Things have gotten strange out there in the land of shopping. I ran across a pack of butter for $8. I was shocked but then used my device to check other sources, only to find out it was a good price.
The same happened with some maple syrup. The $20 price tag shocked me and I thought, “What a ripoff,” until I realized it was being sold at a discount, given the volume.
Not long ago, most shoppers had a sense of whether something was a bargain or too expensive. That intuition developed over decades of relatively stable prices. We assumed it would last forever. Now, it’s gone. We are pretty much at a loss now when shopping, not knowing even how to price compare, especially with prices rising in real time even as we are out and about.
We no longer know for sure what is too much or a bargain. Nor do we know how much longer the prices will last. How do we know if we are making a big mistake by delaying a purchase? What if it goes up another 20 percent next week? It could happen. It could even be worse.
There are strange Weimar vibes in the air. Ridiculous government statistics say that the dollar has lost only 20 cents of value in four years. That makes no sense if you look at pretty much anything you actually buy. The price of fast-food burgers has tripled in that time, while the burgers themselves have shrunk in size.
How much value has the dollar actually lost in four years? It’s anyone’s guess. We know that 20 cents is too little, in spite of what the government claims. It’s closer to 30 cents but might be 50 cents or more, even much more. Whatever it is, it is bad, and the sticker shock gets worse by the day.
My friends are now talking about bulk-buying meat from local farmers and ranchers under special buyer-club arrangements not typically advertised on the internet for fear of the insane regulators. You have to know the right person, like a speak-easy beef service. The idea is to snag half a cow or pig and put it in your locking freezer in your garage.
My grandfather had one of these. So did my father, and we did this very thing growing up. Night after night, Mom would find meat in there for the next day’s thawing and cooking. I thought it was a bit weird, but it was what we did.
As I entered adulthood, I entered a world of unparalleled prosperity. The economy grew and grew, and the digital age came along and it seemed like the age of abundance would last forever. I looked back at those freezers as symbols of a poorer time when you really couldn’t depend on your local store.
Through the 1990s and following, I believed that a new age had been born. We have a market that loves us and will always be there for us, providing us with endless quality food at low prices that will consume an ever-smaller portion of the household budget. The age of plenty. There was no more need for the ridiculous habits of the past such as stockpiling meat in deep, hulking freezers in the garage.
And yet here we are. Everyone I know is looking into this. People in apartments are buying smaller models for their smaller spaces and porches. Everyone has become a prepper, particularly as it pertains to meat. We no longer trust that the stores will be there for us. Regardless, prices are rising so fast that it is better to buy at the store and buy in vast bulk to stay ahead.
Yes, it is that bad. But actually, it’s even worse. My parents never once considered having a generator in case of brownouts or blackouts. Those can ruin everything because the meat thaws and you have to hold a neighborhood cookout so as not to let your meat go to waste. That was never really much of a threat, or perhaps it happened once in a generation.
These days, most people assume that long periods without power are in the future. We know this because the powers that be are forcing us into ever-more intense uses of the grid in ways that the system can’t sustain. They will get us all in electric vehicles and then shut down the system so that we have electricity rationing.
In that case, a generator is essential as well as a supply of petrol to fuel it. This is all getting quite alarming, like a slow crawl back to nature. There was a time when gardening was a luxury, an indulgence for those interested. Now, people are figuring out ways to raise their own food and figuring out how to do this in small spaces.
What’s next, foraging? I think I wrote about that two years ago, but I was being facetious. Now, it seems completely real.
Sure, much of life seems quasi-normal, with people out and about, traveling here and there, going to restaurants, and sharing drinks. But the whole of it is starting to have the feeling like the last days before the apocalypse. The shock of the menu prices is painful, and the bills flowing from one source to another are mounting even as the ability to roll debt from one month to the next is becoming truly punishing.
How much longer can people live in practical denial of what’s happening? Perhaps a few months? Maybe years? It’s hard to say. The habits of half a century of seeming prosperity are hard to break, and no one wants to admit the truth that real living standards are plunging fast.
The reliable surveys on real income are released once per year by the Census Bureau, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They have so far shown two years of devastating declines. The next one is due in the fall. It will be calamitous but nowhere near the truth. If the needed inflation adjustment isn’t 4 or 5 percent but 10 or 15 percent, it makes a huge difference.
It’s truly the most bizarre thing. We flatter ourselves that we live in times of knowledge and expertise, under a system ruled by science. But what happens when the science is fake, the media lies, the government covers it up, and the academics who know the truth are too fearful of their jobs to state what they know?
That’s essentially where we are. Public trust, however, is dissipating if not entirely gone. You simply can’t believe the talking heads when they keep saying that inflation is cooling when you know for sure that it seems to be heating up. Not a day goes by when we are not astonished at what is happening. And it’s obviously not private enterprise trying to take advantage. No, they are merely trying to survive even as labor costs rise and inputs go through the roof.
It’s even stranger than that. Even as inflation is sweeping through consumer and producer goods, and making housing utterly unaffordable for everyone but the very rich and institutional investors, high-rise offices in urban centers are selling in foreclosure for small fractions of their value only a few years ago. The demographics are dramatically changing as people leave the cities when possible and move closer to food sources and prepare for something terrible that everyone knows is coming.
Every serious inflation in history has been characterized by the cosmetic increase in wealth coupled with underlying decay. Even the financial companies that seem to be doing well with rising financials face underlying stresses in costs and ever-shrinking profitability in real terms. The people dealing in real goods and services face something even worse.
Yes, we all want to have hope. We want the politicians to be correct so that they can turn the system around. But it often seems like the system is too far gone. The sheer amount of decadent waste in public institutions—government, academia, and all state-allied industries—is so vast that fixing it is going to require far more than a few pieces of patch-it-up legislation.
There’s something in the air, a strange feeling of seething public anger, declining living standards, loss of trust, and an overwhelming bitterness toward the betrayal we’ve all experienced at the hands of all the experts who once earned but then squandered our trust.
What else can we do but shop for freezers, take tutorials in managing generators, and hang out with friends who have friends with farms and ranches? That suddenly seems like the best hope for the future. Of course, some white knight could come along and smash the Deep State, but it’s better to play it safe and assume that this won’t happen.
