Saturday, October 14, 2017

best buy


BEST BUY
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note: serious bromance with Green Mountain Dude.  Another classic.  Prepping in the porn sense-fake and make believe, perfect after editing.  Prepping in the biblical sense-dealing with messy and imperfect reality. click here
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Of course this has been mentioned before, I’m just not sure it its been a full length article.  Right now is the time to buy all your prepper gear.  Well, not ALL.  But all your back-ups and consumables ( like shoes and underwear, etc. ).  A loyal minion was commenting ( by far the largest source for my article ideas, so please don’t hesitate to blather away as the mood hits you ) that he was seeing prices FALL and it was pissing him off.  You can’t blame him.  Prices were rising for the last fifty years-or nearabouts-and it was our programmed behavior to buy before prices rose.

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I was reading a short book on the life and times of Burger Chef which was rather interesting ( Kindle Unlimited is far better for non-fiction than they were even six months ago.  Great for me, but it also speaks of declining book sales and over saturation.  Just like everything else ).  The 1950’s saw almost no inflation which is why the 15 cent burger was possible almost the whole decade ( and contributed slightly to the explosion of burger chains ).  Burger Chef went from a industrial equipment manufacture to the second largest burger chain in only thirteen years, then disintegrated in about the same period of time after being within a hundred stores of beating McDonalds.

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What was fascinating was that most of the stores started out with their big ass signs displaying the “15 cents” for the burger ( drinks and fries were about the same price, with fries being the big profit item.  Just like today.  They also innovated everything you associate with McDonalds such as kids meals and fish sandwiches and combos ).  There was no concern with inflation-none.  Once the prices of burgers had to increase to eighteen cents or a quarter, the signs had to be modified.  Today, no one thinks prices will be stable.  No one would dream of a permanent sign with a price on it.

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 And not many folks think prices will fall ( except for electronics which has been the norm since the transistor gave way to the computer chip ).  But falling they have been.  Not at Wal-Mart.  Those leg humpers are just jacking up the price as they lower the quality.  But a LOT of other prices are falling.  You saw digital content first, as that was the easiest.  If a DVD blank with ink is twenty cents or lower, in bulk, it doesn’t matter if you sell a movie for five dollars or three and a half.  Profits certainly decrease, but you aren’t selling below cost.  Same with Kindle books.  You might go from a dollar profit to ten cents, straight sales to Unlimited, but you get more “sales” and are actually more profitable.

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Now you are seeing prices fall on a lot of other items.  Shoes are just as crap quality as always, but at least the prices are falling on some.  One example the minion gave was water filters.  They went from $100 for a Berky type element replacement to $20 for a Sawyer, which gets more gallons filtered.  And that is GREAT!  I went from two Katadyn elements for a homemade filter to those two plus two Sawyers and the tenfold increase in capacity barely hurt financially.  Okay, the Sawyer might be attributed to innovation or invention, just as the decrease in solar panel prices is due to the Chinese entering the market and going gangbusters on quantity.  Not everything is overcapacity.

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But a lot is.  One coastal city in China was ( or used to be ) churning out 90% of the globes supply of underwear.  One desert basin in west China grows 10% of the globes cotton ( you know that isn’t sustainable-but it does pressure costs down as long as it lasts ).  The Chinese do “big” better than Texas ( sorry, Texas ).  And their quality is no longer guaranteed bad.  China is growing their infrastructure as the world pays for it, by being the world’s factory.  Which puts pressure on the rest of the worlds manufacturing to lower their prices also.  Now add in all the lost jobs to everyone automating to afford to sell for less.

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( Maglite brand manufactures in California, proud to be a Made In USA.  Alas, they had to automate as many functions as possible so they don’t employ THAT many folks-still, a much better bargain than most companies offer us ).  Automation is nothing new.  How many folks lost a job to a computer?  How many lost a job to corporate idiocy, such as getting into debt to acquire a worthless competitor which cost even more before it was sold, forcing layoffs and doubling or tripling of job responsibilities?  I would think everyone has been effected by robots, computers or corporate incompetence.  How many hours were cut just for ObammyCare? 

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Mass manufacturing has long ago hit its peak and is in decline.  The Chinese were able to wring the last efficiencies from the system by mega-centralizing production on a global scale.  And they might just hold on to that if their new Spice Road infrastructure is completed in time before the global Big Financial Flush.  But when that happens the US will already have lost the PetroDollar advantage and most manufacturing items will remain in the other hemisphere.  It would be advisable to have as much of your personal inventory in stock prior to that.

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Certainly it is nearly impossible to have everything you need in stock for the lest of your life.  But you can come relatively close.  In theory, I have enough thrift store golf shirts, work boots, slacks, new socks and underwear and sandals, hats and cold weather gear for the rest of my life ( and nothing was high dollar best of bunch, just best value/buy for the buck ).  I’ll never have to buy another toothbrush or razor ( although I keep buying as needed to turn a lot of my previous life’s stockpile into barter ).  I probably have enough back-to-school sale notebooks and cases of flimsy note pads to outlast me. 

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The perishables such as vinegar and vitamin pills and heartburn pills, toothpaste and the like I have at least five years worth.  Stuff I can only guess at how much I’ll use like the powders to make laundry/dish soap I just try to shoot for between a guesstimated five or ten years.  I should in theory have enough books to last me the rest of my life, the bulk in space being ten cent paperbacks and even the much more expensive ( average $10 each ) stuff such as history or economics or whatnot should last nearly as long. 

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In theory, yes, this stuff will shoot up in price.  What you are doing now is taking advantage of lower pricing to stock up on more of everything.  Wheat too expensive?  Buy cheaper food, but also take the opportunity to expand your five years out to a lifetime for many items.  You bought the heck out of ammo when it got more reasonable, right?  Now is the time for most everything else.

END ( today's related article http://amzn.to/2xu4vYe )
 
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4 comments:

  1. One time the local supermarket had tubes of toothpaste for 0.50 Dollaroos (AUD $0.50). To put that into perspective the cheapest no name brand is $2.

    I bought as many as I could. One lady remarked "I just want a couple" because she was alarmed at my stripping of the shelf.

    At the end of the day I had so many that I didn't buy toothpaste for about 4 years.

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    1. The trick is to strip the shelves, then set aside as you keep buying one at a time as needed, ignoring the stash. Always buy the apocalypse sales. On a related note, imagine the headache we'll have policing use of such things as TP or toothpaste afterwards. "a pencil erasers worth, not a teaspoon!" "four squares, not half the roll!" Earth Rapers, one and all.

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    2. The problem I have with stockpiling is the missus refuses to buy anything that we've stockpiled.

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    3. Understood. She's buying the sales, you just hope the apocalypse happens after each shopping trip :) Been there, done that. They want our testicles AND our money.

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