how do you transfer $ for life ins., retirement...in US from Arg?

Hello DrKen, welcome on Expat.com
I'll move your topic to Mendoza's forum for a better visibility.
Hope this helps!
Cheers
Arlette

Well first of all I think it silly to have moved this thread to the Mendoza forum as this is a question regarding federal policy as a whole and therefore applies to the entire country and not just this one rather small town.

Secondly, you are not going to be happy at the prospect of transferring large quantities of money down here.  If you do so, there is a one year waiting period to gain access to your funds in many instances and the taxes are incredible (I am told around 20%).  As real estate is a cash only business for immigrants and expats, one does have to go through this process if purchasing an apartment.  But otherwise, everyone I know avoids transferring funds here.

There are a few methods people use down here to access funds from another country.  One is to simply use an ATM machine and eat the international transaction fees and deal with the Argentine banking system's many quirks.  (For some reason there is no administration or oversight over Argentina's 2 ATM companies.  There is a complete absense of governmental policy, law or governing body and they even fall outside the control of the central banking system.)  People go to an international banking institution such as HSBC and arrange an international account, but I think even then they fall victim to some of Argentina's weird banking quirks such as the fact that having any kind of account here costs money, a substantial amount each month and it there is not a minimum deposit level that can be maintained to avoid those costs.  The last method is to open an account in Uruguay which has the only equivalent of offshore banking in Latin America (or so I understand). 

As an interesting aside, as banks are expensive, they have developed an interesting marketing program here in order to get people to use their particular financial institution.  For example, most of the heavyweights here have partnered with the larger grocery store chains and other businesses to offer special incentives.  For instance in one grocery store every Wednesday persons with ATM cards from "such and such bank" receive a 30% discount on any debit card purchase.  It is a very interesting, and to me an odd, way of marketing and promoting a bank.