Seventy grams of lemon, the same amount of salty shortbread, 33 grams of allspice, 33 grams of prunes, one hundred grams of liver pate, one large orange, half of sour cream, a liter of yogurt.
What kind of nonsensical recipe is this? But it is not a recipe, but a minimum consumer basket: that much is available to one person per month.
There are not only prunes and pâté in that basket - the aforementioned imaginary person, part of a three-member household for which the minimum consumer basket is intended - can indulge in two hundred grams of biscuits, 170 grams of hake, 130 grams of beef, one hundred grams of bacon, six grams of pork and nine hundred grams of chicken. All this during one long month.
That unfortunate household of three, which needs to survive on the minimum consumer basket, obviously has its own apartment, because for housing, water, electricity and gas they must spend less than 11.000 dinars per month.
Each person has the right to spend 45 dinars on their education in a month, to spend 140 dinars in a restaurant once a month.
When all this and a little more is added up and underlined, the famous result is obtained: 53.518 dinars for a month, for three people.
We've reached the basket!
What is "glorious" here?
The fact that the government just celebrated reaching the minimum consumer basket. That is, we are told that the minimum wage has overtaken the minimum consumer basket for the first time.
And indeed, we learn from the news from all sides - from the beginning of next year, the minimum wage will be 13,7 percent higher, and will amount to 53.592 dinars.
The attentive reader immediately recognized where the government - otherwise, in a deep conflict with the truth for more than a decade - lied to him this time.
Actually, 53.592 is higher than 53.518, but it is an accident that it will be the minimum in January 2025, and the consumer basket, which we have written about so far, is from May 2024. This is the last data, and the government refers to it, as if until January, the basket will not grow beyond the minimum.
But that's a minor problem, we're used to it.
The bigger problem is that this is just another unsustainable measure. A country where the economy grows by three to four percent annually cannot sustain a permanent increase in either the minimum wage or wages at this level.
Otherwise, there will be a loss of the country's competitiveness, even with our wretched salaries - the government cannot talk about the fact that half of the employees receive less than 650 euros per month.
It is even more crazy if the state - as employers are demanding these days - partially or fully pays for this increase in the minimum wage itself.
Another thing - the minimum wage should not be common. It is applied as a measure when the company runs into problems - it is allowed to reduce workers' wages to the minimum for six months only.
And here, more than a hundred thousand people receive the minimum wage all the time. Even some so-called foreign investors are welcomed with subsidies, in order to give employees a salary barely above the minimum wage.
But better prices!
This great "victory" over the minimum basket, which, as we have seen, is unworthy of a man, was followed by the circus of Aleksandar Vučić and Miloš Vučević in a play called "the best price".
As if the idea of certain items being cheaper for two months was not bizarre enough (by the government's decision, not as a market response to lower demand due to high prices), Vučić praised this action by saying that the price of pate will drop from the lowest of 40 dinars to only 37 dinars.
Vučević, accompanied by the sour smile of Minister Momirović, organized a bizarre display and advertising of "cheap" goods in the government building, as if it were a smuggler's stall in an improvised market.
Both of these "great victories" are actually defeats for the economy. With one hand, the government is fighting against extremely high prices with unsustainable measures, with the other hand, the increase in wages and pensions is extending beyond the gubernatorial system, thus pushing further price increases.
With one hand they put out the fire, with the other they start the fire. And all this while the reference interest rate is even six percent, which further kills the economy and citizens.
