What Will My Children Say to Me?

The twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has recently served as an occasion for compiling profit and loss accounts, cost-benefit analyses, and conducting surveys among the people. When was it better for whom and why? In newspaper articles and comments, those waving numerical data about inflation and average wages then and now, cheering for capitalism, are equally represented as those who nostalgically look back at the past.

Thus, even after drawing the line, it is unclear who is right for the generation that was not even planned at that time – capitalists, communists, nostalgics, historians, politicians, or someone else entirely. It didn’t take me long to remember what I was doing when the Berlin Wall fell. I was joining the pioneers. The last generation, they say. And no, I didn’t remember it because our educator and principal explained the importance of that event to us. The ceremony involved new (shiny!) shoes and a hot dog for lunch.  Hey, a hot dog and new shoes on the same day! Who could forget that?

So, if I think about it, I was definitely better off then. Today, a hot dog and new shoes can no longer make me happy. At least not enough for me to remember it twenty years later.  Which on the other hand means that today I have more – a greater choice, more is available to me, consumer possibilities are greater, so it is better for me. Or?

What troubles me is how much more we actually have, or how real our ‘prosperity’ is. At today’s prices, the debt that remained to be repaid by the young generations at the beginning of the 1990s amounted to 10 billion dollars. Today we are talking about 60 billion dollars of external debt.

And definitely, better cars are being driven, people are spending more on clothing, traveling, skiing, swimming, etc., but in most cases, not because people are earning more, but because there is that wonderful banking service – loans. It is therefore questionable how much better we are actually living, and how much of it is an illusion that will come due. Namely, experts ‘threaten’ that the debt will reach 100 percent of GDP next year, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain loans (again). And if we are today ‘angry’ at our parents for leaving us such external debt, what will my children say to me?