Funny..it seems like it was just two or three weeks ago my focus was rather intense about getting topped off on various foodstuffs and other items. And now…the sense of urgency seems…diminished…I suppose. That is, of course, the classic survivalist trap – you get fired up over something and pursue it with great intensity and then that intensity wanes. And then, something big happens, and you’re caught flat-footed.
Solution? Well, for me, it’s reminding myself that we aren’t out of the woods by a long shot. Oh sure, virus-wise its a maybe-maybe-not thing, but my concern is more economic. The repercussions aren’t going away anytime soon and I need to be in a position to not only survive it but be able to take advantage of the situation as the less-foresighted suddenly have to choose between their pre-ban Bennelli M3 Super 90 or making the mortgage that month.
Did you know that, as a group, the Mormons came out of the Great Depression better than when they went in? Because of their conservative nature and dogma they weren’t as impacted as most other groups. As a result, they were in a position to take advantage of opportunities that arose.
From an economic standpoint, the impact the virus (and it’s ‘control measures’) inflict on the economy are pretty big. I don’t see a lot of new hirings for the rest of the year, I can see a lot of places shuttering up from not being able to withstand the revenue loss of a couple months, surviving businesses might have to cut back hours/employees, and the smarter folks will cut discretionary spending to the bone to make sure hey have enough cash ‘just in case’. In short, the worst person to be right now is a Starbucks barista with $50k in student loans, a car loan, credit card debt, and a month-to-month lease with roommates. (Actually, thats a pretty crappy position to being pretty much anytime.)
Other things I find interesting are how the media beatas a slightly different drum every few days. Drug shortages one day, restricted airline travel the next, and the current crsis du jour is….meat shortage. Here’s how strong an influence that media can be – I saw no less than three articles on various news wires predicting a beef shortage. My natural inclination was to think “Ok, time to head up to CostCo and buy a case of beef” and then I realized, waitasec, I don’t really eat beef. (True fact: other than cheeseburgers, I don’t eat very much beef. Rarely do I eat a steak. My go-to animal protein is chicken and Italian sausage.) But the media hype had gotten to me to the point that I was almost ready to go stock up on something I don’t even really eat. Insidious the way these media panic stories mess with your head.
On the other hand, as I said, there’s also the problem of them not messing with your head and you becoming complacent or losing your momentum/initiative. Thats what I have to be on guard against right now. The ship is sinking, and it’s a slow leak, but the fact it is happening slowly does not change the fact that it is happening.The Current Situation seems to move slowly and invisibly but it is moving….and not for the better (economically). So, stay focused, keep your eye on the big picture, and stick to the plan.
and for people who want to go back to work? Wages are going down. (yeah, we have our choice of 30,000,000 people, we ain’t paying squat). Of course, expenses are the same (or up), esp taxes, but wages? pfffffffffffft Nobody has even mentioned this yet. I imagine working conditions in jobs that do exist are going down too. (can be instantly replaced)
Sooner or later the national debt (our ship with the leak) will go completely under. Jobs? Dollars? FORGET about them. The nation has had a disease (debt) for a VERY long time. We never had the intestinal fortitude to take our medicine. We let it fester. We developed gangrene in our pinkie toe, but insisted on putting band-aids on it rather than removing the offense. The gangrene spread. To the adjoining toes. To the foot. To the leg. The pain that is coming is unimaginable. What emerges may or may not be recognizable – freedom is on death’s doorstep. There is going to be a fight. The barista doesn’t understand that he/she had the freedom to be responsible for his/her actions and will DEMAND that you and I bail him/her out including giving up OUR freedom.
Make no mistake – there is GOING to be a fight. Are you ready?
Do you have the resources for the prolonged emergency that is coming? How many ‘preppers’ believe that THIS is the emergency and are using up their resources now?
Think things through and stack deeper my friends.
Well here in the Ozarks, Walmart the big employer just gave all their hourly workers a bonus. Apparently they plan on hiring 200,000 more nationwide. That is one company that has come out on top, in this crisis. I am definitely concerned about the coming economic crisis, also. It is hard to stay focused on an ‘invisible enemy’ like the kung fu flu. Many counties around us had very few cases and zero deaths. Wondering what ‘getting back to normal’ will look like…
Employers are going to have trouble finding workers. Unemployment was raised to $900 per week for the duration of the emergency. Remember that no taxes are taken out of that, meaning that this is take home pay. Any job paying less than $50,000 a year is not going to pay more than that, so what incentive do people have to get back to work?
