Can You Spare Some Change?
A new year, a new start. But it's not really, except for certain things. Holdovers from last year are still beating hard, such as local news that has gone national, or Christmas vacation for schoolkids, which still has a week to go. The rain that has decided to wait for winter to roll in has also continued over from the past year. Weather doesn't care about calendars.
For other things, it is a new start. My husband went back to work today, his broken rib healed, though the nerve endings still jangle and he sometimes needs a painkiller. It's also a new start for price hikes of all kinds. Except salaries. Those only go up a tiny percentage point, such as old-age pensions, which have only gone up .25 percent. A quarter of one percent, which means the lowest pensions might only go up little more than a euro a month. Then there are the salaries that haven't gone up in years, such as my husband's, which has been frozen for I forget how long. Like him, many, if they haven't been cut in these past years of crisis.
Inflation has gone up more than salary hikes, which means spending power is gradually disappearing. January 1st is when that is most noticeable. Automatically, tolls on the major highway everyone has to use at some point go up, this year three percent to offset the cost of adding more lanes on the Ponte de Rande at the entrance to Vigo from the north, and around the city of Santiago. Butane gas, which most people use to cook, has gone up. Electricity has gone up. Phones, internet, and pay television have gone up. Just about every basic service is going up this month. And the salaries have to be stretched out even further every month. Electricity alone went up more than ten percent last year, with a mouth-drying 4.6 percent just last month, when everyone put up their Christmas lights.
Meanwhile, the minimum salary went up to 734 euros a month. But that is just a little less than many make, and is largely eaten up by payments of one kind or another. Some people don't even make that much. There are jobs that call workers in to work by days, or even hours. A job might call someone in to work eight hours one day, then have the person waiting at home to be called in five days later to work three hours, etc. That person will earn less than the minimum salary. And it is perfectly legal. The person statistically counts as being employed at so many euros an hour. Based on an eight hour day, that person would probably be making more than minimum wage, but in reality is making much less. Also, that person signs a contract every time they are called in to work, which means that each signing of a contract statistically counts as a person being given an employment. So, when the government says so many people started working each month, it's not a true number, because some of those people are just one person.
The disappearance of people from the unemployment list can also be ascribed to people emigrating and thereby being taken off the list. This past year, with numbers broken down, two people a day went abroad to work just from this area of ten towns that make up the county of Barbanza. They left because there was nothing here to allow them to live a dignified financial life.
The recuperation of the economy, much touted by President Rajoy and his neo liberal cronies in the government, is true only for the large companies that have begun to create more profits for themselves. These people are firm believers in trickle-down. If companies grow, they supposedly hire more people. But it doesn't always follow. It's true that when profits go down, the first thing most do is cut easy costs, such as jobs. But when profits go up, the first thing they do not do is hire people. If anything, they will invest a portion of those profits in making sure they don't need to hire any more by installing robotics or by opening an auxiliary company in a third world country, which cost would be much less than re-hiring the people they had laid off when the crisis began. Yes, there are some people that are spending more, and have more confidence in the economy, but they tend to be the people who didn't lose their job and now know they won't, or people who have specialized knowledge and have found a new, secure job they know they won't lose soon. The rest of mortality is still stuck under the cart wheel, and they have no idea just when they can leave the mud they're buried in.
It's a new year on the calendar, but too many people still face the same bleak reality as last year.
For other things, it is a new start. My husband went back to work today, his broken rib healed, though the nerve endings still jangle and he sometimes needs a painkiller. It's also a new start for price hikes of all kinds. Except salaries. Those only go up a tiny percentage point, such as old-age pensions, which have only gone up .25 percent. A quarter of one percent, which means the lowest pensions might only go up little more than a euro a month. Then there are the salaries that haven't gone up in years, such as my husband's, which has been frozen for I forget how long. Like him, many, if they haven't been cut in these past years of crisis.
Inflation has gone up more than salary hikes, which means spending power is gradually disappearing. January 1st is when that is most noticeable. Automatically, tolls on the major highway everyone has to use at some point go up, this year three percent to offset the cost of adding more lanes on the Ponte de Rande at the entrance to Vigo from the north, and around the city of Santiago. Butane gas, which most people use to cook, has gone up. Electricity has gone up. Phones, internet, and pay television have gone up. Just about every basic service is going up this month. And the salaries have to be stretched out even further every month. Electricity alone went up more than ten percent last year, with a mouth-drying 4.6 percent just last month, when everyone put up their Christmas lights.
Meanwhile, the minimum salary went up to 734 euros a month. But that is just a little less than many make, and is largely eaten up by payments of one kind or another. Some people don't even make that much. There are jobs that call workers in to work by days, or even hours. A job might call someone in to work eight hours one day, then have the person waiting at home to be called in five days later to work three hours, etc. That person will earn less than the minimum salary. And it is perfectly legal. The person statistically counts as being employed at so many euros an hour. Based on an eight hour day, that person would probably be making more than minimum wage, but in reality is making much less. Also, that person signs a contract every time they are called in to work, which means that each signing of a contract statistically counts as a person being given an employment. So, when the government says so many people started working each month, it's not a true number, because some of those people are just one person.
The disappearance of people from the unemployment list can also be ascribed to people emigrating and thereby being taken off the list. This past year, with numbers broken down, two people a day went abroad to work just from this area of ten towns that make up the county of Barbanza. They left because there was nothing here to allow them to live a dignified financial life.
The recuperation of the economy, much touted by President Rajoy and his neo liberal cronies in the government, is true only for the large companies that have begun to create more profits for themselves. These people are firm believers in trickle-down. If companies grow, they supposedly hire more people. But it doesn't always follow. It's true that when profits go down, the first thing most do is cut easy costs, such as jobs. But when profits go up, the first thing they do not do is hire people. If anything, they will invest a portion of those profits in making sure they don't need to hire any more by installing robotics or by opening an auxiliary company in a third world country, which cost would be much less than re-hiring the people they had laid off when the crisis began. Yes, there are some people that are spending more, and have more confidence in the economy, but they tend to be the people who didn't lose their job and now know they won't, or people who have specialized knowledge and have found a new, secure job they know they won't lose soon. The rest of mortality is still stuck under the cart wheel, and they have no idea just when they can leave the mud they're buried in.
It's a new year on the calendar, but too many people still face the same bleak reality as last year.
Comments
Post a Comment