I'd say the reset is already well underway globally and there is already a significant reduction in the middle class in SA. More than we can 'see' yet. Check on your quiet friends. People are going through things, being functionally broke.
As they say, the middle class doesn't know how to be poor and while they can appear rich (or at least 'true' upper middle), they don't have the safety nets or assets to maintain that for much longer. This fuel 'crisis' has really highlighted this for me. There are people in fairly high paying jobs that literally won't be able to afford to come into work, it seems. There are others that are organising carpools. The difference we are talking about is a lunch or a coffee date over a week/week and a half. For many people that is now too much to bear which shows how close to the edge folks are right now.
What I really (genuinely) don't understand is why this is as big of a deal as it seems to be for people driving around in R1M rep cars, Ms and Porsches with kids in R200K/year schools.
It is beyond anyone's control. The government has done what they can to buffer it, which I appreciate as a driver of a V8. The same profiteering has happened before. The same shit is going to happen again. It's like people asking about fuel consumption or maintaining detailed reports on their M lites and Ms. Fill up and move on. Is it annoying? Yes of course.
What is the solution? Try to save money on fuel by spending R1M? Same guys try to 'save money' on maintenance by spending R1M, because they can afford R10K a month but not a R40K repair bill once a year)? Once again, I find myself unsure as to whether I am too rich or too poor to understand.
There is no blueprint for losing your status, so people suffer in total silence to maintain the facade while renting cars and trying to copy rich people things when it is a worse time than ever before to be doing these things. Mental gymnastics to settle for ever-cheaper junk (but it's new and shiny) to terror about maintaining cars and homes while using credit to mask everything as 'business as usual' to anyone outside.
As with so much of South Africa's problems (or the world's) K shaped-recovery is a thing that is 'for everyone else' not 'me'. At this point there have been so many things to recover from over such a long time, that you could zoom into each bit of the K and find an infinite number of smaller K's
Broadly speaking though, in the "K-shaped" reality, the top of the K still has first world problems and not much has changed. Load shedding is bad, but we have solar and batteries. Water is a problem but we have boreholes and tanks and pumps. They will complain just as much about the petrol price, but will still ask for full tank 95 (while complaining bitterly) and tip R20.
The bottom of the middle-class K is ever closer to real poverty while (falsely) believing the top of the K is beyond middle class. In South Africa's case, many professionals are in the "everyone else" portion of the K as well. This is your (now weekly) reminder that if your investments, assets, property and salary has not kept up with inflation this is not a phenomenon that has affected everyone (like the petrol price has) - it has put you into the bottom of the K. We are not 'all in anything' together as human beings.
As I mentioned in a prior thread, we talk here like we all have the same problems when it comes to new cars. The affordability is not actually one of them for many (top of the K). It is desirability. The other side is not just even affordability anymore, but rather just being able to stay afloat. At the same time, in terms of upwards mobility, the top of the K people are ever further (if not completely blocked) from skipping to the next class level.
The current global situation and fuel situation is an ever growing reminder of this.
