"Threatened by poverty"

[matrixmann]

Regarding the recently soaring consumer prices for foods that rise nearly every two weeks (like if they'd be measured by the price of oil, humorously spoken), it reminds you of openly raising the question why is it always called "threatened by poverty"?
Is "poverty" the shady scary guy with the club that stands on the sidewalk beside the house entrance? No! People aren't "threatened by poverty", they don't fear for his hit, they are already poor! This is the reality!
"Threatened by poverty" is nothing but another one of those public relations phrases that shall cover up the fact that there are people in the so-called "wealthier countries" of the earth who aren't as rich as their self-produced propaganda machinery wants to make believe. And, regarding the numbers that are repeatedly cited in this context, there even is no talking about "individual cases" and "personal failure". It's a mass phenomenon, always affecting a quota of between 15 and 20 percent of the population. No matter which of the "wealthier countries" you take to take a look at.

And, important to note, it's not even dependent on an individual's employment status. People work and have a job, but they're paid too few, compared to the costs of living in their countries, or they get job offers with too few working hours per month (half-time employment and so-called "mini-jobs").
Creating the group of "the working poor" - beside those people who cannot work anymore from old age or health reasons who are being kept on a short leash financially anyway, like undesired eaters sitting at the table that are perceived as "an unnecessary burden".

Comments

[maadmike.livejournal.com]

Yes, this nowadays European economic escalation reminds me about the book I've read decades ago, where man was writing about the before ww2 German realities when prices were sky rocketing and you'd never known the price of bread going to buy it in the morning... So, after he had changed his job selling... graves monuments, it seems, on war's activities...
My point is that all these late things as at Europe as in USA looks very much artificial. It is like some big weaponry selling or more big players are playing their old play to radicalize the population of Europe to push it as Ukraine had been pushed into hell...
Yes, of course there are millions of poor as at USA as at Europe but... anyway, it is very strange that European politics, not Americans but exactly European, while USA is producing fuel, so the Europeans are trying to cut their ears out and while doing it are starting to cry — oh! Shit! It hurts!!!!!

[matrixmann]

Economically speaking, the is no shortage of things compared to the pre-war state of the world. It's only that the Western countries have stated "we don't buy from a certain (big) player no more", and by that, they have shrunk the mass of goods available to them in certain sectors. Which, as a consequence of that, drives up the prices. - So yes, this is a part that is totally artificial. Because there aren't much fewer wares on the market than before (except for those which are affected by the war activity in Ukraine directly - like sunflower oil, which can't be produced from fields not harvested, fields not tilled, raw material destroyed through battle activity and infrastructure for production destroyed, blocked and people who worked in the production chain before now fighting in the war or fleeing to foreign countries).

Another part of it is simply the panic at the stock exchange. Unforeseen events always shake the markets and make players wobbly about their behavior and their decisions where to invest/park their money.
This drives up prices too - in combination with the artificially shortened supply of certain products on the part of the market available to the West.

The third one is very much buried in the whole issue of energy imports and fuel. As Europe could previously work very well with the cheap Russian gas and oil, and now it looks like there's going to be a hike due to Nord Stream 2 being abandoned and the Western countries shifting their contracts to buy the significantly more expensive LPG from the US in the long term.
- Partly, you also have the panic on the market in this issue present, as the prices for oil and gas get driven up by the Western embargoes. (Germany still tries hard to avoid breaking up on Russian gas and oil because its industry keeps saying "Don't do that - or we have to close!" - but enough countries around join the choir of abandoning the energy imports.)

And a fourth one... How to say...
If talking about the prices for foods (e. g. meat prices have noticeably exploded), it seems on the surface that the industry which sells the finished products abuses the new situation in order to raise the prices. In order to just make more profit than usually. - The war in Ukraine and its effects posing just an excuse to do it, so to say.

[maadmike.livejournal.com]

Yes, all this is logic or rather illogic but the key words at Europe for this is – “It is Putin to blame!” As if it is not Germany and France were supposed to work together with Russia to force Ukraine into the Minsk agreement and what Europe did instead – have made loud applauses to the wish of bloody clown to get out of all Minsk agreements and dare to threaten Russia with a dirty nuclear bomb, had called the genocide of killing 15000 of East Ukrainian population the laughable… What USA did – directly and openly forced Ukraine into a war against firstly Eastern Ukraine states and after against Russia itself... And nobody is taken their part in what is going on at Ukraine now. Instead they are, through all bribed or bought western mass media radicalizing Europe population. I am certain it is the clear preparing for future war with Russia like it was played at Ukraine not so long ago, which would be a cherry on a pie for the bankrupted USA economy…
So, I can ask you LJ friend – are you prepared for the third war at Europe?

[matrixmann]

...I see myself what is happening and how wrong it all is what the fraction does which I live in. But I see myself pretty unable to change anything in particular about that. Especially only on my own. (It needs masses of people who e. g. refuse to show up to make war in order to make a difference.)
Except for telling people what I know and understand about the situation, I can't do more than that.

If you ask me about my own position - I know I'm one of those who can already assure themselves that, if you want to survive in one piece and at the best health, then it's simply your own interest and you'll have to struggle for it on your own.
'Cause I'm one of those which are the easiest expendable - chronically ill and dependent on meds. That's how far I'll tell that in the public space.

[kanzeon-2040.livejournal.com]

Official poverty rates are so arbitrary, but yeah, however you calculate it, big chunks of the population are living in poverty in lots of countries. The latest official poverty rate was 18% in the US, but also 18% in Cambodia, and 18% in Luxembourg, and 18% in Croatia — very different countries but all of them putting up with almost 1/5 of their population living in poverty however that is defined by them. If you can define and measure poverty, you can simply send a check to each person living in poverty for enough cash to remove them from the category, poof, but ... we don't do that. It boggles my mind that in many countries we have all sorts of programs to help families living in poverty, but we can't do the simple job of guaranteeing a minimum income for all? Why not?

[matrixmann]

I'll make the guess that it stands and falls with if you have an administration in politics as well as the economy that is focused on making people get an affordable and worthy life - worthy measured by the material and technoligcal possibilities that mankind has already reached -, or if you have an administration in all relevant areas of society that is just interested in letting a few people get some shares of the big cake, but in general passes the cake over to some other people which, by the local and global hierarchy, are in the position of being "the elite".

'Case, previous real socialist/communist systems have at least leaid a proof down for it that, for example, affordable living space - rent, costs for electricity, water, heating - is very well possible, even at low prices. The affordability was created by the state subsidizing it.
Basic foods that could be grown on the local ground were done so also - because agriculture can never compete in money revenues with industrial goods. (Agricultural products aren't just very well-paid... It's always been like this.)
What kind of goods and services are subventions spend on today - and with what reasoning?
Exporting goods is getting subsidized to flood foreign markets with one's won cheap products, purchasing a new car is getting subsidized if it runs on a different energy source than usual gasoline, rich people can deduct private costs back from the tax - but nothing that you can eat, which kids can go to school from, which adults can acquire higher school education from, which gives everyone the opportunity of cheap mobility, which makes having a home affordable for you even with a small income, which makes you able to regularly eat healthily; and so on.

So, public money mostly isn't spent to the well-being of people and to build infrastructure, but to shrink the costs of the wealthy for their endeavors that actually would be theirs.
Any miracle that the picture looks as it does? I don't think so.