It’s hard to believe that Argentina and Australia were once peer frontier economies that generated roughly the same high per capita income from similar natural resource bases at the end of the 19th century.
Since then, Argentina has become a politically volatile economic basket case and low-trust society with a long history of military coups, embroiled in almost permanent financial crises, and a byword for corruption and incompetence. It lives beyond its means, suffers triple-digit inflation, and can’t repay its debts.