Prices should be frozen for one year

Neo-liberalism, which is synonymous with poverty, hunger, misery, and unjust wars and occupations, has brought blood, tears, and death both across the world and in our country.

The ruling and opposition parties, as implementers and defenders of neo-liberalism, expect the country's salvation from neo-liberalism, which is a sick man. They are afraid to even mention the development and welfare economics, as well as the planned, public-oriented, and statist policies that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk laid the foundations for starting in 1923, even before the republic was established. While some of the world's developed countries implement Atatürk's welfare and development economics policy, our ruling and opposition parties seek salvation in neo-liberalism and neo-liberal economists. Neo-liberalism maximizes the interests of capital, not the interests of the public, wage earners, retirees, and the poor.

The political power implementing neo-liberalism is constantly transferring wealth from retirees, wage earners, and the poor to capital. To stop this wealth transfer, the prices of all products must now be frozen for one year. Freezing the prices of these products will also lower inflation. The political power will announce wage hikes and tax increases. With these announcements, the prices of all products will increase even before workers and retirees receive their wages.

In order for wage earners, retirees, the public, and the poor not to be crushed further, the prices of all products must first be frozen. The answer or solution to the question of how producers will cover price increases lies in the 2024 budget, where total expenditures are 11 trillion TL, total revenues are 8.3 trillion TL, and the budget deficit is 2.7 trillion TL. The tax expenditure that the political power should have collected but did not is 2.2 trillion TL. This amount represents 33% of the collected taxes that were waived. The losses of producers due to a one-year price freeze can be covered by this 2.2 trillion TL in waived taxes.

My call to all our people, the poor, laborers, workers, and unions is that prices must be frozen for one year so that the wage hikes granted by the political power do not melt away and inflation falls. Even if wages are increased by one hundred percent, if prices are not frozen, those one hundred percent wage increases will lead to the erosion of wages before workers and retirees even receive them, as well as to class conflict and deepening poverty.