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CONSUMERISM DYING

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Note: There was an ad in a recent Shotgun News on a surplus ammo sale.  303 British was offered.  One has ‘30’s production rounds ON STRIPPER CLIPS!!!!  The clips alone are worth the asking price, or close enough.  Another was a thousand fired cases on a Vickers belt.  You would need to full case resize, and I’m sure not all are reusable, but for $40 it seemed like a great deal ( there is only one available however, so don’t think too long about buying it ).  There are a lot of others, from 308 to 30-06 to 32 acp.  Go to
www.ows-ammo.com
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Note: “Joshua” by John S Wilson, a VERY good post-apoc novel, is available on KU.
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Consumerism is dying.  If not on its death bed it is getting darn close.  And there is no saving it as it is the perfect storm of negative trends meeting in a death match fixed by Vegas bookies.  Slave labor is not going to fix it, nor is fracking oil.  Immigration is now overpopulation.  Bankers both cannot lower interest rates anymore, nor can they loan out anything due to the derivatives market issues.  In short, all the cans have been kicked down the road since the ‘80’s and we are running out of highway.  Every solution to a minor problem leads to exponentially worse issues being created.  And since the economy used to be 70% consumerism ( lord alone knows the true number now, given the governments propensity to apply so much convoluted math out of their ass that even they have no idea where the real statistics are at ), but is probably higher now because both the remaining factories and the drought ridden/flood damaged farms are being outsourced and that means that your miserable pathetic job is not long for this world.

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First off, that is assuming you do actually have a job anymore.  You might be making ends meet, barely, by scaling back, dipping into savings and working fifteen hours a week, but that isn’t a real job.  Not one that allows you to be a consumer and actually do stuff like, you know, buy things.  Did anyone pay attention to what became of the middle class after the housing bubble burst?  I sure haven’t seen anything written about it that wasn’t a puff piece meant to mislead or lie.  How do couples keep a house when only one of them works, or both took cuts in their hours ( or at the very least, had their health insurance quadruple ), when the property taxes across the nation doubled or worse? 

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Notice how I didn’t even include inflation into the mix?  Inflation is due to the other factors, monetary policies barely having any impact on things.  Which is the trouble with the Mises disciples or other freedom porn outlets.  They push the “central bank is an evil twat that steals all our money” paradigm, which while true also gives false hope.  It seems to be understood that if we all just pay dues to the organization of our choice, register Libertarian and close in a big circle and sing “Cumbiya”, we can eliminate the central bank and use gold coins and inflation will disappear.  Sure it would.  And then the economy collapses anyway from empire collapse ( do you think the Free Market is really responsible for making sure we have super cheap oil?  Or is it imperial colonization? ) and resource depletion and overpopulation.

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A minion brought up the effects of inflation on him personally.  In the 1980’s, a wool shirt was an insane $35.  Today, it is $100.  As almost everything else poor people buy has tripled in price since then, this is about what is to be expected.  Yet, while before he could bite the bullet and invest in the clothing ( warm winter clothing is a GREAT investment if you are a survivalist.  Aside from keeping you alive, it allows you to save a butt ton of money in heating costs.  Better than insulation for the house, keeping yourself warm is cheaper and has a much quicker payback period ), today it is not anywhere close to easy.  Why?  While hourly pay has only doubled, and inflation has tripled prices, that isn’t even close to the whole problem.  Number one, if you know the economy is headed down, you are in no mood to spend money if it is at all possible not to.  Savings must to increased for unemployment ( a HUGE strike against consumerism ).  Two, you are making a lot less now, with the mandatory Obammy Health Tax hour reductions.  Who but a select few Very Important People are given more than 28/30 hours a week?  To do so is to be penalized by the health care laws, as far as your employer is concerned.

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Minimum wage mid ‘80’s was $3.35.  Today it is $7.25 ( some states are higher, but we’ll stick with the federal minimum ).  In ten hours you could buy the wool shirt ( and most states had lower sales tax, also-but I’ll ignore that ).  That was 6% of your monthly wages ( everyone worked forty hours, purt near ).  Today, working a thirty hour week, that same shirt costs you 12% of your wages.  Between the mere doubling in wages, and your insecurity about future employment necessitating savings, are you seeing how easy it is to consume a lot less?  Now, let’s make that even scarier and talk about the “national productivity increases”.  I’m not talking about increased productivity shooting up as inflation adjusted wages have been stagnant since the early 1970’s ( that would lead to a complete article ranting against the 1% living at the expense of the 99%, and I’m sparing you that today ).  I’m talking about how those increased productivity numbers are now realized.

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It used to be, to increase productivity, a worker invented a process to cut the time on task.  Or an engineer invented a tool to use less material or less labor.  It was a GOOD thing.  It was also necessary.  Foam panel insulation and plastic wrapping houses might lead to mold, but as labor was cut to nothing, using illegal labor, and all the trees were cut down, what choice did builders have?  Well, for one, it would have been nice if they didn’t waste material to save even more on labor, or leave unprotected lumber to rot in the rain as they went bankrupt, but really, they had no choice but to substitute materials in the face of resource depletion.  By now, you can buy one of two different types of consumer product ( for poor people-which is that 99%, remember?-I’m sure rich whores have better options ).  One, the thing falls apart on the third use ( this does not include electronics as they are the only exception to the inflation rule-although, I’m a bit disappointed with the Kindle book readers.  Too fragile and little longevity.  I’ve switched to Amazon Fire tablet to read my books-near half price ).  Or, two, the best made items still don’t last nearly as long as they used to, which in real terms increases the cost even more.  Continued tomorrow.

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