Inflation is skyrocketing. When I arrived at the shop yesterday, my co-worker was busy putting the prices of many items up by $5 or more. We shook our heads – how will anyone be able to afford this stuff? We are worried about our jobs if people stop coming into the store and about being able to afford food ourselves or pay our housing costs. What do we do? I have been thinking back to the things the War Generation did to survive tough economic times.
Economic Free-fall
My tenants, who ordered from Skip the Dishes almost every day for well over a year, have slowed down. I saw an old car pull up to the house and watched the delivery driver unload several bags of WalMart groceries from the trunk. Hard times indeed!
If you only watch legacy media, you’d think everything is tickety-boo. Yet there are new taxes on fuel – gassing up the car is more expensive for all they say and anyone who has a natural gas furnace knows they’re full of shite. A quick trip to the grocery store comes with sticker shock as a typical bag is $50 rather than the former $20, CBC optimism be damned.
The economic downturn is not going to affect everyone equally at all. This is the big secret that no government or media talks about. It’s the working poor who will bear the brunt and, more specifically, those who have learned to rely on someone else, like a parent or government.
Let’s NOT Skip the Dishes
Take my tenants’ common behaviour of ordering food as an example. When I break that down, I see some interesting things. First is the pattern of younger people who don’t want to fend for themselves. These are richer students or working kids. They have an app on their phone, internet connectivity, someone delivering items to them – items that are ready to eat, for the most part so they don’t have to cook or make anything themselves. But some hard-working person making minimum wage actually made that food or put that order together. Some rich people financed the companies that developed the infrastructure for the internet and the apps. Yet others, of every age and race, are resourceful enough to put their cars and phones to work earning money delivering the items.
Who will suffer the most when the price of fuel and food skyrockets? If you’re not rich, you’ll need to get yourself into the resourceful camp as soon as possible. Luckily, we can look to the War Generation as an example of thrift and know that we can survive.
Getting’ Gritty Wi’ It
Maybe because my parents were the “hands off” type, I’ve always looked out for myself. I’ve been through two economic recessions. Surviving them has been a source of pride and accomplishment. Looking after myself, especially when shit has gotten real, has helped me develop something that used to be called “grit.”
I have often gotten strength by remembering the hardships my grandparents, great-grandparents and Inlaws faced. They lived through the Great Depression and WWII and never forgot what it was like to do without. This encouraged them to be unspoiled as they learned to “make-do.” Even with the rationing of the second World War, this generation of people gives us a pretty good idea of how to survive. They used resourcefulness and creativity. Recipes from the early 1940’s often contain brilliant substitutions for eggs, butter, and even flour.
We used to laugh at my Mother-in-law, who refused to buy plastic wrap, for example. She put leftovers in a bowl with a plate on top for a lid. This was when times were good again! She always had two chest freezers filled with pies, chunks of strange meat (they cut up their own game), and anything else she found on sale and bought in bulk.
I stopped laughing and began to imitate her when my own broke times came. I think a whole new generation is about to be initiated.
Survival Soup
When I lived in Van, there’s no way I’d go to a food bank – that was for poor people! Still, my friends and I had to eat so one day we went shopping with only 54 cents. (Does Big Hair Make You Resilient?)
Unfortunately, bulk foods appear to be another casualty of the pandemic. At our local el-cheapo grocery store, to get the ingredients for soup, you need to outlay extra money now. You’ll need to buy a whole bag of dried beans, peas, rice, or pot barley plus a whole package of soup cubes.
I tried it out today and was able to buy:
Potato – .81
Carrot – .25
Onion – .56
Whole head of garlic – .16
Vegetable soup mix – 1.77
For $3.55 you will have a delicious soup that you could share with someone if you used extra water. Plus you’ll have garlic cloves leftover. If you add a can of beans for protein or buy a bag of rice, it will cost another $1.77. This will stretch your soup to at least three meals and give you a lot of rice leftover. If you get to the store early, there are always discounted bags of vegetables that you could add. Cabbage, kale, or mushrooms.
Of course, you need a kitchen to be able to cook for yourself.
If you don’t have a kitchen, what about volunteering at a soup kitchen? This is one of my back-up plans. I’ll be well fed for my trouble and also feel a sense of community. I think being creative about my financial circumstances is necessary as this recession drags on.
Take a Deep Dive
Another idea came to me after seeing all the food that is thrown away (we leave ours at work just outside the back door for anyone to take). If SHTF, I’ll be frequenting dumpsters around town before I let any of my family starve!
Check out: https://www.shareable.net/how-to-dumpster-dive-eat-free-fight-waste/
As the article says, “Perhaps the hardest thing about dumpster diving is overcoming the stigma that comes with rooting through the trash. Our culture associates that behavior with poverty, and poverty with shame, and there is a strong cultural bias against dumpster diving. But that’s all it is: dumpster diving is completely one hundred percent legal. If you live with roommates, discuss with them how you want to do it. Dumpster diving is great for communal meals because you can get a really big haul of food for free.”
