As capitalism tightens its grips on working class communities, families are feeling the pinch further in a range of areas, one being the rising cost of basic necessity and food provision.
This week the Department for the Economy in the six counties published their latest Economic Commentary. Stark reading reported on the rising cost of breakfast with basic essentials such as milk rising as much as 18.6% in the last year.
There have been further spikes in cereal, bread, butter, eggs and many more basic food provisions.
As has become the norm at the moment, this is being attributed to the ‘cost of living crisis’. The rising cost of living refers to a decline in peoples real disposable incomes. Real disposable incomes are incomes minus inflation and after taxes and benefits. In real terms, less money in your pocket, less food on your table and bigger profits in the pockets of the rich. This is capitalism.
Now is the time to build a resistance to capitalism. We need to build alternatives to the failed economic system that allows people to go hungry. We need to move away from reliance on food banks to a community based approach based on solidarity and empowerment such as the establishment of breakfast clubs, social supermarkets, co-operative allotments etc. and begin to lay the foundations for a system that puts the welfare of individuals and community over that of profit.
Like many of our essential resources that are exploited for profit, there is a plentiful food supply in Ireland that nobody should go hungry for the greed of the rich.
