News - 01.05.2024
We are running out of time
Today is International Workers’ Day. We need to send clear messages to the authorities and politicians that the time of inaction and mismanagement is running out.
The inaction in housing matters and the bottomless pampering of special interests has reached the point where it is impossible for the public to remain silent. While the meat processing plants celebrate, following their exemption from competition laws by the Icelandic Parliament, there is a plan underway to give away our immensely valuable resources through a legislative draft on fish farming. Meanwhile, the interest rates on public housing loans are in double digits, and there is an absolute crisis in the rental market.
This situation is not due to external, unavoidable, or unforeseeable circumstances. On the contrary, it is a well-thought-out, organized situation carried out by the government with the support of the Central Bank.
The political response in housing matters is pitiful as all key parties in politics have come up empty and bear all responsibility. The country's largest municipality prides itself on bringing slightly more to the table than others while inviting thousands of tourists to a party that no one had anticipated. Thousands of apartments have been removed from the rental market for short-term rental to tourists, all with the blessing of city authorities and governments that have shown no effort to tackle the problem except with plans and policies that only contain meaningless and irresponsible chatter without real actions.
To add insult to injury, the Central Bank Governor was recently reappointed despite a ruthless interest policy that is well on its way to bankrupting indebted households and small to medium-sized enterprises. This is probably not the result of massive and repeated macroeconomic errors, as a recent Nobel laureate in economics pointed out and the European Central Bank's governor has agreed with, but rather another example of blatant special interest care.
How long and how far will the authorities go in transferring the nation's assets into the hands of the special interests they support? And how long and how far will the Central Bank go in transferring the assets and disposable income of the public to the banks with the support of the government?
If this is the future that we are prepared to silently consent to, then it does not bode well. It does not bode well for our wealthy society and our children who will have the task of unraveling the inequality and asset transfer that is building up, if that will be possible at all.
Where, in other countries we compare ourselves to, would it go unchecked that housing interest rates are in double digits, the rental market is deregulated, companies exempted from competition oversight and the nation's resources given to corporate monopolies by law? Nowhere would politics dare or have the imagination to do most of what characterizes the current government's résumé.
It should be clear to us all that the situation will worsen and it will continue to worsen until we have the courage to rise. As we did in the financial crisis protests.
Dear comrades, I urge you to participate in marches and outdoor meetings on the occasion of 1 May. The struggle continues!
Ragnar Þór Ingólfsson,
chairman of VR.