I had a CD that matured during the first week of March. I watched the stock market crash, and I took that money and bought stocks while they were at the bottom. The stock market rebounded a bit, and that stock is already up by $15,000 and we haven’t even begun the real rebound yet.
What if it goes back down even further?
What if it doesnt?
This is called a “bear trap” a big pump and dump on the downside. Cover yourself with cheap sell options incase the bottom falls out
the extra 600 bucks a week ends july 21st. if you refused to go back to work, you’ve shown your boss that you have zero loyalty, thus he/she will show you none. what then?
But you have to pay the taxes at the end of the year….
That’s a good point about how what we hear about drives what we think about.
I actually prepared for these restrictions to be worse, but I didn’t expect them to be this … weird and arbitrary.
To stick with the plan, you have to first HAVE a plan and I think many people don’t. My plan is in my mind; I need to change that.
I listened to Aesop, warning us you couldn’t buy food when the roads to your town were closed for quarantine. So I stocked up, beating the rush. Then nothing happened.
I realized I need an actual prep plan to make myself antifragile rather than listening to hysterical media, even if it’s just a blogger rather than the mainstream.
A good way around travel restrictions, and a very useful thing indeed, is to hit your local volunteer fire department.
Since its volunteer, you don’t HAVE TO go every time there’s a call out.
You’ll qualify as a first responder, pick up some serious skills, have better intel access, and find a surprising amount of LMI’s.
Having your vehicle marked as first responder will help you move around when everyone else is being grounded.
you volunteer for the responsibility to go, you do not volunteer to pick and choose which calls you go on.
I suspect the hardest part of surviving TEOTWAKI will be dealing with truly desperate people – especially those connected to you in some way: co-workers, neighbors with kids, old friends.
Having enough for you & yours is one thing. It’s going to be very difficult to witness suffering on an overwhelming scale, yet fully realizing that “you can’t save everyone”.
True. We got back from grocery shopping today and when mother in law asked what we bought, we told her we found TP. She said, ” Oh good, because I need some.” I don’t resent sharing but I hate the assumption that she assumes she can just have it. The masses feel that same kind of entitlement on a much grander scale. Worrisome.
UBAZ,
Next time pick up some extra TP, you know the kind you can also prep a wall with prior to painting. lol
No meat bothers me but I can’t help but think about the collapse of the dollar. The US gov’t has printed so much money for so long the bubble has to be ready to burst. The petrol dollar is in the trash and I’m sure the Chinese are getting ready to pull the plug on never ending loans.
Our debt to GDP ratio is now at 110%, when the market crashed in ’87 it was 48%, crikey.
Beans, bullets and bandaids seem to be a good bet. People using wheelbarrows of money to buy a loaf of bread during episodes of hyper-inflation can’t be far off.
I want to say that 110% ratio was where Greece was when their economy imploded. The only saving grace for the U.S. at this time is we are the world’s reserve currency. Prior to the Dollar it was the British Pound. We saw what happened to the greatest empire in modern history with they lost reserve status.
We saw what happened to the greatest empire in modern history when they lost reserve status.
China is in trouble if we default or on our own decide to wipe out the debt we owe them…..
I bought clothes at a Goodwill store a few years ago that were specifically oversize. When food is in very short supply, you want to look like everyone else – with clothing that makes you look like you lost 30 pounds.
That is a great idea – effective urban camouflage that costs nearly nothing. Thank you for sharing!
Let me see what have I learned from all this pandemic disaster. Remembering how important are Our God, Our Country, Our Constitution, Our Rights, Our Family and Our Friends. Oh yes I almost forgot. What we need is more plumbers and less Art Critics. Not everyone needs to go to University. For goodness sakes save your money. Get a job and let the company pay for your school.
Stay Well My Friends
My Grandparents told me about situation like this,they lived through the depression. Be frugal,stay liquid and be ready to pounce on a deal. A dear friend and the best neighbor you could hope for(RIP),told me about the dust bowl during the depression and how he couldn’t see the sun for days and how agriculture was harmed. This is one reason the Mormons did well,they were not effected by the droughts(south east of them) and didn’t practice the destructive farming practices. To really come out well was to be in war production around 1935.
we’re not over this by a long shot. the sheeple are still scared to death. any little fake headline sends them running. we’re still dealing with shortages of everything here, funny since there are two paper mills nearby. our new household rule is: if you think we may need something in a few days/weeks and its in stock get it, don’t wait. my wife is terrible about waiting to the last minute. meat- we’re importing meat from Nigeria and telling local ranchers to slaughter theirs. NIGERIA.
