SOFIA, Oct 1 (AFP) - In Bulgaria a generation of 
     hopeful young professionals backed the country's 1989 
     conversion to a market economy. 

     But, now aged around 40 to 60, this "lost generation" 
     has seen its engineers become grocers and its doctors 
     become taxi drivers, as it plummets down the social 
     scale. 

     Ten years ago, 47-year-old Genoveva Popova was an 
     industrial draughtswoman -- today she sells tiles in a 
     shop belonging to her brother, ! who was once an 
     engineer. 

     "We can manage to feed ourselves, but we no longer 
     have enough money to go on holiday. I wonder why I 
     studied at all," she said, disillusioned. 

     "As a general rule, 40 to 60-year-olds who backed the 
     transition to a market economy have lost their jobs 
     and their position in society," commented Jivko 
     Georgiev, of the Gallup polling institute. 

     "Their savings evaporated and more than a third of 
     them have been unemployed for years. Some of them 
     tried to play the capitalist game by starting small 
     businesses, but most of these failed," he added. 

     A recent study by specialist institute Alpha Research 
     showed that 78 percent of Bulgarians say their 
     position in the social scale has dropped since 1989, 
     and 66 percent believe they are at the bottom of the 
     social ladder. 

     Less than eight percent believe they are in a better 
     social position than they were under communism, a! nd 
     only eight percent believe they have stayed at the 
     same level, according to the study, in which less than 
     two percent of those questioned believed their 
     standard of living was "above average". 

     "It is not poverty so much as the feeling of being 
     over-qualified for one's work, of having fallen from 
     one social status to another, which is painful," said 
     political analyst Kancho Stoichev. 

     Another analyst, Andrei Raichev, said: "Bulgaria's 
     transition from a communist economy to a market 
     economy is complete. The social structure has been 
     established definitively and irreversibly." 

     A crisis in schooling means students have to pay for 
     lessons in English and computing -- the two best 
     tickets to jobs. 

     "That means that the children of the 14 percent of 
     well-off families will make up the next generation of 
     the well-off," explained analyst Kolio Kolev, of the 
     Mediana polling institute. 

     "T! here is a consensus in society on the market 
     economy, the rule of law, and joining NATO. But people 
     are not sure about the methods which are being used to 
     achieve those goals," said Georgiev. 

     Nostalgia for the communist era is becoming stronger 
     and stronger, Alpha Research noted. According to one 
     poll, more than 60 percent of people with low or 
     medium incomes believe that Bulgaria developed better 
     under communist rule, between 1944 and 1989. 

     Among the changes the transition has brought, freedom 
     to travel is most appreciated, with 70 percent pleased 
     with the change, the poll said. It is followed by the 
     end of food shortages (65 percent), the right to do 
     business freely (66 percent), free elections (58 
     percent) and the restitution of farmlands (14 
     percent). 

     According to public opinion, the main winners in the 
     last 13 years have been politicians (55 percent), 
     criminals (37 percent) and businessm! en (18 percent), 
     the poll said. 

Re: A generation lost to the market economy in Bulgaria

Dear All, 

That article is DISGUSTINGLY MANIPULATIVE - as most of the figures quoted! - and full of DAMNED LIES! 

What makes me especially mad is that repeated assertion that there is consensus re market economy and - N-A-T-O!!!!! 

If the majority of people are asked about market economy, they will not know what you are talking about. "Market economy" is an abstract term that speaks nothing to them. But if you ask if they like their present life better that the life before 1989, it is quite another thing: they will answer without any hesitation – NO! The PAID author has pointed "more than 60 %" are nostalgic for the “communist era”. What does “more than 60% mean?” - 70? 80? 

NOTE THE CONTRADICTION between the assertion for “consensus re the market economy” – and the nostalgia for the past figure of “more than 60 %”!!!!!!!

THERE IS NO CONSENSUS RE NATO! 

There is such consensus ONLY among the so-called political parties! 

