Today begins the routine annual maintenance work on the two lines of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Experts expect that Russia will not turn the pipelines on again after the 21st July and that Germany will have empty gas storage tanks in the winter. Together with expected gas shortage, particularly high energy prices in Germany, supply chain problems, inflation, rising grain prices due to drought and war, rising rent prices and the insistence on compliance with the debt brake in 2023 feels like sitting under the sword of Damocles waiting to be strucked. It also seems to me that at some point, people simply become apathetic and don’t feel like dealing with something like that anymore. You simply can’t expect people to just go into panic mode all the time.

I don’t know how much of this is just more and more doomsaying and fear mongering but it is clear for me that the inflation and price hikes will result in poverty for many people1.

  1. According to the IMK, low-income families bear the highest inflation burden, while single households with high-income bear the lowest. At the same time, the situation worsens particularly badly for the poor, as they spend larger portions of their budgets on energy and food. ↩︎