Comments by "joe k" (@joek600) on "Why Western brands are still found in Russian supermarkets despite sanctions?" video.

Im Greek. I wanted to do a comparison of prices between your supermarkets (a country in war and under sanctions) with mine (a country in the Eurozone and a member of the different versions of EU since 1980). I understand that your supermarket was a rather posh one, so I will compare with one of our normal local chains, not discount supermarkets like Lidl etc. I wish you could be more detailed in your shopping list at the end, referencing weights and possibly the status of each brand in the market (cheap, regular, expensive, crazy expensive). I tried to do my best to match your list, where it was not possible i noted the alternative product or quantity available here. Ι used regular brands not private label ones. Fresh Milk 1lt = 1.71 eggs (six regular) = 1.86 Lentils 500gr = 1,63 (Backwheat is kinda exotic here so I replaced it with something as common in the Greek market. FYI 500gr of Backwheat is 2.46) Minced chicken 1k =6.90 Cheese (feta) 450gr= 6.00 Coca Cola 1.5lt= 1.77 Yogurt (3x cups of 200gr)= 3,72 Butter 250gr= 3,18 Tomatoes 1k= 1,60 cucumbers 1k= 0,64 Apples 1k = 2.00 Potatoes 1k = 0,88 Bread (one loaf)= 1.20 Chocolate bar 100gr = 1,58 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Up to this point we are at 34,67 euros. Lets add your fancy smansy ice cream and pelmeni -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ice Cream 650gr = 13,34 Ravioli 250 gr = 4,55 (Pelmeni do not exist in Greece and Im quite sure that your packs are much much bigger, so I replaced them with ravioli) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grand total = 52,56 euros Im curious to see the total in other EU countries.
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@RealReporter I didnt expect such a fast response, thanks man! Your work really makes a difference, I want you to know that. If I can be of any use, providing info. I would be happy to help, although Im not sure if I would go on camera. Im kinda of a double special case. Being Greek with all the financial complexities of the last 15 years that go along with it and having spent time in Eastern Ukraine (in a small Lugansk oblast town) due to a romantic relation in the ealy 00's. In fact Im still in regular contact with my ex and every time she is bombarded by the Kiev government, Im trying to cheer her up by sending links with our super market prices and receipts from the gas station lol.
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@sduchnowski First of all you have to understand that I’m not some kind of therapist for your anti-Russian butthurt. Ok the Soviets ate your grand father’s lunch 100 years ago. I personally give zero Fs about your grudge and in turn you give zero Fs about mine against Turkey. I’m more interested in what’s going on today and how it’s affecting my life. I will try once again and maybe this time you will manage to get it in your thick skull. The average salary which yes is commonly used as a metric is nothing but an illusion the same way that growth statistics are. But the real people, not the numbers live in a completely different reality. The average income combines all the income of the citizens, divide by their number and produces a number that has absolutely no relation to the reality. On top of that Income by itself is not an indicator of living standards if you do not calculate the general cost of living. How much is the cost of housing, utilities, rents, fuel etc. You can have an income of 5000 and pay 4500 for essential living costs, where does that leave you? There are major financial discrepancies even between the EU countries. The initial goal was that through investments and financial support EU will reach a point where those differences would be almost eradicated. Then neo-liberals happened, and decided to extend EU including countries that were not ready at least for the next 30 years, only to be a cheap labor force and cheap (mostly sex) tourism destinations plus low tax havens for businesses. That doesn’t change the fact that living standards are relative and that the most important thing is the essential every day needs. Do you buy cars or electronic appliances every day? No. Do you buy groceries, fuel and pay utilities? Yes.
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@sduchnowski I didn’t compare prices between Russia and UK my razor sharp minded friend. I directly compared Greek market prices with the Russian ones. Actually I called for people to add their local prices, maybe you should move your lazy butt abit and do it, it only takes a few minutes. I will say again that there is no such thing as an average salary. This is a statistical illusion. Adding together the income of the upper and upper middle class and that of the working class provides an average of absolutely no practical use. By that standards the average in Greece is 2500 euros. Yeah good luck getting that kind of money buddy, not as a lower end worker but even as a skilled experienced employee. The true average, meaning the money that the majority of the people receive and it’s most likely for you to get if you seek a job ranges from 800 to 1200 euros. The fact that a shipowner like Latsis has billions and can spend hundreds of thousands in every supermarket trip, doesn’t change that the AVERAGE citizen counts his money three times before getting to the cashier. And as I said before it’s all about buying power. People can accept not being able to buy posh brands or things if their basic needs are met.
