The stockholders have improving profits. That’s all the media cares about. If profits go up, the media will be praising it even if inflation is killing the bottom 90%.
"It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too — in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, ALONE in the possession of a memory?"
I'm honestly not sure why there isn't civil unrest worldwide. People have got to be suffering mass homelessness at this point and starving. I did hear that theft from grocery stores increased but to me it's well deserved.
Well deserved or justified? I don't think a grocery store deserves being robbed given that they operate on slim margins, but if you steal a loaf of bread because you are otherwise going to starve, then I think you are justified.