r/geography • u/MontroseRoyal Urban Geography • 17d ago

Argentina is the most British country in Latin America. Why? Discussion

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I would like to expand upon the title. I believe that Argentina is not only the most ‘British’ country in Latin America, but the most ‘British’ country that was never formally colonized by the British themselves. I firmly believe this and will elaborate.

Let’s start with town names. In the Buenos Aires metro area alone; English & Irish town and neighborhood names are commonplace. Such as Hurlingham, Canning, Billinghurst, Wilde, Temperley, Ranelagh, Hudson, Claypole, Coghlan, Banfield, and even Victoria (yes, purposefully named after the Queen).

One of the two biggest football clubs in the capital has an English name, River Plate. And the sport was brought by some English immigrants. Curiously, Rugby and Polo are also very popular Argentina, unlike surrounding countries. For a long time, the only Harrods outside the UK operated in Buenos Aires too. Many Argentines are of partial English descent. When the English community was stronger, they built a prominent brick monument called “Tower of the English”. After the Falklands, it was renamed to “Tower of the Malvinas” by the government out of spite.

In Patagonia, in the Chubut province particularly, there is obviously the Welsh community with town names like Trelew, Eawson, and Puerto Madryn. Patagonian Welsh is a unique variety of the language that developed more or less independently for a few years with no further influence from English. Although the community and speakers now number little, Welsh traditions are a major tourist factor for Chubut.

There is a notable diaspora community of Scottish and their descendants as well. I remember once randomly walking into a large Scottish festival near Plaza de Mayo where there were many artisan vendors selling celtic merchandise with a couple of traditional Scottish dancers on a stage.

Chile has some British/Irish influence (who can forget Bernardo O’Higgins?), but seemingly not nearly to the same extent. The English community was rather small, so it doesn’t make much sense to me how they can have such a large impact. I guess my question is why Argentina? Of all places

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u/contextual_somebody 17d ago

TBF they've always made terrible choices when it comes to voting. Hey. Maybe the U.S. will someday be the Argentina of North America

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u/Wildwilly54 16d ago edited 16d ago

Canada’s doing a good job of going backwards right now

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u/backgamemon 16d ago

I currently live in Canada and idk man we gotta long way to go if we really want to compete with South America

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u/Wildwilly54 16d ago edited 16d ago

Oh of course. I was just replying to someone saying that someday the US could go that route. At this current point in time, Canada is the one on the downward trajectory. But no, it will never get that bad.

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u/conners_captures 16d ago

But no, it will never get that bad.

that's what argentina thought lol

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u/backgamemon 16d ago

Look I’m not saying Canada is in a better financial position than the us, not by a long shot, but Canada still has a higher life expectancy, social net, better education, lower poverty, lower crime rate, much more equal distribution of wealth and all people on the internet seem to care about is that the US has a huge concentration of global corporations. All I’m saying is I’m tiered of people pretending that Canada is some failing disfunctional hell hole one step away from poverty, when in reality it’s largest problem is that it shares a border with a nation that essentially has a global currency backed by the entire fucking world economy.

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u/Throwaway98796895975 15d ago

Dude, Toronto police told people to keep their car keys by the door so that the car thieves don’t have to become home invaders.

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u/parararalle 16d ago

What you say is true but GDP per capita is declining in the last 6 quarters. It's not a good thing. People are feeling that and that's why they come in the Internet saying such things too. Government about to announce some larger deficit spending numbers and unemployment is up. There wouldn't even be a positive overall GDP if it were not for government spending. Good possibility this decrease in GDP per capita trend will continue. The trend is troubling

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u/Upset-Safe-2934 15d ago

Hahaha your out Hat. Send regards to the Governor!

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u/Smartyunderpants 14d ago

Too much social spending is what happened to Argentina

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u/PEE_GOO 16d ago

just adopt the dollar then duh

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u/LupineChemist 16d ago

Argentina is way richer now than it was when it was one of the richest countries in the world.

Not caring about economic growth is one of those things that you can get away with for a couple years, but that shit compounds hard after a few decades. It's sort of why Canada and the US have been diverging in the last decade or so since US is still with very solid growth.

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u/hissboombah 12d ago

Slowly at first, then all at once

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u/allanrjensenz 16d ago

Not really, I’d say Uruguay is doing better than you guys for example.

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u/backgamemon 16d ago

No offence to Uruguay but name a single way it’s doing better

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u/allanrjensenz 16d ago edited 15d ago

Their healthcare system isn’t oversaturated (unlike Canada’s), is also completely free, and also considered one of the best in the world. The cost of living is considerably lower even considering local income as well (compared to Canada). Also leads in support for democracy and renewable energy (98% renewable). The GINI coefficient is also fairly close to Canada’s. Uruguay’s poverty level is 9.2% compared to Canada’s 9.9%

Can’t really put South America as a single entity, the countries are vastly different.

