Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home <3 In the time honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!
I promise I’ll work on Element soon
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uwu
People in Belgium are now facing electricity/gas bills of 500-1000 euros a month, or an end bill next year of 3000-4000 euro’s. These are poverty numbers for a majority of people.
But we owned the Russians, I guess. And our corporate overlords made record profits. Yay, poverty.
On top of this, and I kid you not, municipalities will be shutting down street lights because the electricity costs are too high.
People have to sit in the dark because of this
I’m surprised they’re not installing huge hamster wheels connected to generators. Those cold people would soon warm up powering the street lights.
It’s sickening and scary. Absolutely no idea how people are going to make it through this winter.
Ruled by people who can only see the market. And if the market doesn’t provide, it’s our own fault. It’s ideologically impossible for the ruling class to accept the need for – or even to acknowledge – other models of distribution. And this applies to almost every ‘politician’. Even when a government steps in, they do so (inadvertently or explicitly) by asking the market to provide a solution which the state can buy at the ‘best’ price.
The bonus to this is that even the most milquetoast politically active people are starting to get a revolutionary spirit. The important thing for our party is to not let them turn to the far right.
The message of ‘5-10 years of hardships’ from the prime minister awakened something I guess.
You’re right, there.
I’ve found it remarkably easy to bring up our politics recently. Almost everyone I come across is feeling the squeeze in some way. Whether it’s energy, food, general inflation, interest / mortgage rates, house prices, rent, stagnating wages, redundancies. I can’t think of anyone I talk to regularly who isn’t worrying about at least one of these things. And they bring it up!
This time five years ago, or even last year, pre- and "mid-"pandemic (I don’t believe it’s over), I’d struggle to find a common issue to bring up. Seriously struggling to pay the bills was only something that happened to the poorest, the laziest, and to people in other countries (in bourgeois eyes, anyway; we know better). If I spoke then about capitalism, I’d often get rebuffed. Not anymore. Well, not so much anymore.
Although now the challenge is pointing out where the real blame lies (i.e. not Ukraine / Russia, Brexit, this or that party, ‘Chinese’ / ‘Russian’ investment (of course, it’s only ever the Russians and Chinese who would use investments to influence other countries)).
don’t worry, I’m sure all large private manufacturers will limit their production to save electricity and gas for households, even if it decreases their profits
We laugh but companies actually proposed cutting working from home to ‘save us from higher energy costs wink wink’. That’s their solution it seems.
I’m not sure which is worse, this or letting / making employees cover work costs, such as heating, internet, lighting, physical space, furniture, etc. Some places are shutting their buildings for the winter to save on heating. Don’t ask whether they’re passing on those savings to the workers who will be paying instead.
blech
To put this in perspective, a 3k euro salary per year is barely above minimum wage in Latin American countries.