The last fighter against inflation
We have long had the last fight against inflation in our newspaper house. Pandemic, a war in Ukraine, an increase in energy, the customs war, the unbridled printing of central bank money … Nothing threw it off the track. Most of the time he was quiet, only here and there he murmured a little before spitting out the chocolate, coffee or flavored water. A can of a carbonated drink, which you do not get for less than seventy euro cents in the store, claimed fifty of them. It offered candy, which costs the euro of twenty, with a permanent 25 % discount. Prices for espresses, macchiatov, Latte and other coffee genres of a relatively reputable coffee supplier ranged between 40 and 55 centers. This was the case in 2017, when I, as a student for the first time, crossed the work threshold, and so it was until this winter, when the last fighter against inflation fell under the shot of a manager who raised prices.
For a generation born in the mid -1990s, inflation has long been a very abstract notion. In 2005, when the euros gradually began to replace the tolars, we were too young to feel more seriously rising prices. The tales of pizzas that cost six hundred tolars and ice creams that cost six times less, in my brain sounds like anecdotes that my parents tell about my early childhood: by some logic I had to experience it all, but my memory does not go that far.
For the first time, I became acquainted with the money at least at the end of elementary school, which is in time with the financial and economic crisis that affected the world in 2008. For example, I remember, for example, that in 2010 at the Celje restaurant, where I most often went, coffee with milk cost the euro twenty, and with a special campaign you could buy Rogljic for twenty cents. These amounts are still my starting point today when I get involved in debate about « normal » prices. And precisely because of the claws of the crisis, from which the world and Slovenia could not escape, these prices persisted « abnormally » for a long time or were very slow. They added their student vouchers, who at least blur a little look at the broader picture (so it will not be mistaken, that’s the only right thing to do). In 2017, it seemed to me the most normal that the prices of food, coffee and alcohol have not changed significantly since my first real contact with money.
In 2025, I was already fully agreed that I have to deduct twice the amount for the same service or product than eight years ago, when my student utopia was over. During this period, almost everything (except salaries) exploded: real estate, rent, Bitcoin, Facebook, Google and Tesla’s shares … No surprise is that prices in shops and restaurants have joined this explosion, which is an excellent starting point for the opportunity to impoverish the middle class and to enrich the elite, and at the same time, Against inflation, who has persisted in our media house for so long.
His unwavering will was breathtaking. As a surviving relic of socialism, he resisted the laws of capitalism and the free market, taking the rich and giving the poor. It must be acknowledged that he did not offer all the essential necessities of life, but after all, it was just a food and drink machine. Its role was, above all, symbolic in nature: in the unbridled changing world, there was a reminder that some values were eternal. He reminded us of the past, which, when looking at the rearview mirror, always seems simpler and less defiled than the present. When I recently approached him and saw that after a new can of a carbonated drink for seventy cents, I couldn’t say anything other than: the last fighter against inflation, rest in peace!
