Inflation - How is it affecting you?

[neorichieb1971]

Hi guys,

Just trying to get the feelers out there from you folk about how the world is treating you these days.

I will admit my youtube subs are full of political wranglings around the USD$ and the feedbacks are all negative of late. I've also seen lots of price comparisons between Europe and USA around groceries and it seems the Americans are getting charged 2x as much in some instances.

Today I watched a video stating that game collections are losing their worth, at least common items and I was wondering if inflation, unemployment, credit card debts/loans were starting to make the pinch feel real with any of you.

Some other bits that I've learned is that the house I built in Indiana in 2003 now costs exactly 2x what I paid for it to build it. My son who still lives in the USA says getting a home these days is the last item on his bucket list.

I can't help sense the USA is fragile right now. But here I am in the UK pondering on where that leads for the sake of my family there and the friends I left behind. On the surface American citizens are just going on about their business buying trucks and cars on loans. But in the news its saying 401k's are being liquidated early.

So to my American friends here, do you feel the pinch at the moment?
What about my German friends who don't have Russian energy supplies and can't sell a German car to a chinese buyer anymore?


So ill start. My company has been kind and given me a booster pay rise 2 year ago. That has helped tremendously. As soon after Liz Truss took over UK government and knocked my mortgage up by £200 a month. Unfortunately my renewal came up just after she took office. Talk about a kick in the balls. I'm lucky in that my wife works in a supermarket and gets a good discount. My job lets me work from home 3 or 4 times a month which offsets my fuel costs but then i'm at home revving the shit out of the central heating at home. But i'm lucky, my friends who are largely single are crippled by all of this. It seems the economy doesn't like single men anymore.

Personally I'm at the point now where I believe having a job doesn't mean shit. You could possibly have a job in certain situations where your building negative equity by working. The only way out is to invest, but in what?

I feel that sometime soon (if it hasn't already happened) is that those who are lucky will be subsidizing those who are not lucky. I'm a man in my 50's and possibly one of the oldest here.. so how's life treating you these days?

[BryanM]

This one comes up in the apocalypse thread quite a bit, but sometimes it feels like I'm the only one bringing it up.

A couple years ago we had a year that raised prices on us plebs by 8%. (Something utterly insane, completely unsustainable, and I don't know why people aren't absolutely screaming about it constantly. Just gotta grit your teeth and take it, I guess...) It very much felt like they were clawing back the free Trump n' Biden bux they gave us during the pandemic, and then some. Nowadays a can of beans is like a buck and some change, when it was around $0.50 pre-pandemic.

An annual 4% inflation rate will compound to +50% higher prices over ten years. An annual 8% compounds to +115%.

As for dealing, it's as it ever is. My meals are as cheap as I can stand to make them - if I could survive off of raw flour alone they'd cost me around $0.45 a day. I shudder when the day comes when I'll be reduced to that. (As Grey says, sad thoughts don't go viral. I can understand why no one really wants to talk or think about this shit - denial and "coping" is the only tool we have to deal with doom.)

5 pounds of flour used to be a dollar. Now it's two bucks and some change.

.... that ain't no "8% annual inflation". These shitters have to be doing that thing where they include luxury goods like sports cars and computers in the calculation.

Personally I'm at the point now where I believe having a job doesn't mean shit.

Another thing I'm constantly repeating in the Doom Diary thread.

The unemployment rate is determined by two questions: do you have a job and are you looking for one. So if you're not employed, and not looking for a job, congratulations! You're not unemployed.

The obvious conclusion from that is that the worst possible situation isn't a 100% unemployment rate, because that metric is literally designed to be impossible to get very high. No, it's at a 0% unemployment rate - when nobody believes in the system enough to think that a job is a possible means of improving their lot in life.

The "unemployment rate" of the USA is at 4%. Up from 3.5%. Well-off liberals use this number to pat themselves on the back and say everything is fine. People who actually know what it actually means are not reassured.

(Once again, if you're a liberal, please start using the participation rate. It's at least an objective number that isn't subject to people's feelings - people without jobs are listed as people without jobs there. It's a much better metric.)

As they say, capitalism that's doing ok enough doesn't need fascism. It can coast along on liberalism all day long. Only when shit is falling apart do people ever want to super crank up the boot-stomping and dial the capitalism up to 11. Our politics is all we need to see how well we're doing by that metric.



I guess when historians look back at this era, they'll lump the 2008 bank bailouts into current events. They're as relevant or more than Covid, and the upcoming climate and fuel crises. The possibility of AGI and a machine god are a totally different kettle of fish...

Today I watched a video stating that game collections are losing their worth

Maybe that's from a natural peak of demand. The kids who grew up with the old stuff are now old guys like us. More options than ever for normies to play their own games through official emulation means. Anyone who wanted to go back to the past has gotten it out of their system, mostly.

Like I always mention, you have these big games like Genshin Impact and smaller games like Warframe or Dauntless that cost $0 to play. Fortnite is the future, boxes like Diablo 4 are for dinosaurs. The competition for people's attention is more ruthless than ever.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Food costs have noticeably gone up. It's way, way too expensive to eat out regularly, and even fast food places are very pricy compared to what they were in the past relative to weekly income. I also find that things like soda and flavoured water (I'm a sucker for fizzy flavoured water) is pricy enough that it's not sustainable to purchase it unless it's on sale. I'm fortunate to live in an area with safe, clean tap water at least.

