Oof. How are you managing? I'm in Canada and I'm finding inflation/wages to be incredibly stressful. 10 consecutive interest rates raises. Groceries up 20-40%. Cost of housing has doubled. Electricity + water is still dirt cheap though. Video games are way too expensive for me, library or bust.

[–] talkingcat 2 points 1 year ago

I am lucky enough to be the owner of a house (government regularly makes houses and lets you buy them). Finished payment not too long ago, so it could be worse, but getting a house outside these housing projects is really hard. Groceries keep going up regardless of multiple blocks the state puts on them (these have very easy workarounds so the state can't really enforce much). Electricity has a symbolic price unless you go over a certain threshold and healthcare and education are free, for now at least.

Main problem is that there's a shortage of jobs, you usually get temporary hired so they don't have to pay severance or are "hired" but not legally employed so no laws protect you. If you can program you can probably be hired for an international company (they hire here because it's cheaper) but that's about it.

As for games and other digital content? We pay around 90% in taxes (yes, that is not a typo), that sometimes translates in higher prices than in the US, like is the case of Street Fighter 6 (price tanslates to about 65$ atm, translation was 80$ on launch for illustration purposes) or really any Capcom game. and there's also 'Dollar Blue' but I don't really understand the mechanics of it much, but is more expensive than a regular USD while having the same value of it. So usually piracy it is.