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@sduchnowski The comparison still stands regardless, if you keep in mind that there are huge wage discrepancies between the EU countries. And I’m not even including the third gear ones that should not be in the EU at all, but were included prematurely for pure political reasons and the expansion mainly of the German market. The 2008 financial crisis only increased those gaps. You must not look only at the ‘’average’’ salary, btw all those average salaries stated on the internet are just a big statistical illusion that create a false image. What’s important is the buying power and especially in essential goods and services.
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@Психолог_АлександрСосновцев He simply doesnt want to understand, obviously because of anti-Russian obsession, that actual living standards and buying power are relative. He should be able to get it, since he is probably Polish LARPing british. For example Im renting a 120 square meters appartment that I own to a family, for 400 euro per month. This is the average price where I live in a suburb of Piraeus. The school is one block away, the open market every Monday one street away. The central street with all the shops 3 blocks away. This appartment in Germany in a suburb of a big city would probably cost a couple of thousands to rent.
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@antzacalie It wasn’t always like that. I’m part of the generation that grew up having everything and slowly watched the world crumbling around us. Everything points back to the time when Greece entered the eurozone. What was presented as a blessing was really our undone. The first wave of price increases came in 98 when drachma was devalued in order to lock the relation with euro. I remember as an art school student the illustration Pantone markers I was using, cost 800 drachmas on Friday and 1300 on Monday. But people quickly got over that because the private sector and personal debt was extremely low. Then in 2001 came the Euro. During the transition let’s say that many prices were ‘’lost in the translation’’. That could be solved if the then government did not allow for the annual price rising to happen, as it already happened with the pretext of the euro transition. They did nothing and the annual price increase launched the prices of all the essentials. From the time the drachma and euro exchange rate was locked, the banks started issuing business and personal loans like there is no tomorrow. They would literally call you and ask if you want 3000 euros loan for vacations or shopping. That caught people completely off guard. You see in Greece up to the late 90’s credit cards and bank loans were almost unknown words. Up to my 20’s I never knew somebody who had a mortgage. Because drachma was a soft currency and the banks were extremely reluctant to issue any kind of loan except if you had concrete evidence that you will be able to repay them. That resulted into an extremely affordable housing market compared to the average western country. And the majority of the people had at least some emergency savings in the bank. Actually it was considered extremely shameful to owe money even to a bank. It was seen as a sign that you mismanaged your finances. Buying home appliances or a car on payments was something that you didn’t want the neighborhood to know. All that were turned on their head and especially during the time of the Athens Olympic Games the illusion that money are falling from the sky was everywhere. When it was my generations time to get married and find a home there was a huge housing bubble that drove the prices like 5x times upwards. Our parents managed to BUILD houses on real estate they owned only with their salaries and some tight financial management for a few years. We realized that unless you get in line and get a huge mortgage for the next 40 years it was virtually impossible to get an apartment in a building complex. All that was brewing when the financial crisis and the punitive treatment we received in order to scare Italy, that was about to bust, came like a wrecking ball. The real average salary in Greece, not the statistical BS, is about 1000 euros now. When I got my first job as a graphic designer back in 2002, my first salary was 1050 euros. I think that’s enough to give you the picture of what happened here.
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@avotia I remember that literally over one week the koulouri (pretzels for the non Greeks) you would buy on the street for 50 drachmas, turned to 50 cents. 50 cents of the euro were 170 drachmas. I remember the ministers playing puppet theatre ‘’patroling’’ the open markets to show for the cameras that they are fighting back against price increases by the ‘’evil’’ middlemen. I also remember that my parents bought in 1997 a plot of land about 700 square meters in a sea side area close to Korinth. I’m not talking about some god forsaken village, but a location IN the city plan with the beach at less than 100 meters away. It cost them 7 million drachmas. That’s 20.500 euros. They built a house of 320 square meters triple floor maisonette without any loan, just savings from my father’s pay checks. It took about 10 years to complete, while living a measured but normal life as a family, the total cost was about 60k excluding personal work that saved around 10k. Right next to us there was another plot with the same size for sale. The guy who bought it took a loan and payed in 2008 120000 euros. Just for the plot of land. Our house today even with the current lower prices would sell for over 400000 euros. That should indicate the tremendous changes in the prices of real estate after our entrance in the eurozone.
