Şenol Onay: 2025-08-03

Cumartesi, Ağustos 09, 2025

Inflation is a hidden tax!

Inflation is a hidden tax, and most economists don't understand it. Let me explain: You have 100 lira in your wallet, and a year later, you can buy 80 lira worth of goods with the same amount. The 20 lira difference goes to the government, the government borrows interest-free, and its real debt decreases because the debt it borrowed in the past has become cheaper to service due to inflation. If salaries paid to civil servants, workers, and retirees don't increase in line with real inflation, the government appears to be saving money. In other words, the masses' loss becomes the government's gain. This is a hidden tax; it empties the public purse. The best antidote to inflation is an interest rate hike. Be careful, it's well below the real interest rate, creating a source of extravagance. In the West, a member of parliament cannot simultaneously receive the salaries of both a working and retired member of parliament. No other country in the world has a parliamentary representative who receives a salary of $9,388, as do members of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. It's a legal scandal that many bureaucrats receive salaries from two, three, five, or even fifteen different sources (the media reports have never denied this). Such a thing is unacceptable in the West; no one can receive more than one. TÜİK (Turkish Statistical Institute) has been concealing its data from the public since April 2022, violating the principle of transparency, and blatantly eroding the salaries of wage earners and retirees. Those waiting for inflation to fall will have to wait longer. Interest rates will soon be cut again, inflation will be exacerbated, and a little money printing will fuel it even further. Because there's no freedom of expression, I can't delve deeper. But what difference does it make? Whatever you write, you can't exceed the other person's perception threshold. Speaking to the heedless is useless! I've written this here to ease my conscience, leaving a document for future generations, because today they're doing this so blatantly.