Every news about price increases, the introduction of the euro or another “reform“ inevitably leads to the same feeling in people – that they are getting poorer. Not statistically, not according to tables, but really, in their everyday lives. In the store, at the checkout, when paying bills. And this feeling is not the result of suggestion or nostalgia, but the result of a long process that began with the transition, but has not yet ended.
The transition in our country has turned from a temporary state into a permanent model. It was promised that it would be short, that it would bring freedom, a market, prosperity. Instead, it gave birth to scumbags (they are still in power), speculation, inequalities and social fatigue. Prices are growing faster than incomes, and every change – from currency to energy - is used as a justification for a new increase in prices. In this sense, the transition is not just economic, but moral:
it legitimizes the idea that “everyone saves themselves“, and the weaker pay the price.
A euro in a society with weak institutions, poor control and high speculation is no guarantee of a better life. On the contrary - it can accelerate processes that already exist.
Here the crude but increasingly used metaphor of “the fed” also appears. Not in the literal sense, but in the social sense - a system in which some profit from the impoverishment of others. When food prices rise without economic logic, when energy becomes an instrument of profit, when labor is devalued and capital reproduces itself, society begins to eat itself from within.
Not out of malice, but out of a lack of rules and justice.
The comparison with life “before“ is often dismissed as sentimental. But people are not comparing ideologies, but security. They are comparing the feeling that you can plan, that tomorrow will not be worse than today. Now many live in a mode of constant adaptation - to new prices, new rules, new crises.
This is exhausting and leads to apathy, which is the most dangerous result of impoverishment.
Speculation is not just an economic phenomenon, it is a culture. A culture of “take it now“, “press it while it lasts“, “we'll see later“. In such an environment, any major change – be it the euro, the “Green Deal” or digitalization – becomes a risk for the common man and an opportunity for profit for the few. Until this changes, until the rules start to apply to everyone, the conversation about prices and currencies will be secondary.
The real question is not whether we will pay in euros, but whether we will live in a society that does not accept impoverishment as a normal state. Because when people get used to impoverishment, then “the fed up“ is no longer a metaphor, but a diagnosis.