What do we want for Christmas? A chocolate bar to who needs it the most maybe
I was racing through the supermarket the other day trying to get my Christmas shopping out of the way. I would have been finished in record time had I not been held up at the checkout line because the bozo ahead of me decided to return something. I began to sigh loudly and roll my eyes until I realised that the bozo in question was a young mother obliged to return a pack of chocolate chip cookies she tried to purchase with her limited shopping budget.& E) b+ r8 V' R% y \; B# h
- t& B, J. @% [! S5 rI tried not to catch her eye while the cashier recalculated her purchases without the cookies. (Her little boy didn't look too happy.) She was still RMB 21.50 short on her pre-planned 2 red 100-Yuan notes but there didn't seem to be anything else she could spare. She dug into her pocket and managed to put together the required sum with 1-Yuan greenish tickets and coins. She smiled at me red-faced as her bags were packed. But I was the one who was more embarrassed.
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I had been held up in a similar fashion a few days before in the same supermarket. On that occasion, the perpetrator had to return a bottle of orangeade. Her children were not too happy about it either.
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2 s p3 g4 E& i6 MI can't help thinking about what sort of Christmas these women and their families are going to have if a packet of chocolate chip cookies and a bottle of orangeade are beyond their reach.
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4 L1 Z4 k' V% o3 ^$ H, TI told a friend that I may end myself up in situations like such next year if I can't work my way out of my own financial quagmire. He was highly amused and said he hoped they had a second tier of unemployment benefit for people who enjoy champagne and caviar.
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It turns out you cannot buy champagne on welfare money, or any kind of alcohol for that matter. You can buy orangeade and chocolate chip cookies, though, and if you are really frugal and save up your unemployment money for many weeks, you might even be able to afford caviar.
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You can buy any kind of food as long as it's not prepared like restaurant food or heated. The snag is that with an average benefit allowance of RMB700 per person per month, you can't really buy much of anything.* O" N* V2 I/ v9 w8 s6 E
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I hope I never end up on such governmental payment. If I were obliged to reduce my appetite to accommodate a budget of RMB180 a week, I would definitely be in need of something stronger than orangeade to take my mind off the situation.1 ?$ ^+ a$ y# }9 A
/ D; M$ D4 s! S( \4 |; EBack in July 2003, just before he took office, Mr. Wen Jiabao described his base as "the haves and the have mores." Now the situation turned out to be on all those people who used to have just about enough, and who now, eight years later, have next to nothing.! l( k% y7 n9 |5 _. \% U) Q" B5 C
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According to government data, as of September, 91.5 million Chinese workforce were registered for unemployment benefit, up 17% from the previous year. That's 10% of the US population. These are staggering figures.9 j, ^2 J6 k1 v4 z Y
8 C% h& } s' E8 \6 \) g% b/ vThey bring to mind another staggering figure I recently came across that I have been unable to remove from my subconscious. It is RMB66,787,000 – the salary that Ma Mingzhe, now Chair of China Insurance Association, took home in 2007 for his services as CEO of Pingan Insurance.4 ~5 Y: C& M" E
3 M, F# b5 H) U. Q7 months later, Pingan required a massive bail-out from taxpayers. Many of these taxpayers may soon be plunged into unemployment benefit payroll., a E' Z: }- J
# a- E3 J$ ~: `When Ma sits down to his sumptuous Christmas feast, paid for with some of the spoils from that 8-figure salary, I hope he will he spare a thought for the 8% of Chinese who have barely enough to eat., L& ]" J0 w- N* R8 j$ R
; |* R" u# {: Y0 N8 cI'm sure that if he ever witnessed first hand the humiliation of a person unable to pay for their food at a supermarket checkout, he would feel compelled to redistribute his millions among the 91.5 million benefit recipients.$ D$ d+ f5 Q. \8 N: f+ p
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Maybe then they could afford a decent Christmas dinner next year.
