Losing Ground

Over the last few days having to purchase air tickets and book hotels and car hire etc for our trip to Europe it highlighted one thing. I haven't travelled outside of South Africa since 2016 due to all the nonsense of lockdowns etc but that is not he main thing. It is obvious that by being in South Africa far away from Europe we have kind of been left behind even more than before.

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Maybe it was @pele23's post that kind of woke me up to this fact because of the €24 hourly average wage. €1 is the equivalent of R19.87 which €24 per hour is working out to R476.88. The unemployed masses receive R350 monthly via a government grant scheme which in theory would work out to around 45 minutes work.

I South Africa there are huge disparities between wages with a middle class being judged earning a salary between R10 and R20K per month. Some stats say the average SA citizen earns R31K monthly which is simply not true. If you consider we have the official unemployment stat sitting at 32.9% and the unofficial somewhere between 40 ad 50% so how they ca thumb suck the average salary is R31K is so far off the real mark it is plain crazy.

Even if we were generous and said that the average was R20K monthly that would work out to be the same as working one week for €24 per hour (42 hours). This is being very generous and bearing in mind only a few are earning R30-R50K monthly.

This is not so much a huge problem as they say salaries are relevant to the country you live in which is fine unless you need to travel. Europe is expensive, but you do earn more if you work and I would guess your inflation has been in line with what we have experienced here as well. I would judge by what I know is that 75% of the population in South Africa could not afford to travel to Europe and this may be as high as 90%. The top 10 or 20% are in a different league to the rest of the country when it comes to financials and it seems I am fortunate enough to be in that bracket. If I was not then I would be in trouble and stuck here permanently

For the majority of the population they are landlocked because they cannot afford to travel anymore. This was not the case 20 years ago and has been bought on by a poor performing economy which has kept the currency weak along with lower salaries. I see this divide in wealth only increasing which I find very worrying for the future.

Those in Europe can afford to fly the short haul flights so they don't really see how much a log haul flight is these days unless they need to. I just did a quick check knowing what they were before and these have increased 280% since 2016 and unless your salary has early tripled in the last 8 years you are falling behind. Salaries in SA have not doubled in the last 8 years with many being frozen for at least 3 of those years due to lockdowns. The idea is you are just lucky to have a job and there is no need to complain and just be grateful for the employment.

It is not surprising to see so many migrants flocking to Europe and the US because the future looks rather bleak everywhere you look outside of those regions. I knew thigs were bad and expect unemployment to only gat worse and worse over time because of thigs like birth control is not kept in check due to a lack of education.

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