radon1 wrote:AgentR11 wrote:The middle class guy with no significant real assets or liabilities, can get dinged pretty hard by inflation if his wage doesn't rise along with it; but if wages aren't rising, inflation won't hold.
Shall we tell this to Ukrainians?
Ukrainians honestly don't have inflation.
What they have is a termination of subsidies which presents the appearance of consumer inflation.
It is not inflation, it is simply a change of who is paying the market price.
PreMaidan
UA Bob went to the store, paid 5 copper for his bread, and behind the scenes the state forked in another 20 copper that went to energy, grain subsidies, fuel subsidies, corruption subsidies, oligarch subsidies, friend of oligarch subsidies, etc.
PostMaidan
Now UA Bob is paying most of the cost of that bread, but unfortunately his government is still forking out those corruption subsidies, destroying Ukraine's future in order to pad the checking accounts of a special few.
UA with a functioning Donbass, and capture of Crimea would have been worth this cost to the EU/NATO; heck, telling the French and English public they could freely sail in and out of Sevastopol in recreational/personal yachts; would have been enough to assure plenty of funds for Ukraine/Kiev and probably, eventually overwhelm that oligarch subsidy thing. Without those assets.. Kiev is a black hole of cheap labor and corruption, at a time Europe is absorbing millions of cheap, migrant labor from MENA.