But how much percent of the PEOPLE are the DAMNED political parties? 

80 % of the people are AGAINST NATO! They want referendum but it is not allowed because, as one of the DAMNED politicians put it, the result will be a BIG GREAT "NO"!!!!!!! 

All the so-called Agencies for sociological public opinion researches are PAID to publish MANIPULATIVE data and blatantly to manipulate people here and abroad! 

That article is SHAMELESSLY manipulative - besides some figures that seem acceptable the HIGHLY PAID author distributes a DAMNED heap of lies! Look at the consensus thing! Look at that excerpt: 

"Among the changes the transition has brought, freedom  to travel is most appreciated, with 70 percent pleased  with the change, the poll said. It is followed by the  end of food shortages (65 percent), the right to do  business freely (66 percent), free elections (58  percent) and the restitution of farmlands (14 
percent)."

Note the CONTRADICTION with the figures quoted above it!!! But let's look more closely at it.
freedom to travel

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry! Freedom of travel – BIG SHAKES! Who travels? Could the hungry travel? Could the unemployed travel? Could the ill travel? Could the beggars travel? Who travels? Only the government and party people - with the taxpayers’ money – our tortured money! Only the economical MAFIA people – with the sweat money squeezed out of the slaves working for them for next to nothing - and with the money stolen from all of us through the neoliberal so-called privatization. Look at the figure and compare it with the other figures quoted in the article – doesn’t the comparison results
strike you as, mildly said, funny? Read again the sentence “We can manage to feed ourselves, but we no longer have enough money to go on holiday.” That poor woman means going to holiday in the boundaries of BULGARIA! Her family and she are bound to the town they live – that town has turned into a concentration camp for them: THEY CANNOT LEAVE IT because they are POOR and ! ALL their money are spend on FOOD, electricity, water, and central heating bills!

end of food shortages - 

Besides the years after the WWII at the end of the forties there was ONLY ONE YEAR OF FOOD SHORTAGES, and it was 1991! Why? Because the future businessmen from the Bulgarian Communist Party nomenclature - who SOLD Bulgaria to the US in 1989 and 1990! - hid the food in anticipation of the coming "price liberation". They bought huge quantities of food products at the low prices of the "totalitarian regime" - and then sold them at the New High "Liberated" prices! In this way they
turned into very rich people overnight, one can say! (I personally know of a man who bought tons of sugar directly from the Sugar factory in the town of Gorna Orjahoviza, kept them in warehouses, and afterwards sold that quantity at a great profit for himself!)

the right to do business freely 

Which is the date of that "research"? Because it might have been so in the first 4-5 years of the Great Neoliberal Liberation - it means till about 1995. Now it is impossible to get such figures. The people in their majority have already understood that the "free business" is ONLY one more of THEIR MANTRAS! "Free" successful business can do only the politicians and those near and close to them - THE POLITICAL-ECONOMICAL MAFIA OF US SERVANTS THAT IS KILLING
BULGARIA FOR YEARS ON A RUN TOGETHER WITH THEIR US MASTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A great majority of ORDINARY people who tried to do some "free business" has lost everything and lives the despicable life of the other Bulgarians outside THE MAFIA.

free elections - 66 %

How is it possible that 66 % rejoice at the so-called "free elections" - and the participants in those" free elections" to be regularly under 50 % for the last several years? Last autumn the current Bulgarian President was elected f.i. with only about 40 % participants in the Presidential elections from all the people with right to take part in elections! Make the conclusion for yourselves!

the restitution of farmlands - 14 %

That figure seems acceptable.

You see quite well THEIR system of manipulation: get out some truths to catch the attention - and then pour out buckets of DIRTY MANIPULATIVE LIES!

One should be very suspicious to the official news from the US\EC protectorate Bulgaria.

As it is already very well known, THEY – THE GLOBO MASTERS - LOVE LIES! 

And demand THE SAME from THEIR servants.

Blagovesta Doncheva 

Sofia

The Balkans
 
 

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