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u/Dr_N00B 16d ago

When people say Canada will become Venezuela, I say no. We will become Argentina of course

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u/Fake-Podcast-Ad 16d ago

Only going to get worse with PP and provincial morons lining their pockets further.

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u/Wildwilly54 16d ago edited 16d ago

I lived in Toronto before Covid, but work for a Canadian company in the States. Every time I go back to the Toronto office I got at least 15 people asking me if I can get them a job. It’s pretty bleak at the moment. Don’t think Poilievre can do much worse than Trudeau.

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u/Attainted 16d ago

pp will bend over for Trump.

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u/Wildwilly54 16d ago

Trump called Trudeau, and the next day he flew down to Florida. Now he’s publically calling him the governor of Canada. Justin’s already spreading em wide and he’s not even in office yet…. Got a much better chance with PP, I wouldn’t trust Trudeau to negotiate a purchase at a garage sale.

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u/ToughPlatypus 16d ago

He flew down because Canada doesn’t allow US felons in their country.

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u/Juanzilla17 16d ago

Damn. You’re right.

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u/Attainted 16d ago

Ah, okay then.

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u/ThomasBay 16d ago

You know it’s the provinces that are causing these problems right? It’s not the Feds

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u/Rand_University81 16d ago

The feds aren’t the ones allowing record immigration during a housing crisis?

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u/ThomasBay 16d ago

That’s barely the cause of the housing crisis. You know thenFord government is building houses at a record low pace. Also housing the responsibility of the Province

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u/Rand_University81 16d ago

You don’t think it’s a problem increasing immigration to record levels while we are in a housing crisis? That makes no sense.

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u/ThomasBay 16d ago

They’ve already decreased it

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u/Rand_University81 16d ago

Ok, so what about the years and years they left it wide open? You can’t even acknowledge that was a bad idea?

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u/Cozywarmthcoffee 14d ago

Canada only ever looked good on paper. It was never as first world as they try to make it appear. Cost of living to income has always been off in Canada. But it is stable and light years ahead of South  America. 

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u/Himera71 16d ago

The millions of low skilled immigrants, that the government has allowed to overrun the country are going to feel right at home.

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u/Jlx_27 16d ago

Still a lot better than the US, but for howlong remains to be seen.

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u/MysteriousAdvice1840 16d ago

Your economy is only doing worse and worse by the year relative to the US. Meanwhile you guys have a worse housing problem than the US as well

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u/bobnla14 17d ago

Give us 2 years and done!!/s

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u/FucknAright 16d ago

Yea, in about 3 years

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u/AKsNcarTassels 16d ago

It’s Canada right now. Cost of living (corporate greed) has lowered the living standards substantially and both the provincial and federal levels of governments are majorly corrupted. Government is staffed with friends of no qualifications except grifting.

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u/Long-Astronaut-3363 16d ago

So it’s like the USA now?

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u/Mcipark 14d ago

Someone posted on another post that Canada has 50% more unemployment than the US (3.63% in US compared to 5.37%) and that Canadians have to pay a carbon tax even though their trees eliminate 110% of their carbon production each year

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u/AKsNcarTassels 14d ago

I won’t speculate on what the trees do or do not compared to our output. I’m not a fan of the carbon tax when a lot of people are struggling to get by because of the increased cost of living as it does absolutely nothing to help with that, in fact it hurts us more

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u/piney 16d ago

Maybe someday in January

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u/ComfortableYak2071 17d ago

Milei is making genuine improvements, their economy has surged quite dramatically since he’s implemented his plans

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u/Vegabern 17d ago

I just read a headline that he's reducing taxes by 90% not 5 minutes ago.

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u/FlygonSA 17d ago

There is a subtlety about that, he is going to reduce 90% the number of taxes, nowadays there is something like +200 different taxes but only 10 of those taxes represent 91% of tax revenue, so he is planing on simplifying the tax structure by removing those smaller taxes that don't bring a lot of money to the government

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/CaterpillarLoud8071 17d ago

If a tax isn't for revenue, it's for another purpose. Often you'll have a tax hitting a very niche area to prevent it being used as a tax loophole for a big tax. Otherwise, it's likely to be behavioural, like a tax on sugar in food.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

[deleted]

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u/Amphibiansauce 16d ago

The reason they don’t want to tax tips, is both that restaurateurs would rather pay garbage wages and have tipping be the source of their employees income, and that people constantly cheat their taxes on tipped wages anyway, costing the government a lot of money both in enforcement and in lost revenue.

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u/DanielOrestes 16d ago

Tax profit. Many 1099 contractors would be rendered insolvent overnight if we taxed gross income uniformly.

