Living in Iceland: Lesson #1: Bending over like a good Icelander...

Went to the grocery store on the way home from work today.

Got reamed.

Fucked like a boyscout in Attica.

And like a good Icelander, I just took it.

I mean, protesting, lodging a complaint, criticising, it really just væla.
Whining that is.

So the government finally decides, after topping the list for highest food prices in the world for a couple of years, to rescind Iceland's "temporary" taxes imposed in the midst of the early-80's inflation and thereby lower the astrononical price of filling your belly by a supposed 7-17%.
So what do the stores do?
You guessed it.
They start raising the prices on everything that would have gotten a bit cheaper, so that when the taxes are repealed in March, they can lower their prices back to what they were a few weeks ago, and pocket the 17%.
And no one says anything.
No one does anything.
'Cause its Iceland and nobody likes a whiner.

I could go on and on. The oil companies that price-fixed the general public out a millions, and when finally found guilty raised their prices to pay the minuscule fine. Baugur, the company that owns most of the Icelandic retail food companies (not to mention newspapers, TV and radio stations, import businesses and one of two Icelandic shipping companies) has a near monopoly on food sales here, but when they are faced with charges of tax fraud, bribery attempts, and general bad-business practices, the public rises to their defense.

Because they helped break up the old monopoly. Decades ago.

Icelanders might complain, they might get pissy with the people working the check-out, but do anything about it? Sue? Protest? Demand action?
Why bother?
We're all too busy working one of the longest work weeks in the Western World to pay for our fucking Cheerios.

I mean, fucks sake, two cans of tuna just cost me 290ISK. That's $4.25. And this is the "off brand".
I mean, I bought a half liter of soda, a half liter of "lite" beer (meaning most of the alcohol is removed) bread, rye-bread, a small thing of Icelandic blue cheese, a chunk of the closest thing you can get to cheddar here, the aforementioned two cans of tuna, a small jar of pickles, an even smaller jar of jalapenos, and two small onions, plus the bag (which you have to pay for over here) and it cost me 2429ISK, or $35 god damned dollars!


And don't even get me started on the whole "buy local" thing. For reasons no one has ever been able to explain to me, Icelandic cod costs less in the UK than in Rvk.

All the útrás that Icelanders are so proud off, buying up companies all over Europe? Paid for by the Icelandic public. The price-gouged, over-worked, in-debt-up-to-their-eyeballs Icelandic public. ...or, in prison terms: Bitches.

Grr! Argh! Bleh! and other onomatopoeic forms of disgust!

Capitalism sucks. But unbridled capitalism, when the capitalists own things that you need to stay alive like food, sucks like a $2 whore at a sailors convention.

Speaking of whores...the next lesson is all about that den of iniquity known as Alþingi.