In response to the global economic crisis, nearly two thirds of Hungarians have economised on electricity and gas consumption over the past year, the latest survey of the market research company Nielsen showed.
The company conducted an online survey, asking some 26,000 consumers in 50 countries about how their spending pattern has changed over the recent period.
In Hungary the second major item of cost saving was clothing and the third one food. About half of the respondents said that they had postponed the replacement of their telecommunication equipment.
Twenty-two percent of Hungarians have no discretionary income available for purposes other than housing and living. This ratio compares to a global average of 13 percent and a European average of 18 percent.
Fifty six percent of Hungarian respondents said that they would economise on energy even after the economic situation has improved.
Putting VAT up to 25% will help ……. not !
Raising taxes is always a jolly good idea. People who don’t pay any taxes will not-pay even more. Push the economy – or what’s left of it – further into the twilight zone. Of course the good folks who come up with these ideas will be fine. They have their stolen fortunes safely stashed away in offshore accounts, no worries there. Hungarians are sheep, they’ll take it, no matter how badly they get screwed. And soon it will be illegal to say “baaa”.
Man, whatever happened to once mighty Europe? Under the yolk of the EU, 18% of Europeans are vegetating at subsistence leve? Yet on a global average including places such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this same no-hope segment comprises only 13% of the world’s people? So, Europeans are worse off than the world’s average?
Wow!!! I guess if you want a highher living standard than what is attainable in today’s Europe, you gotta emigrate overseas, right? Yeah, thus must be it. But of course — that happened a few times in our glorious EU history before…