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@kobi_pw Personally I absolutely hate feta cheese lol. But it’s a DOP product meaning that only if it is produced in Greece it can be called ‘’Feta’’ (btw feta means ‘’slice’’) in the same way that Cognac is a trademarked product and you can’t call just any Brandy, Cognac. So if it is a feta type white cheese as in this case ok but if it’s actually Feta then that means that it comes from Greece directly or indirectly. That’s why I was curious about the price difference. I was joking with some friends in Lugansk that I could send them olive oil from my fields in exchange for gasoline lol
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@avotia Πλέον είναι οικονομικά αδύνατον όχι μόνο να μεθύσεις σε μαγαζί έξω, αλλά ούτε σπίτι σου με φίλους. Αν το σκεφτείς ένα Τζάκ από σουπερμάρκετ κοστίζει όσο το βασικό μεροκάματο ενός υπαλλήλου γραφείου.
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@avotia Μας έχουν φάει την ζωή κανονικά. Ήμουν 29 όταν ξεκίνησε το πανηγύρι το 2008, τώρα είμαι 44 και ακόμη δεν υπάρχει φως. Χάσαμε τα πιο δημιουργικά μας χρόνια σε μια διαρκή κατάσταση ανάγκης κάθε φορά για καινούριο λόγο. Οι βορειοευρωπαιοι πρώτη φορά τώρα ζορίστηκαν και είναι ακόμα στην φάση ‘’νταξει μωρέ θα περασει’’ όπως κι εμείς στην αρχή. Αν δεν βγει κόσμος στον δρόμο αυτή η ιστορία θα κρατήσει μέχρι τα 60 μας.
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@MrBoxxer95 the 832 is before taxes and healthcare/insurance deductions. Now do you want to compare utility costs?
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Btw i would like to add a little detail that many ''google experts'' in Greekonomics are missing and will also indicate why you cannot argue with somebody with local knowledge when your only tool is wikipedia. There is a certain peculiarity in Greek salaries that at least to my knowledge (please feel free to inform me) does not happen in other countries. The concept of ''Doro'' (gift). In Greece we dont receive 12 monthly wages per year, but 14. On Christmas you receive as ''gift'' from your employer one full extra wage. The term ''gift'' is a euphemism because its legislated and calculated in your taxes. Lets say that you are payed 1000 euros, on 21 of December the employer is obliged by law to give you one more wage, making your salary for December 2000 euros. On Easter you receive extra half of a wage, so according to our example 500+, and on the summer along with your payed vacation time you receive another half of a salary, so according to our example +500 euros. So an employee that receives 1000 euros per month, is actually receiving 14000 annually. I guess this seems wonderful. Not exactly. Because this is a mechanism created to ''patch you up'' financially with a little boost on the periods where most people have the most social and personal expenses AND also have various tax related payments. Its also a nice way to put the working class back to sleep. Now, that money are calculated in your annual income (and offcourse appear in the stats), but you dont have access to them but only on these three specific periods and 9 out of 10 are gone within the next days upon their arrival in your account.
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@Timrath I used the prices from Sklavenitis and Vasilopoulos. If you notice the reportage, he is not going into a discount supermarket but a rather fancy one. Also all the prices come from normal brands not private labels and not special offers. You completely missed the point. PS btw which super market are you referring cause those prices look like something from last year. In all Athens you won’t find Pepsi under 1.20 on offer (normal price is 1,78) and Coca Cola have not been on offer at least for 1,5 year. Before that the two brands used to compete, at some point for some reason Coca Cola just stopped bothering and soon after that Pepsi raised its prices too.
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@kobi_pw Thank you for your effort! if only more people did it instead of running their mouth. I have to ask something. You have access to Greek feta cheese or its just a local white cheese? Cause the price difference is very impressive and interesting.
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@henningbartels6245 Offbrand colas are from 0.80 to 1 euro. Juices have skyrocketed over 2 euros/lt. Generally everything is 30+% more expensive and keeps going.
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@MrBoxxer95 The pocket money of the basic wage in Greece are 667 euros. You dont have to go absurd for 300 euros utilities. Actually thats around the amount most people pay when you add everything up and it can get higher than that. You know, google will only get you that far.... I didnt say anywhere that Russians as a whole live better than Greeks. I simply resisted the notions of butt hurt Polish trolls that somehow the conditions in Russia are generally abysmal while in Europe everybody is dining with silver spoons without taking into account the purchasing power. There are great discrepancies even between EU countries. And I dont even count in those third gear EU countries that are so, only in name.
