Furthermore we are seeing major euro chemical corps taking preservation measures that may be a signal for a death spiral for the competitiveness of European capital. We also see leaders like Macron pissed that the US is in such a good spot relatively speaking. All of this is only getting harder to watch. The US truly is cannabalizing the west.

    • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      The question is - how are they going to go about resolving this? The current governments may not want to even try, but the people will eventually demand action.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Most probably austerity and hoping people wont revolt. Also combined with usurious loans to subisidize essentials and fuck it, après moi le déluge as is the motto of every capitalist. In Poland it’s surely gonna be like this and people most likely won’t revolt.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Well that’s the rub, there is no plan here. The underlying problem is that Europe lost access to cheap and reliable energy from Russia. Unless that gets fixed there is no way out of the hole Europe dug itself into. And of course resuming dialog with Russia is politically impossible for ruling class.

        I really think we may see genuine revolutions happening in Europe come spring. Once people realize their governments betrayed them and they have nothing left to lose then things will get very ugly. This was a really good discussion about it incidentally.

        • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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          2 years ago

          Well they could also attempt to solve the problem the old fashioned way - by starting a war. Either with Russia or with other countries.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.ml
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            2 years ago

            A war needs an industrial base and energy to run, and Europe is in a short supply of both right now. Meanwhile, I don’t think US is dedicated enough to fully commit to a war with Russia. Once Ukraine burns out, they’re likely to refocus on China.

  • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    And the crucial months are yet to come. November - march are cold months and loads of people get their final energy bill, in some cases several thousands of euro’s.

    Shit is fucked now but with two weeks of twenty degrees Celsius in late October is okay. But it will get colder soon. It’s really bad already but we’re not yet at the bottom.

      • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Hell even non vulnerable people cannot pay 2000-4000 euro’s all of a sudden. And this is just energy.

        Food, gas, rent, everything is getting expensive.

  • JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Remember back in 2003, when the Bush administration made a big stink about France not joining in on the invasion of Iraq? On the grounds that “America defends Europe, Europe needs to return the favor?”

    Guess “defends” always meant “keep as an economic buffer zone in case the US economy shows signs of going belly-up.”

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    2 years ago

    I’m struggling to understand these claims that inflation is ~10%.

    Especially with food. The only thing I can think of for food is that ‘incl. alcohol, tobacco’ is skewing the figures if, say, there has been very little inflation for alcohol and tobacco. (Also why the absolute fuck is tobacco included with food?)

    Restaurant prices have gone up by 10–20%. Greasy takeaways seem quite stable, tbh.

    But supermarket food. Christ. Weekly food shop has doubled. Or, it would have doubled if I had not simply replaced items that became far too expensive.

    4 pints of milk went up 60%. The price of one pint almost doubled. A loaf of bread is more or less the same price. Unless you buy the supermarket’s own bread, which has more or less doubled.

    As for the rest… fuel went up ~60%+ since before the pandemic. Energy bills… I won’t even try to work out those as percentage increases.

    • CountryBreakfast@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      2 years ago

      Could be a lot of things. Opportunistic price gouging being a big one. Another is that this is for all of Europe and likely won’t be an accurate representation on any one place in Europe. And of course, the source of this information is the bourgeoisie press so it’s not out of the question that it is being downplayed somehow.

  • holdengreen@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Assuming this is true of u.s. too I am taking some measures to de-liquidate.

    From my twitter:

    aliexpress is overwhelming… particularly looking at raw components

    looking at solar cell 's specifically. these things are so much cheaper than buying a ready made panel, presumably more versatile

    yay I got a few of these:

    https://a.aliexpress.com/_mPGnZ6Y

    so next I need a source of good and cheap battery cells

    so I have a junk LGA 1151 mobo from 2015 sitting around from my first PC building experiment… I thought I burnt it out but recently I found it’s still working /w the Pentium and 2x 4GB DDR4 I had originally.

    maybe I can buy a cpu like the E3-1260L V5 ($50 ebay, 45W) or go

    cheaper even. Since I’ve found I can get solar for 31¢ / watt, and cheap extrusions, cheap ATX parts on ebay.

    I could make a half decent monero mining rig for barely any cost ultimately.

    and I plan to buy more aluminum extrusions…