The ice cream lady disagrees. The scoop, once one euro, rose by half in price in this Achterhoek village. “So I’ll give you a real fifty-one sphere,” she says, scooping our horns full of grapefruit-sized spheres. Hesitantly, I tackle the beasts. Do we look that shabby? Or does everyone get this perk? And what does this gesture mean in a broader macroeconomic perspective? The ice cream woman is engaged in a reverse kind of contraction-flation, which cancels out the price increase. Higher up in the production and supply chain they probably won’t be happy about this, but I don’t feel very burdened: the ice cream industry association spoke of a “peak season”.
Anyone who is also experiencing a top season: the petrol farmers. The circumstances gave Shell a windfall of 18 billion. It’s a shame that they just left for England, where a ‘windfall tax’ skims off the spoils of war.
Our country wishes everyone their peak season. Households are in massive trouble, while multinationals, supermarkets and energy giants continue to grow. Surrounding countries are trying to do something about this discrepancy, but with us – with the highest gas price in Europe – answer the responsible government members when asked to the House: “A new tax return system must be built for a new tax, which will take at least two years after the implementation has started.”
And who’s to say that the excess profit really comes from energy prices, and doesn’t have a “company-specific cause”? In addition, there is a ‘demarcation problem’.
That’s how it rains arguments. The business climate! The shareholders! Our energy companies are now urging the government to grant income-related subsidies. Chances are it will come. After all, something so absurd is only possible with us: to secure the usurious profits for the coming peak season with tax money. Would its implementation also take two years? Or will this succeed at the speed of a corona law?
Supermarkets. Running their umpteenth top season. Would love to collectively make a collection of basic products cheaper, but unfortunately, the rules don’t allow that.
Everywhere laws and practical objections stand in the way of justice. On an individual level, I think most of us are like that ice cream woman who can’t bear the injustice. They turns a small beautiful revolutionI think, with my giant ice cream under the linden trees in the Dorpsstraat.
You will see such contrarian behavior on a larger scale as long as the government continues to mask its unwillingness behind company-specific demarcation problems. In Great Britain, the Don’t Pay campaign is now on the rise: a hundred thousand Britons are already threatening to stop paying their energy bills this autumn.
In the revolt that is brewing, citizens are resisting their role as defenseless consumer. That revolution will be much bigger, and a lot less beautiful.
Christian Weijts writes a column here every Friday.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 12, 2022