America and in Europe.

His massively popular #FedeTessoShow channel on Youtube has almost a quarter of a million subscribers, whom Fede guides through the ins and outs of investing in complex markets around the world.

During an unhurried hour or so, we discussed lessons from the “fin del mundo” as well as his excellent book, Argentine Power: How to Return to being the Richest Country in the World (Spanish language).

So please, pull up a chair and enjoy our conversation with Sr. Tessore, below… and don’t forget to share our show with friends in both the English and Spanish speaking worlds.

Federico Tessore - Lessons from the Fin del Mundo

And that’ll do for another Sunday Sesh, dear reader. We’ll write to you next week from under the watchful, art deco eye of Cristo Redentor. In the meantime, Bill will return tomorrow with his regular, daily musings.

Enjoy your weekend and, until next time...

Saludos!

Joel Bowman