Opinion: Crisis of confidence or confidence that the crisis is coming?

The bizarre thing about this looming crisis is that people are somehow on the outside. Two recent figures from INSCOP are striking in this context: 75% of Romanians say that the country's economic situation has worsened compared to a year ago; 44% say that their financial situation has worsened compared to the same time reference. They explain why, looking around, you get the feeling that everyone knows that a crisis is coming, but few people understand that something needs to be done to cushion the shock. This gap between how many think they are worse off as individuals and how many think the country is worse off economically carries within it a coping mechanism to the uncertainties of the immediate future. Especially as the second half of the year will bring price hikes and new electricity price reporting schemes, which do not bode well.
At least inflation has been evident in recent years, so it's no wonder that only 44% of Romanians complain about their financial status. The explanation probably lies in the gradual and steady rise in prices. It's a kind of habituation to hardship in our area that can also mean resilience - and it has probably helped us many times in history - but it can also mean that sometimes we don't realize what dangers are grazing us, or, there is also this variant, what problems we have escaped by behaving correctly. "Come on, sir, they're overdoing the pandemic." Let's not forget how the pandemic began with a collective effort and solidarity, both spectacular, only to end with a generalized and irrational anger at a state that nevertheless intervened more coherently and adaptively than we expected, for all the good and bad of that intervention. Similarly, once it had passed, the crisis of 2009-2010 did not seem so great either and, in many other cases, the initial fear and mobilization turned into zephenia once the danger (real, perceived, correctly assessed, exaggerated - it doesn't matter) had passed.
Of course, dissatisfaction with the way the institutions - and not only the institutions - are reacting is understandable. But there are cases where, comparatively speaking, we have done what other EU countries have done, and not necessarily worse than them. Look, let's take the INSCOP poll published on informat.ro: for years, with small permutations and score changes sensitive to the immediate reality (but not for the future), the hierarchy of trust in institutions is practically the same. Everything in the Romanian society of the last 35 years has changed so much that the lack of variation in these distribution lists of trust must indicate something we still do not understand. The reality is, despite everything that sociologists have been commenting on for over three decades, that we are no longer talking about a crisis of trust, because things have never been better or even different.
The crisis is also a therapeutic concept which, of course, justifies all sorts of measures. And it explains why we have problems, in such a way that, before getting upset, people think that there is a crisis and, for a short while, they have an explanation that calms them down. In the idea that it's not something that hasn't been seen before. After which, gradually, the crisis passes, in parallel with the erosion of confidence in those who ran the country during the crisis, for better, for worse, it doesn't matter. This looming crisis, if it hasn't already started, has some explicable parameters: expenses related to mitigating the effects of the pandemic, the liberalization of the energy market, the war in Ukraine, etc. Whether it was right or wrong to do so is not the subject of this discussion. The state is in debt and does not have the desired capacity to collect what is due to it. The market is still functioning. There is a small paradox here, just as there is a small paradox in the public's position on the appropriateness of public spending.
On the other side of the crisis is the public, the taxpayer, in one form or another. And what is the public telling us it wants to happen with public spending now, on the threshold of a crisis/reform in which the state seems to be doing worse than its citizens... another set of indicators from the latest INSCOP poll leads us to these answers. 83% of Romanians think that the state should increase state investment in education, 75% in health, and even, in fourth place, 63% would like the state to increase investment in culture. Of course all this shows an understanding of long-term development on the part of our public. It seems an ideal country, with citizens concerned about education, health, culture. This is the optimistic interpretation. The pessimistic interpretation is linked to the convenience of these views: for the public and politicians alike, education, health and culture have been priorities for 35 years. But perhaps the public understands these priorities differently from the politicians.
I am afraid that behind the formulas "investing in defense", "investing in education", "investing in health", "investing in culture" that are being bandied about in the public arena are three different agendas, difficult to reconcile, each with its own rationale: the agenda of politicians and budget makers, the agenda of professionals in the field, the agenda of the beneficiaries (the general public). But this would already be a topic for a qualitative super-research.