” In short, the worst person to be right now is a Starbucks barista with $50k in student loans, a car loan, credit card debt, and a month-to-month lease with roommates. (Actually, thats a pretty crappy position to being pretty much anytime.)”
Well, you could run for the Senate…
I can honestly say that the “Crisis” has pretty much had zero effect on my life. Please understand that this isn’t a gloat in anyway. It’s just a statement of fact. We’ve had ~ 40 cases and 3 (elderly) deaths in a county population of ~ 20K. Stores I use never closed, very little in the way of restrictions despite”Stay at home”.
The main employers in town are all essential so majority of folks never lost their jobs. Our population is already welfare heavy with a (voluntary) 38% unemployment rate even in “normal” times.The schools shutdown was probably the biggest disruptor for most folks. We’re in the middle of nowhere so we don’t have much here to begin with.
All I’ve really done so far is to draw down a little long term food (mostly for convenience), upped my freezer storage of fresh meat, get a little more ammo into stores since it was on sale, and get a lot of yard work done. I’ve done some extra cooking to help out some of the folks around me and I haven’t seen the GF as much as I’d like (she’s coming over tonight – steaks, fries, grilled veggies, chimichuri sauce, and what-not – hopefully a lot of what- not) due to her staying with her mom. Aside from that- Huh?
The bad thing for all of us? We might get lulled into complacency just because, for the most part, THIS TIME turned out to be less than the TEOTWAWKI event that was being blared by the media. Like generals fighting the last war, we have to reset ourselves, take lessons learned, and then hit “clear, new file” to get ready for whatever is coming down the pipe (soon IMHO).
Regards
March 27 ordered thru Wally, 20# White rice,jug of Mobile 1 full sun motor oil and jug of Castrol (same). May 1, on phone 2 1/2 hours as got Mobil 1 in a week, but never the balance. Told it was lost in shipping ( my c. card charged immediately)
Checked order, rice shipped within 6 hours, motor oil Still not shipped. I bet others having same opportunities, done bidness w/Wally and this is 1st time like this, maybe nothing, maybe…….
@riverrider, can you provide a link for the Nigerian meat? I googled that and got nothing. I looked at Nigeria’s exports and got almost no meat at all. When you REALLY drill down, in 2017 (last year I found) they exported $87K in bovine meat to Vietnam. And $250K of frozen cow to Hong Kong. That was the total of their exporting of cow.
n
It was Namibia I believe. https://www.africanews.com/2020/02/21/namibia-becomes-first-african-country-to-export-red-meat-to-united-states//
Thanks,
So Namibia has been trying for 20 years to get their imports approved, they finally do, and they send just over 25 tons, or 50K pounds in FEBRUARY, before the current issues. That is less than a semi-trailer load by weight.
US meat imports were projected to be 4.3 BILLION pounds (all meats), and US production of beef was 27.2 Billion pounds (347K full semi trailers, by weight). Namibia contributes a TINY portion of imports and is dwarfed by domestic production.
BTW, we produce and eat about twice as much chicken as beef or pork.
https://talkbusiness.net/2019/04/u-s-meat-production-estimates-are-up-consumption-is-down/
n
also, FWIW, from FEMA’s daily briefing, they expect there will be enough meat this year to meet demand.
“Other Domestic Lifelines
• Food, Water, & Shelter: Cold storage supplies of red meat, pork, and poultry indicate there is enough frozen supply to meet normal demands”
Whether there will be enough to replenish supplies is a questions I guess, but in general, we’re pretty good at growing food.
I am not denying that there are localized shortages, and that I wouldn’t buy some beef is someone made me an offer and I had somewhere to store it. Big picture though, big ag will probably come thru in the end.
n
I had to Federal and maybe state taxes back in the ’70 when I was between jobs.
CZ, worry more about the Italian sausage than the beef. And worry especially about the chicken. There are still a lot of cattle that are fed on grass (at least part of the time) and in warm enough climates that access to purchased feed isn’t critical, at least in the short term. Almost none so in the case of chickens and hogs.
Many cattle growers will be able to keep their stock on grass until the meat plants reopen. Chicken and hog farmers are already beginning large culls of their animals because they’re running out of money to buy feed.