The Buenos Aires barber's books: a history of 19,900% inflation
In his small barbershop with sandy wooden floorboards and a fishbowl glass window to the street outside, Ruben Galante has for some four decades watched presidents come and go, myriad economic crises, and fast-rising prices. The 67-year-old has jotted down every haircut for over 20 years, a rare personal history of the ebbs and flows of inflation during a period of patchy - and at times unreliable - official data. Galante's colorful lined notebooks, tucked away on a small shelf in the corner of his store, show that between 1991 and 2023, haircut prices rose from 15 pesos to 3,000 pesos.