food for thought 2

FOOD FOR THOUGHT 2

I know most of you hate me, wiping the crack of my buttocks with your delusions, wishful thinking and half baked plans ( I have plenty of half baked plans. The difference is I don't think they will really work, while you think yours are a good idea ). I'm sorry for that, but I don't think you are hurting anyone but yourself by neglecting my e-mail newsletter as a result of your resentment. Who doesn't have e-mail? Even if you are part of the ZuckerHumper Borg on Facebook, surely you don't communicate with companies over your bills through Social Media?

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If more than 3% of you got my e-mail newsletter ( see instructions at the end of each article in my contact info ), you could continue to follow my brilliance if I ever got censored, AND as a bonus get the odd extra article ( I'm not as prolific as I was, adding length to blog articles rather than creating more newsletter articles ). Like the one where I covered a scary real life example of the hideousness that is JIT inventory. Despite your hate, I'll relent and fill you in. See, that is how desperate I am for your love and approval.

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A town of 18k, in a county of 45k ( newsletter subscribers, my first numbers might have been slightly off. These here should be more accurate ), has in half its groceries stores, a whole 25 pounds of lentils. Barely over two pounds per thousand people. When I went two weeks later it was worse-15 pounds, half the towns grocery stores. Is it so hard to conceptualize that if ONE person in town decided to stock up on that one bean, the supply is effectively wiped out?

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And I stopped at half the stores not because I wanted to avoid the other two which have much higher prices, but because I ran out of free storage containers. If even I of limited income don't care about the cost but want to stockpile, what chance is there of any supply if anyone else wants to panic buy? I don't even NEED them, I just want them because I plan of grinding them for gruel and pintos are too hard. What if the Latino population ran out of pinto's in their mad panic? If EACH bean was at JIT inventory levels, no amount of shelf stock stands a chance.

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Only one person per thousand is allowed to stockpile before the crowd panics. And that one person is only allowed one or two pounds. And that is only if that one person isn't panicking but only is slightly, slowly increasing his stocks. This is how brutal JIT is. It was NEVER close to this bad when I has shopping for Y2K. Not even close. I had two shopping carts and I couldn't wipe out the shelves even as I was trying to pile them as high as possible. And when I came back the next night ( after dark, AFTER anyone else who wanted to was most likely to shop ), I did the same thing again.

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What a difference twenty years makes. Wal-Mart, THE mass quantities store, has crap for inventory. So every other chain has even less ( about half as much at Kroger, on obscure items like lentils. One tenth as much on expensive items like butter ). If food inventories were much more back when Wal-Mart perfected its “Rolling Warehouse” model ( no time to sit in warehouses, immediate shipping nightly ), and so much less now when trucks don't drop off as often, what does that mean?

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To me, it means, simply, that there is less food to be had. Yes, Wally is desperate and cannot keep as much inventory on hand, nor can it afford daily but rather weekly deliveries ( I surmise, from observation-I know I could be wrong on this ). But if everyone has the same lower levels on inventory, and everyone is practicing JIT, less food is out there ( actually, it isn't less food but increased population, so there is no surplus as there was ). That means that we cannot have a few extra fractions of a percent of the population recreate the buying frenzy of twenty years ago. This has nothing to do with the midwest flooding, and everything to do with the flooding from the southern border ( and their propensity to breed once here ).

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It also isn't just because I used an obscure food item that I'm painting a gloomy picture ( cherry picking as it were ). THE epitome of food storage food, wheat kernels, are just as scarce. The most the feed store ever had on hand was about sixteen sacks. One sack per thousand people in town. At best. Usually it is half that. And that is for chicken feed. I doubt many preppers ( the town has LDS'ers, who I am sure cannot lower themselves to livestock feed for the collapse ) are after that supply besides myself.

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But most folks will shop at Wally for food stores. So, to another example. Wally is below inventory even from 2009. In all items, but especially in food-rolling shortages are normal, and they were not back when oil was $150 a barrel and the economy just saw mass unemployment spike. Yes, that means the economy is worse. Wal-Mart is a canary in the coal mine. But Wal-Mart also sells the most groceries. 25%, to Krogers 10% ( Publix is 3%, for you good old boys down South ). 35% of all grocery stores have a proven marked reduction in inventory, and you know the others are just as bad.

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And, need I add, grocery stores are doing better than restaurants. Some of the biggest fast food places are hurting, and I submit to you the primary cause is a shift away from eating out. It has to be. Shrinking disposable income demands cutting the number of meals you eat out. So grocery stores de facto gain extra business yet at the same time are in huge financial trouble. They have little choice but to cut quality in their higher profit areas ( deli, bakery ), cut staff and reduce inventory which is not immediately problematic.

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You need to eat. You are getting poorer and don't cherry pick shop around as much as you'd like ( unless you are magic like me and live in a small town and transport by bike-eat me, bitches! ), so you substitute buy. Empty shelves don't really cost you lost business ( your competitors are just as bad if not worse, a race to the bottom ). Staff is usually useless so in the cheaper stores lack of service is almost expected. Everyone is incentivized to cut inventory ( except the Yuppie Scum hoity toitie stores, saving money by drastically cutting quality and reducing shelf space to afford to keep those shelves full for “customer satisfaction” ).

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You must panic buy now, because lack of inventory means it will be a longer more drawn out endeavor. At the very first sign of others joining you, the game is up. The US population is only up 25% from Y2K. The food inventory is down far more than that. I would wild ass guess at least half. There is far less wiggle room for food prepping. Do not delay.

( .Y. )

( today's related Amazon link click HERE )

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note: bless you, WC, for the PayPal donation!
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