The Call of Capitalism: A horrifying tale of financially instability and not having enough money to buy Resident Evil 4.

By Aiden Wilson (they/them)

I am a simple human.

I like video games and music. I LOVE food. I enjoy having spending money left over after buying my food so I can buy video games and music.

Stereotypically, students are incredibly poor. Thanks to our loving government, those of us with cost-of-living payments are now a whole twenty dollars richer each week, provided we keep studying and knowing full well that we have to pay this money back someday. This extra moola we’ve been gifted is a result of the rise in living costs, as well as shitty landlords deciding they need to milk students for all they’re worth, most likely thinking “they should be thanking me for providing a mould-filled flat with a roof caving in and a family of roaches beneath its floors. I’m providing them a home; I deserve a bit more cash!” These landlords probably then wipe their asses with a phat stack of hundreds before putting on a Rolex and driving a Tesla to the nearest bank.

Anyway, back on topic, we’re now getting twenty extra bucks, but it makes absolutely zero difference when the big wig corpo-rats decide to raise everything just a lil’ more to match. As a result, almost all the cost-of-living is used up on either rent or food, and what little money someone may make from a job is probably going to be drained by one or the other too.

Once more, I am a simple human who loves video games, music, and food. Recently the remake of Resident Evil 4 dropped, and if you know me you know I love me some Resident Evil. Between my cost-of-living, and three little side-hustles I work, I have not been able to afford it. Thanks to the price of food skyrocketing so hard that Elon Musk is calling it the next step in space-faring technology, any form of luxury item has to fall by the wayside for a while. I know this sounds like I’m complaining about not being able to buy a video game, and at a surface level yes, I am, but it’s more than that. Since when did fun and entertainment become something that only the wealthy could consistently access? As humans we should not have to worry that the extra fiver we dropped on a stupid trinket for ourselves might be the difference between having bread or not in the shopping, or if we have to dip into a savings account to buy food ‘cause the prices have gone up once more.

Let’s talk about meat for a second. It’s not everyone’s thing, be it for ideological or dietary reasons or whatever. Regardless of your personal stance, society has deemed meat a staple in the human diet. So why in the fuck does 200grams of shitty mince cost almost eleven dollars? If you want actual quality product, the price only goes up from there. The whole joke about students only eating noodles is more reality than ever now, not due to student laziness or noodle convenience, but because that’s one of the most affordable items on the shelf right now.

In the current capitalist hellscape, we’re all the shit stuck to the boot of the 1%. The way things keep going up is further evidence of that. Next time you go grocery shopping during a supposed ONE DAY ONLY PRICE DROP EXTRAVAGANZA, take a look at what’s being marked down. Is it veggies? Meat? Hygiene products? Toiletries? No, it’s beer, chips, a random flavour of ice cream, maybe some potatoes if you’re lucky. Stuff that’s non-essential, designed to look like a steal so you spend more while getting what you actually need.

What I’m trying to say is this: thanks for the extra twenty that we’ll have to pay you back for, but we wouldn’t need it if you’d just stop prices from going up. In a month’s time having that extra twenty will feel like nothing at all due to rising costs eating it up once more. Increases in minimum wage and student loans shouldn’t be a signal for corps to raise costs. How morally bankrupt does one need to be to see the socio-economic disparity and decide they wanna make even more money from it?

At the end of the day, this isn’t just an article about students but about money and society overall. What kind of world has capitalism made where someone can see the hardships economically precarious families are going through and decide they can make a few bucks more off it?