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u/CaterpillarLoud8071 16d ago

There are many forms of income, goods, investments and assets. Some we want to encourage, others we want to limit. Taxes and subsidies are often more market-friendly in altering behaviour than regulations because we just let the market do its job - ironically this makes them favoured by many libertarians in pushing social goals, e.g. pollution taxes, negative income taxes/basic incomes, land value taxes. Milei may find that without these taxes he has to increase regulatory load.

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u/MysteriousAdvice1840 16d ago

Headline was misleading on purpose and worked effectively on you

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u/davetn37 17d ago

When you drastically reduce wasteful government spending you can also drastically reduce taxes. Funny thing, that

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u/sukabot_lepson 17d ago

Most of taxes are paid by companies, not by regular people. So basically he reduced budget income that is used for social needs and let American and other foreign companies earn more, by spending less. In the end it's a victory for private capital, not regular citizens.

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u/berlinscotlandfan 17d ago

This isn't a serious point. Nobody with a rudimentary understanding of how any of this works can think you can pay for a 90% tax cut through government efficiency savings.

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u/davetn37 17d ago

Outside of one article by a questionable Chinese news site I'm not seeing anybody saying they're cutting taxes so drastically. Could you point me to a site or article?

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u/berlinscotlandfan 17d ago

I don't need to. You replied to a comment saying taxes were being cut by 90% with an argument that this would be okay because of cutting wasteful government. I replied to say that your argument (for why that figure was okay) is nonsense. Lol maybe you should have found a source before you commented.

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u/davetn37 16d ago

Someone posted an article with an Argentine govt minister clarifying the tax thing, they aren't cutting taxes by 90% like you claimed, they are eliminating lots of minor/superfluous taxes. So your claim was wrong lol. Interestingly enough though, in the article the minister states that if they wanted to quantitatively cut taxes by 90% then they'd have to eliminate government spending by 90%, which is basically what I said. You can try and insult me and down vote as much as you want like the other redditards, but the point stands. Cut spending, cut taxes.

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u/berlinscotlandfan 16d ago

You're moving tbe goalposts. My comment was specific to your reply to the 90% claim which you didn't challenge.

Edit: for clarity, if you look up the thread you'll see I've never made a 90% claim.

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u/Beginning_Ad_4449 17d ago

The Berliner-Scotsman can't comprehend economic growth reforms, color me surprised

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u/berlinscotlandfan 17d ago

Lol nice bait m8.

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u/CaterpillarLoud8071 16d ago

It's immaterial. I could reduce the tax burden and government spending by 90% on a technicality by taking pensions, healthcare, education & welfare out of government spending and turning taxes into mandatory insurance. It doesn't really matter who's paying and who's providing services, it matters whether the services are cost effective and functional.

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u/hyakinthosofmacedon 16d ago

I thought that was infamously the opposite of what he was doing lmao

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u/Music_Upbeat 17d ago

Lex Fridman has an interesting conversation with Javier Milei on his podcast.

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u/dave1314 17d ago

I don’t know much about it so could be wrong - but did he not already tank the economy? Hard to give someone credit for making improvements on a poor economic situation they created in the first place.

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u/ComfortableYak2071 17d ago

Not at all. Argentina’s economy has been tanked since the 40s under Perón. Also a massive Great Depression in the late 90s early 2000s. Milei inherited an abysmal economy and has started to turn it around. Inflation has lowered, rent prices have significantly decreased, government is running at a surplus for the first time in forever.

He is very much hated by reddit, so they deny any good he does, but it is what it is

It’s gonna take a while, but he is making actual improvements

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u/dave1314 17d ago

Just looked it up for myself, you are being disingenuous.

It looks like Inflation rates and poverty increased dramatically since Milei took power.

A slight recent reduction in inflation and changing the spending deficit to a surplus does not mean the Argentinian economy suddenly looks good.

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u/BIGDADDYBANDIT 16d ago

Inflation rate, not inflation. They were in a period of hyperinflation when he was elected, and now have the second lowest inflation rate in South America. It doesn't undo the inflation already taking place, but it is one in a long list of improvements made to the Argentine economy under Milei. The black market currency exchange is dying off and FDI is flooding in. You can disagree with the ideology, but for the ideology, Milei is about as effective an administrator you could get to implement these reforms. He knows his stuff.

And not that this is directly relevant to what you said, but the 91% tax cut being repeated above is false. It's a nonspecific but high percentage of different taxes being cut next year to reduce administrative bloat. The rffective reduction inntax rate will only be around 10% in 2025.

