In what language should we warn to be heard?
Mohammad Fazli – member of the Faculty of Shahid Beheshti University
I had called the protests of January 2016 “The Movement of the Lost Things”. One of the tasks of politics and economy in Iran is to produce lost things, that is, it constantly increases the number of people who feel something valuable in their lives – their property, their youth, their talent, their future, their children, etc. – they lose
The characteristic of “losing things” of politics and economy that I mentioned in the speech “The Legend of Peel and Pride” is going on with more force and it has become a situation where millions of people are losing the minimum of life. Corona has also become the cause.
Double-digit inflation has plagued this country for nearly five decades. Inflation in previous years and this year with more intensity is deepening the valley of inequality and blowing away the least hopes of the so-called losers.
Rising inflation, astronomical stock market gains, skyrocketing car prices, and skyrocketing home values make owning any number of assets unattainable dreams for some segments of the population.
Nearly twenty years ago, Peugeot 206 was a middle-class car, even for students. I remember when my wife and I entered the married dormitory of Tarbiat Modares University for the first time, we were surprised that most of the married students had cars and many had Peugeot 206s. It was a promise that we too can have one day.
Peugeot 206 has now reached 170 million tomans and the house I bought at the end of my student days with 17 million savings has become 500 to 700 million. Which married doctoral student is able to provide such an amount under normal conditions and his work?
The outcome of this situation is quite clear. Those who have savings, cars, houses, land, coins, and other assets are outdistanced from those who don’t by the extraordinary speed of inflation, stock market gains, or skyrocketing car prices.
The losers, who were called in the same situation, are now “inflation laggards” or are quickly falling behind those who earn big profits in the stock market. The valley of inequality deepens, and a broader name spreads its color on the face of creation.
I have previously featured the book The Inequality Payoff: Why Equality Benefits Everyone (here). There is a sentence in that book that is used to analyze this situation: “Human means sensitivity to being despised” (p. 56) and despises the inequality of humans. Inflation fuels inequality and humiliates the losers more than before.
Wilkinson and Pickett, the authors of the book “Inequality Compensation”, believe that governments do not have a lack of policies to reduce inequality, their problem is a lack of political will and determination. (p. 265) The problem now is four decades of lack of political determination to comply with the all-round requirements of reforms and curb the mechanisms that generate inequality and humiliation of Iranian people.
I haven’t studied economics but this much I understand that what is going on is rampant inflation that is making life unaffordable for millions of Iranians and driving the few to inflated asset values.
Systemized corruption blows on the flame of this inequality and its tongues will leave the soul, soul, coherence, order and social stability gray. The feeling of deprivation and relative poverty, along with the absolute poverty of some groups, is not a sign of a pleasant future.
In what other language should we warn to be heard?
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@fazeli_mohammad
This post is written by monese_ghamgosar