There are moments in the history of state addresses when statistical figures magically transform into high-level speculative fiction. On Friday, August 14, 2026, that historical page swung wide open when President Prabowo Subianto confidently uttered a figure that instantly made millions of farm laborers across the archipelago want to switch careers on the spot: an onion-peeling wage of IDR 700,000 per kilogram!
Right on cue, the video clip of that speech exploded across social media. Netizens who happen to enjoy cooking in their kitchens immediately scratched their heads in utter confusion, while actual onion-peeling laborers at traditional markets stared blankly at their weighing sacks and whispered to each other, “Wait, what planet have we been working on where we’ve never seen numbers like that?”
Market Reality: Working Your Fingers to the Bone for the Price of a Bowl of Meatballs
When elite economic theory collides with the bitter reality on the ground, the results are enough to make anyone clutch their chest. Take the testimony of Ibu Gini (53), a senior onion-peeling worker at Pasar Legi, Solo. The actual wage structure in the real world turns out to be lightyears away from that multiverse fantasy.
In Solo, laborers aren’t paid by the kilogram in some luxurious fashion; instead, one full sack of onions fetches a flat rate of IDR 10,000. The catch? A single sack can weigh upwards of 20 kilograms! If you do the raw mathematical breakdown after exhausting your eyes and fingers peeling onions all day long, their daily earnings max out at around IDR 30,000 a day.
Quite a massive drop, isn’t it? From IDR 700,000 per kilo according to the Istana’s math, plummeting straight down to IDR 10,000 per sack at the market. By the palace’s calculation logic, an onion peeler in Solo should easily be able to buy a brand-new sports motorcycle just from peeling a single bag of shallots!
The Istana’s Response: “We’ll Check It Later”
Faced with a massive uproar across the timeline, State Secretary Prasetyo Hadi responded with the classic, normative bureaucratic playbook: “We’ll check it later,” he remarked at the State Palace on Saturday, August 15, 2026.
The question is quite simple: was this merely a slip of the tongue because the speechwriting assistant forgot to drink coffee the night before, or does it genuinely reflect a severe systemic disconnect where central policymakers live in a dimension entirely detached from the daily survival of ordinary people?
The answer is yours to decide. But one thing is for certain: if there’s ever a job opening for an onion peeler paying IDR 700,000 a kilo at the Palace, make sure you sign up first before the spots run out!
