Devalued Time

It's not the bread. It's not the house. It's your time being reduced.
They rob you without touching you. They applaud you while they deduct the cost.

Inflation isn't a metaphysical mystery. It's a perpetual discount applied to your cost of living. If the price of ham goes up and your paycheck doesn't keep pace, the problem isn't the ham. It's the price they're paying for your time. The annoying thing is this: they haven't made life more expensive. They've made you cheaper.

Those who hold fixed-rate assets and debt learn the choreography. Buy once. Don't sell. Use collateral. Extract liquidity. Let time and inflation erode the liability. Pay with tomorrow's euros. The salaried worker operates on the opposite wheel. They are paid now and buy futures every day. Every purchase is a taxed transaction. Every month is an uphill battle. Nominal capital gains are taxed. Real inflation doesn't compensate. Official accounting softens the blow. The net result stings.

There's a trick to the measurement. Quality is adjusted. Sizes are shrunk. The lifespan of goods is shortened. The index smiles while the refrigerator dies two years earlier. The t-shirt weighs less. The phone lasts less time. Your mental bill says you're saving. Your replacement costs say otherwise. Wages seem stable. The decent basket of goods is moving further away. That's the ugly angle no one wants to face head-on.

The convenient narrative claims that inflation is useful for growth. This is only partly true. It loosens rigidities. It prevents the debt trap of deflation. But this benefit isn't neutral. It depends on which side of the counter you're on. If you produce with a margin and have good financing, the fog pushes you along. If you sell time with a rigid contract, the fog swallows you up. Deflation kills businesses and jobs. Slow inflation kills expectations. Choosing poison isn't a victory. It's damage management. Meanwhile, someone I know changed jobs three times in six years. Their real income never increased. They just changed bosses. The poison tasted different, but it was the same.

I've seen states ask for patience while they fine-tune the index. I've seen salaries rise by two percent while the cost of living increased by eight. A reader showed me his figures. Rent in a typical neighborhood went from 780 to 1190 in five years. Salary went from 1420 to 1625 in the same period. Add bank fees, energy, insurance. Subtract the margin needed to live comfortably. The spreadsheet doesn't scream. But it bites.

There's an even worse bias: the emotional education of the salaried worker. They were promised that their salary would increase with seniority. They were told that patience and loyalty would pay off. Reality responds with mandatory mobility. Those who jump get promoted, not those who wait. The same company that congratulates you at Christmas sends you back to the job market in June. No hard feelings. Just accounting.

The system doesn't conspire like James Bond. It operates through incentives. It's in the best interest of governments to erode debt in real terms. It's in the best interest of the wealthy elite to avoid selling and live off their well-secured leverage. It's in the best interest of most people to believe their purchasing power is a straight line. Belief is cheap. Correction is costly.

Three statements to keep you up at night. Your salary is a price, not an identity. Inflation doesn't go up; it goes down. Idle savings are a tribute to oblivion.

There's a psychological blind spot. Let's call it nominal anesthesia. Seeing 2,000 in the monthly transfer is calming. It doesn't matter if 2,000 buys less than 1,700 did ten years ago. The brain celebrates the big number. Life pays for the difference. It's moral accounting. It's socially acceptable self-deception. And it's profitable for those who make the rules.

Don't ask an index to save you. Ask your timesheets to insult you. How many hours of your work are needed for a decent rent today? How many hours are needed for a quality meal that won't make you sick? How many hours are needed for the inevitable repair because the device is dying prematurely? There's no ideology in that arithmetic. There's survival.

The narrative that inflation only enriches the rich is crude, but it captures the essence of the matter. It doesn't enrich. It benefits. It benefits those who convert past time into future rights. It benefits those who can wait. It benefits those who know how to take on debt wisely and legally. It impoverishes those who must sell their time immediately. It impoverishes those who confuse a paycheck with a plan. It impoverishes those who pay taxes based on nominal smoke and mirrors.

There's no heroic moral here. There are cold, hard rules that apply to your personal life. Relationships that break down because of insufficient money. Health decisions postponed until they hurt. Time given away to jobs that no longer pay the emotional rent. Inflation is the background noise. You choose the movie.

If everything seems more expensive, look back at the uncomfortable mirror. Maybe it's not the restaurant. Maybe it's not the real estate agency. Maybe it's not the supermarket. Maybe it's you, as a market price, detached from real inflation. It hurts to write it. It hurts even more to live it.

The elite isn't some mystical club. It's a simple habit: delaying sales, negotiating debt with an advantage, converting revenue into assets before the index eats you alive. Don't call it merit. Call it reading the game correctly.

You'll ask me for solutions, and I'll give you diagnoses. Monitor your ratio of hours per home. Monitor your ratio of hours per healthy meal. Monitor your dependence on short-lived suppliers. If those three lines are curving against you, no political discourse will compensate you. No slogan will defend you. You need to change your mindset. Or accept that your equation no longer adds up.

Sometimes we say things were better before. In some ways, they were. There was less sophisticated, calculated deception. Wages were negotiated with unions that had real power. Appliances were built like tanks. But there was also less access to markets and less room to step out of line. Nostalgia is deceiving. It makes you believe that what was lost was fair. It wasn't.

I'll go back to the beginning. It's not about bread. It's not about housing. It's about your devalued time. The rest is just supporting rhetoric. The question isn't who profits from inflation. The question is something else entirely. How much longer are you going to let others dictate your value?