Have you noticed how fast money disappears?
I know, I’m not discovering the Galapagos Islands, but what can I do? I looked in my pocket and found a note saying “out of stock.” Shouldn’t I mention it?
Money runs out quickly, and we don’t get paid more often. Let’s be real, it wouldn’t be a problem if salaries ended quickly, as long as we got paid every ten days instead of once a month.
That would be great. Let olive oil cost 17 euros per kilo, and we’ll use it drop by drop like essential oil. Let electricity prices jump around like cryptocurrency from 2017 — one day worth 22 cents and the next 22% of Ghana’s GDP. It wouldn’t matter if my salary came on the first of the month and a new one came tomorrow. Hello, salary.
But all this only works in a dream world where we get paid to live, not just to survive. For now, we get our salary once a month, and it runs out faster than a premature… wireless operator, as Arkas’ sparrow used to say.
Even though this sounds funny, it shows a society trying to balance “want” and “can.” And the gap between them keeps growing.
What makes things even stranger is the constant price hikes — especially when they come with promotional offers.
That’s when you feel like cursing under your breath. “Oh, forget it!”
We all have products we find interesting or use often, and we track their prices without realizing it.
I see an ad — totally random product: “Offer on such-and-such carpet cleaners: until the end of the month with a 35% discount, now only 4.60.” And I try to do the impossible math to find the original price without the discount. Not so much to learn the price but because a year and a half ago, the same product cost 4.40 without any discount.
So now, with the generous 35% offer, it costs more than it did without an offer 18 months ago. Wonderful? Splendid.
Or you see a specific car model — not a new version or even facelifted. The exact same one that was newly released two years ago. And what the fully equipped version cost then is now what the basic version costs. And you think: was I foolish not to buy it then? Will I be foolish if I buy it now? Or maybe I’ll always be foolish no matter when I buy it?
And so we live in a world where prices rise like they’re racing up a Tour de France climb while salaries stay stuck at ground level. Maybe the greatest miracle of our time isn’t artificial intelligence but how we manage to make it to the first of each month. If that’s not considered a superpower, dear reader, then truly, I don’t know what is.
At the end of the day, maybe all we can do is keep our cool, our humor, and — ideally — a box of pasta in the cupboard for any situation.
Papa – Ratses