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@fridest By grocery store I guess you refer to your equivalent of ‘’magazin’’ and not to a supermarket. Anyway I will try to answer for both. Most of the neighbourhood grocery stores are mom and pap businesses and they maybe have up to 3 employees, but most usually one or two plus the owner who is also working. Supermarkets depending on the size can have 50-60 or more employees. In most cases they are all considered unskilled workforce and receive the basic salary, which is around 650 euros, pocket money after all the deductions for pension and healthcare/taxes. Small grocery stores usually they are open in the morning, they close down at midday and open again in the afternoons for about 3 hours. Legally an employee should work for 8 hours but in todays reality, yeah good luck with that. They are also expected to place products, clean the store etc. it is illegal to charge any loses of the store due to negligence or theft to the employee, but one too many and you are out without a job. The supermarkets are open from 8 in the morning till 9 in the evening. The employees used to work in 8 hours shifts before the neo-liberal onslaught. Now there is a small core of 8 hours employees, those are the privileged ones, that have full labour rights. The majority are 4 hour and 6 hours ‘’part time’’ employees. I used quotes because the majority of them are forced to work for 8 hours most of the time without pay but even when they are given overtime pay this is calculated against them by the state ending up in to raised taxation that normally would refer to ‘’extra’’ income but due to the reality of the situation it’s their normal income. I have a friend who worked as a cashier in one of the largest supermarket chains in Greece and when she asked me something about her taxes in the springtime when we are filling our income declarations, I totally freaked out because she was getting less than half of my income but had to pay a lot more taxes without owing any real estate. In the recent past the government changed the law where you were entitled an automatic raise for every grouping of three years term that you have as an employee in a certain field, and that was transferable to a possibly new employer. Now you get a raise if and when your employer feels like regardless of your years of expertise in that sector. Your salary will be the product of a negotiation with your employer. As Achilles said to Hector’s pleadings for delivering his dead body to his parents, ‘’since when the lions bargain with the sheep?’’. The employees again cannot be charged for any theft or damage but as I said that can be the cause of being fired. I have seen many times in supermarkets cashiers or security placing products or advertisements, something that’s clearly not their job description. Average rent for a three room apartment 350-400 euros. Average cost of utilities in the present situation is around 250 euros if you are very careful. The average internet/telephone flat rate is 30-35 euros, the cheapest mobile connection is around 20 euros and via card it’s 13 euros per month.
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@fridest in Greece VAT is 24% some categories of essential food is at 13%. In supermarkets and other businesses of the kind it’s also forbidden to sit, the employees are taking their 20 min break but only in one chain that I know ( a friend works there) they are allowed to sit in the cafeteria that is on the last floor and take something for lunch. The government in 2010 ( same party as today different prime minister) introduced a law where people under 30 were payed 550 euros. The basic salary back then was I think 680 for unskilled hand labour and 750 for an office job. The law was supposed to give the incentive of hiring young people so the government could make the horrible youth unemployment statistics look better. Guess what happened. Many companies and not just small ones even Coca Cola did it, fired their existing personnel to the degree that it was possible, and replaced it with young people working for this new lowered wage. That carried on until 2017 if im not mistaken, I remember that it was one of the very few things that the Tsipras government managed to reverse, but the universal again for all age groups basic wage remained at the lowered 650 euros. Basically you can’t exist which that kind of money and that’s the reason why most Greek young people stay with their parents even after 30 years old. It’s very difficult to rent alone, if you don’t have financial help from your parents or a relationship that will move in and split the costs. It’s virtually impossible to buy an apartment without an eternity of debt and even if you are ok with that the bank no longer provide loans. Despite the fact that they were saved from bankruptcy 3 times with state money, instead of being nationalised since they failed to keep their house in order, they remained private institutions with the promise of providing liquidity in the market. Well guess what. They lied and nothing happened to them. The only way that the situation did not lead to generalised tragedy was that Greeks for the most part still own their own home, thus providing shelter to their set to fail kids and also for the most part the private debt was relatively low. For example the generalised use of credit cards and bank loans in Greece became a thing in the late 90’s before that credit cards was an oddity for very rich people and even then most shops under a certain level could not accept them. The banks were not giving out loans because drachma was a soft currency, but that made it very easy to build or buy your own house. It’s those houses that the neo-liberals are after now basically.
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@Лунтик-с5у well then you will have to explain that to all those Ukrainian strippers and cleaning ladies
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@henningbartels6245 thats was a super retarded argument. And I dont buy lemons, I have 3 big trees in the garden, does that mean that they are not more expensive?
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@henningbartels6245 Pepsi Cola in Greek supermarkets was going from 1.20 to 0.70 (there were frequent periods of discounts) now its 1.78.
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