Paying the high price will make you feel good

A few weeks ago we happened to go to a town about 100 km away from where we live. We had a little time to walk around the center and look around, I was as always looking for something to buy. Right now I'm not in the financial position to buy anything, but I've decided I need a new handbag anyway, so we went into a bag and shoe store.
You know that moment when you walk into a store, see something, and say, This is it! I'm buying it. This rarely happens to me personally. But now I saw a bag as soon as I walked in, I liked the color and the pattern and I said to myself, I really like this bag.
Then I looked at its price tag.
Fortunately, as I've told you before, I'm a person who has my own list of "fair commodity prices" and very often, if not always, that list sooner or later turns out to be correct. Sooner or later I find stores, offline or online, that offer the same goods, but at prices that I consider fair, and so whenever I see something that I don't like as a price, I just don't buy it, because it's clear, that there is something wrong. That was the case with this bag as well. I saw the label and brand, made and imported from China, but the price was very high.

I left the store. Then we saw other prices from another store. We didn't even bother going inside because the tags were visible from the street. It was some kind of outlet, if such a concept can exist in Bulgaria at all, and the prices were fabulous/insanely high.

That was the end of the shopping trip in this town.
This made me think, and accordingly start again the eternal discussion with my partner, what kind of life we ​​lead in this country and what kind of people we are.

Bulgaria is a poor country, resp. its inhabitants are poor people. As I told you in the previous post, 65% of working people are working poor. The situation with pensioners, who represent a third of the country's population, is even worse, because their finances in most cases are not really enough for anything.
At the same time, there are cities in the country like the one I'm talking about, where mainly because of one factory in it, where wages are higher, the standard of living in the whole city has risen a lot. These high prices that we saw in stores are not accidental, they are a consequence of higher wages for a part of the population, of course, not the whole.

And of course, when something like this happens - high wages but equally increased prices, things literally go haywire. But that is the way of doing business and life in the country. And there are many examples of this. I was born in a city where the standard of living rose greatly because of an American factory that came to town. Prices in the city have skyrocketed in all stores - groceries, pharmacies, clothes and everything.

Of course, not taking into account the fact that not the entire population of this settlement works in this factory, right? There were still many professions, doctors and teachers and whatnot, with low wages, and these people sometimes traveled to neighboring towns to buy clothes at more normal prices, and although there were no grocery chains like Lidl and Billa's back then, insane amounts of money were given for everyday food purchases.
Then came these chain grocery stores, again with high prices for Bulgaria in general, but no one cares already anyway, especially in these special cities where people are used to somehow cope with the high standards of others.

But there's something else here, and that's actually what I wanted to mention in this post mainly. Something I realized recently about people living in Bulgaria.
I think everyone has already realized that the prices here are higher than normal for Europe and that everyone is benefiting from this fact, not only importers, but manufacturers as well. Although there is no reason for this.
At the same time, although this is known, no one protests, no one objects, no one says anything about this monstrous disproportionality: low wages/pensions-high prices.

On the contrary, people buy, pay bills, pay fees, here and there, when visiting a doctor, the huge prices of drugs in pharmacies, high prices for heating, electricity and water, abnormally high prices for milk and milk products and what not. And if you have to go to the hospital for something - dear mother, I hope I die before I have to go to the hospital.

But people pay. And this payment of high prices borders on or is simply the following thing: I pay these high bills and prices, and so I FEEL HUMAN.
Almost nothing in country life can make a man feel human, anyway. But high prices can! Do you follow my point? When you're poor, paying a high price is a huge achievement, isn't it?

This payment will make you feel proud of yourself, you won't even think about it, you won't want to know the fair price of something, you will have already paid for it and that will be the most important thing.

I always remember and will never forget a Bulgarian family I met in Belgium. They both worked in factories, but they maintained an extremely high standard of living, which had to be seen by others - the expensive Mercedes and branded clothes. "I only wear Gucci and Versace," the woman had told me. "And I go to buy these branded clothes specifically in Luxembourg, where they are the most expensive," she had also told me.
Guess how much the locals loved them since the only conversation they could have was: my shoes cost 400 euros and I bought them in Luxembourg.
Well, it's a specific mentality that can't be understood by outsiders.
Personally, I am also mentally an outsider to this population and this culture is also hard for me to understand. But I take the time to think over these strange things and look for answers.

And here's the answer I came up with myself - high prices help the poor to feel human, to feel alive, maybe also, to feel good. Therefore, prices will never be regulated in this country, because there is no state that does this either.

And I, instead of buying the bag in the store that I liked, bought two bags from an online store for the same price. Because moral principles are important to me. Unlike to the people here.
And I don't feel human when I pay high prices. Quite the opposite.

Thank you for your time! Copyright:	@soulsdetour
	Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you.

Personally, I am a sensitive soul with a strong sense of justice.
Traveling and photography are my greatest passions.
Sounds trivial to you?
No, it's not trivial. Because I still love to travel to not so famous destinations.🗺️
Of course, the current situation does not allow me to do this, but I still find a way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, new places, beauty and art.
Sometimes you can find the most amazing things even in the backyard of your house.😊🧐🧭|