I would see this as a challenge! We could do a competition – what meal could you make for FREE? The point is this: there’s no way anyone can starve in this town. There is plenty of ready-made food chucked out all the time.
This should comfort anyone who is terrified they won’t have enough money for food. Just know that you have options and don’t have to rely on the government or anyone else. I have a few more ideas in my series How to Make Your Money Go Further and here are some ideas from The Dapper Dahlia How to Stretch Your Groceries – 1940s Recipe Ideas • The Dapper Dahlia.
An Attitude of Gratitude
Whenever I think about my broke days in Vancouver, I feel like the luckiest person alive. I learned how to survive and how to be grateful for the kindness of strangers and the solidarity of friendship. (While I didn’t ever go to a foodbank, I had a co-worker who used to give me all the “mistakes” at work to eat. Unfortunately, he found out I liked sweets so this was often a mile high chocolate ice cream dessert!)
Generationally, the younger people do a lot of shouting and complaining that their lack of money is the “government’s” problem. Fix my high rent! Give everyone an allowance! Make education free! People have forgotten that the government gets its money from we, the people. And we’re being bled dry by their grandiose plans. “We” being the ever shrinking working class. The rich hire tax lawyers and create “foundations” to avoid paying for anything – especially if they can’t write it off.
The problem is, when a government gets involved in the nitty-gritty details of the lives of its people, it’s no different than an over-involved parent: it breeds helplessness and dependence on one hand and a sense of entitlement on the other.
OK, it’s worse because at least the parent earns their OWN money and doesn’t endlessly promote their agendas on state-run media.
Eat the Rich
The elites don’t need to care about the same things we do. They are the ones who get to run the government – either by using their connections to get elected or giving so much money to candidates and parties that their interests are looked after. Like Trudeau or Galen Weston of Loblaws fame. Food insecurity, a non-living wage, or homelessness: these problems are for average people, who are stupid for getting themselves into these situations or being dumb enough to be born to poor people.
Galen is getting a $1.2 million dollar raise when his average worker makes $15.65 an hour. He makes $5,649.26 an hour. The company is raking in money hand over fist with all the price gouging they’re doing – its stock price is up 26.6% year over year and %100 from 2018. It’s unlikely any frontline employees hold shares in the company they work so hard for. They are unable to benefit from this rise in the stock price.
The richest guy in BC, also a grocery chain owner, is Jimmy Pattison, worth a cool $15 billion. He owns his company so has no board to answer to yet still pays his employees as little as he can get away with. Ask me how I know. The only times these guys are generous is if there’s something in it for them – like publicity. Or, in Jimmy’s case, he suddenly donated to fund cancer research and hospitals when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Hard Times at Ridgemont High
A cursory search of online job ads shows a decline of over 60% from last year, for all they say. Job numbers are a lagging indicator of the economy – meaning that things have been getting tougher for companies and they have stopped hiring. The best companies, where workers get medical coverage and can play ping pong on their breaks, are actually shedding jobs like crazy, as the companies try to get their profits up for shareholders. I found out that the smartest guy I know, my cousin Patrick, got an email from his employer, Google, informing him that he was fired – after over 16 years! That now makes Google the dumbest company in the world. Part-time jobs, McJobs, scam jobs and slow-to-get-with-the-program government jobs are the majority of jobs being posted now.
Money has become hard to get with banks tightening up and pulling back credit card and loan offers. Even though the rates have gone up and they’d make more off of you. They’ve got a shit-ton of investments in long-term bonds with low interest rates so have their necks out. Everyone is worried about collapse and already bailouts – which governments swore they’d never do again after ’08 – have taken place. Besides withdrawals, banks are also worried about customers defaulting on existing loans and mortgages. If you have a line of credit, I suggest you keep it open because you’ll be hard-pressed to get another one if you need it.
Humble Pie
I believe a whole lot of people are about to get a deep and painful lesson in Personal Finance 101 and a shocking realization that there is no one to look after them. Not even the government can be relied on as their printing presses have run out of paper and the time has finally come for us all to pay the piper. Forget about the recession the media is still pretending isn’t happening – we’re in for a full on Depression. Yes, the capital D is intentional.
And if Ray Dalio is right and the US loses its world currency status, be prepared for a hyperinflationary environment. It’s go time! (More here: The Skyscraper Index is Off the Charts and a New World Order is a Comin’!)
The working poor will be especially hard hit, as usual. This is going to be a great opportunity to develop some character and some grit! We need to look to the War Generation to learn how to survive these tough economic times. Then we’ll get our own chance to torture the following generations with stories that start with, “Back in my day…”
It’s also a chance to be grateful for all that we have – and if you’re reading this, you have a lot.
We had a great run, though, didn’t we?
