Thread Irony and Death in North Korea

Sarcasmo

A Taste Of Honey Fluff Boy
Mar 28, 2005
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Austin
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This article paints an impressively bleak picture of daily life in a place that is almost as bad as Detroit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/asia/10koreans.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

It hardly seemed that life could get worse. And then, one Saturday afternoon last November, his sister burst into his apartment in Chongjin with shocking news: the North Korean government had decided to drastically devalue the nation’s currency. The family’s life savings, about $1,560, had been reduced to about $30.

“Ai!” he exclaimed, cursing between sobs. “How we worked to save that money! Thinking about it makes me go crazy.”


On paper, he said, a Chongjin state construction company employs him. But the company has few supplies and no cash to pay its employees. So like more than a third of the workers, the worker said, he pays roughly $5 a month to sign in as an employee on the company’s daily log — and then toil elsewhere.

Such payments, widespread at smaller state companies, are supposed to keep companies solvent, said one 62-year-old woman who is a trader in Chongjin. Even a major enterprise like the city’s metal refinery has not paid salaries since 2007, she and others said, though workers there collect 10 days worth of food rations each month.

“How would the companies survive if they didn’t get money from the workers?” she asked without irony.
 
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LOL. Kim is brilliant. Punish the black markets by devaluing all the currency they stuffed in their matresses. BACK TO THE LABOR CAMPS, FOLKS!
 
The government periodically tries to rein in the markets, regulating prices, hours, types of goods sold, the sellers’ age and sex and even whether they haul their wares on bicycles or their backs.

Really makes you appreciate how spoiled, lazy and bloated we are in the U.S.

/Liam
 
I'm not sure Safeway can properly convert gold as payment for groceries.
They accept paper dollars and coins. I'm pretty sure we could find a way...
Lol sell fear.
Name one occasion where a fiat currency has succeeded over the long term. in fact, the Framers were so (smartly) against it that the Constitution explicitly requires a commodity based currency. But we just ignore that altogether after Bretton-Woods...
So what were you saying about it's better to not pay off your mortgage due to inflation?

Exactly. Its a redick strategy, but works because of our retarded NEED to inflate.