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u/ComfortableYak2071 17d ago edited 17d ago

I’m curious to see where you’re getting your information from.. is it random Redditors who have a massive hate boner for the man?

https://news.gallup.com/poll/654089/javier-milei-argentina-charts.aspx

https://www.focus-economics.com/blog/argentina-economy-under-milei/

You act like real life is a movie or something, and expect this man to come into office and fix one of the worst, longest running South American economies in a matter of a month. He’s made significant progress in a year, and of course there will be some pain along the way, they’ve been in severe pain since the 40s. You can’t fix an awful economy without there being pain, because again, life isn’t a Disney movie. You are the one being disingenuous and ignoring data my friend, most likely because of your political biases

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u/Cuchifo 16d ago

As an argentinian, this Is just wrong. The outgoing administration printed money equaling 13 GDP points in its last year in office. During the election campaign, they wasted a massive FMI loan on reckless economic measures, such as axing the only progressive tax we paid (income tax) without a care for what would happen in the future. As a result, monthly inflation in december was a sky-high 25.5%, and that's with price control measures in place, and a official rate-market rate disparity of the dollar value at a record 93%.

Not only we now have 2.4% inflation, trending massively down (way better than the "slight reduction" you seem to perceive), but that's with a saneated macroeconomy, no price controls, and no black market dollar rate. The official rate is now true, and this stability provides a lot of benefits. For example, we are not at risk of defaulting on our debt, and this in turn gives us a lot better rates when negotiating old and new debt.

What you are saying Is just disingenuous. Please educate yourself with non-biased sources

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u/letterboxfrog 17d ago

Interesting take by Joe Blogs Argentina in Deep Trouble - "Dead Cow" Revolution

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u/ComfortableYak2071 17d ago

Go read the comments in that video, especially from those actually living in Argentina

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u/RudolfjeWeerwolfje 16d ago

It already is.

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u/Vast_Discipline_3676 16d ago

We’re well on our way!

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u/Copacetic4 Geography Enthusiast 15d ago

Milei’s been able to staunch the losses for now. We’ll see if he manages lasting change

I guess three economics degrees do come in handy.

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u/contextual_somebody 15d ago

The poverty rate increased from 40% to over 53% in six months. It’s now 57%. Extreme poverty is now 15%. Without government subsidies and rent stabilization, homelessness has skyrocketed. As a consequence, domestic spending is down. But hey, the stock market is up.

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u/Copacetic4 Geography Enthusiast 14d ago

He did manage to close the deficit for what that's worth. And Argentina has had a rather bloated bureaucracy even by modern standards.

Sounds like it's at least a net improvement to me, Argentinians will vote on it next election, which is still some time away.

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u/KoedKevin 13d ago

He has lowered inflation from 25% per month to 2.5% per month.  Housing availability has opened up dramatically and unemployment and the economy are much healthier.  Another year and extreme poverty will be dramatically lessened. 

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u/Cozywarmthcoffee 14d ago

It’s cheeky, but unrealistic. America could disappear tomorrow and would likely have and has had more of an impact on the globe (for better or worse) than the Romans, Greeks, and Ottomans combined. So, no America will never be the Argentina of North America- because what Argentina had was a flash in the pan of wealth and political stability. Almost immediately to return to the state of all other Latin American countries- unfortunately. They also had little to no impact on the Latin world during this period nor less the globe. I still love Argentina- but no. 

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u/permanent_echobox 13d ago

Also the Panama Canal changed international shipping/business.

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u/alvar368 16d ago

Maybe the US-backed dictatorships also have something to do with it? Just saying. That includes the one that started the Malvinas (Falklands) War.

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u/Fair_Ad3429 14d ago

The fact u think the problem is voting tells me all I need know.

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u/belortik 17d ago

Isn't that already Mexico?

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u/garytyrrell 17d ago

When was Mexico rich?

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u/sharpafm8 17d ago edited 16d ago

Luckily Americans voted against that this election

The downvotes make me laugh. Let’s just ignore the fact that Peron was a socialist and his socialist policies helped destroy a once prosperous nation because it doesn’t fit our “trump bad 😡” ideology.

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u/Limekilnlake 17d ago

I mean peronism was protectionist, so trump’s tariff plan doesn’t bode well in that department

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u/Lurker-420 17d ago

Replace UK imports with Italian imports was the real outcome though.

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u/sharpafm8 16d ago edited 16d ago

I guess we’ll just ignore the fact that “Perón pursued many left-leaning policies, nationalizing the central bank and several large corporations, expanding health and welfare benefits, and establishing an alliance with organized labor unions.” I guess tariffs are the singular issue we should look at.

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u/WickedWiscoWeirdo 16d ago

Peron was kinda a mixed bag. There were very left and very right policies

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u/contextual_somebody 16d ago

And you are just ignoring the authoritarian nationalism, the militarism, the corporatism… Peronism is a third way ideology, which is well known.

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u/Nyorliest 16d ago

I bet you think the Nazis were socialist too.