Beans and rice type staple dishes fortunately remain relatively sustainable, and I'm always a sucker for paneer curries as a main protein in a dish rather than meat. It definitely helps the budget to eat a few meals without meat, and it helps that I tend to do that every now and then anyways (we eat way more meat than we probably need to globally...).

[neorichieb1971]

Well it sounds like the both of you have your head above water. Thats a good sign.

Liquidating 401ks and the economy perked up by CC's is what i'm hearing though and that doesn't great for a lot of people. In the UK I'm hearing stuff like "I'm just working to pay bills".

Energy, food and shelter seem to be a localized problem for the UK and our government isn't doing diddly about it. I've always been about average on my salary. My company has just let a few folk loose as our company is struggling in the building sector as interest rates bite hard that nobody is buying property (or the banks just won't lend against property like they used to). I work in the Data center arena and cloud technology is getting cheap enough that its on the agenda to go 100% cloud. I'm safe for now but feel there is a bite in the ass coming my way soon.

It may be a conspiracy theory but I think these wars/conflicts of interest across the world are pushing to make non allies new allies at the expense of the west. USA was no1 all my life, I don't know what a world looks like if it ends up being a sick dog. I think Biden is too much of a idealist to notice much is going on in his backyard.

[SuperDeadite]

Live in Japan. Yen is worth jack shit. Can't buy cool stuff from abroad anymore.... XD

[Sima Tuna]

What I buy at the store depends entirely upon what is on sale. There were many things I had to give up during the pandemic price-jackings. I suppose you all know that what we're experiencing now isn't proper inflation, right? Most of the price hikes are unnecessary. See, during the pandemic, consumers became "accustomed" to paying more because of the supply chain issues. Post-pandemic, those same customers are accustomed to paying that, right? So the inflated price becomes the new floor. Corporations continue jacking up the price and we all continue paying because we're resigned to it.

Well, the result of all this price-jacking is I buy the absolute bottom-dollar, bare-minimum priced stuff and that's what I eat. I eat the cheapest cuts of meat when I eat meat. I buy bread when it's on sale, because I can't afford $4-5 a loaf, nor would I agree to pay that even if I could. I buy fruit based on seasonality and sales. I had to give up nuts completely for a long time, because I couldn't find any that were priced fairly. I think the cheapest nuts, such as peanuts, have started to come down in price slightly. They used to be $4 a pound during peak price gouging. Now I can sometimes find a pound for $2.50 or $2.

Lettuce and cabbage, all your "famine foods" increased in price during the pandemic and haven't gone down. A head of iceberg lettuce was close to $2 at one point, IIRC. Even sale items aren't cheap like they were. The "sale price" is basically just a normal price from before Covid/inflation/gouging. $2 for a loaf of bread isn't anything I used to celebrate over.

I had to mostly give up all canned goods. Canned goods increased dramatically in price. I used to buy canned soups (nice ones) for around $1 per. They went up around $3-4 per and haven't come down. I try to stock up during sale periods but I can't afford them the rest of the time.

Cereal I can only buy on sale. Milk is expensive no matter what. More so if you're lactose-intolerant.

Bryan is absolutely right about the way the employment numbers are manipulated. The better question these politicians should be asking is "what portion of Americans can afford all of their essential needs without borrowing." Simple employment isn't enough if you don't get enough hours or pay to cover all your (rising) costs. And many people have given up on conventional society/employment completely.

TL; DR: Most foods tripled in price pre-pandemic to now. The others merely doubled. Spoiler alert: real wages did not double during the pandemic.

[neorichieb1971]

Its interesting that you put the blame of inflation on the pandemic.

In the UK inflation went to 12% where as the USA was low single digits. Although in saying that the UK had very low grocery prices compared to the USA to start with. You can for example buy quite a few food items for $1 or less in the UK. A loaf of bred is about $1. I honestly think the UK prices are low because pensions are low. The state pension is £812 a month which is a smidge around $1000. If food prices skyrocketted folk would starve to death.

No politician is going to want that on their hands.

Live in Japan. Yen is worth jack shit. Can't buy cool stuff from abroad anymore.... XD

I'm in the opposite camp. I thought i'd go Japan every 3 years if I could. But my job probably has a year on it, maybe more and the exchange is in my favour. Last night I was looking at costing it out and maybe going again in 2024. I just got back in August from Japan with a £1 to Y185 exchange but I stupidly exchanged most of it at Y170 which at the time was a 20 year record. I think at the moment the Yen is at a 40 year low. I also screwed myself by going in August which was extremely warm. If I go again I'll go May-Jun or October.

[BryanM]

One of those poverty tricks is to go for dehydrated milk mix. Milk is ~90% water so the same weight of mix has to cost 10x higher to be a worse deal. The mix doesn't rot in a couple days like milk does; I find it much more effective at making soups/gravies/sauces. A sack of the stuff lasts me two or three months on average.

In the UK inflation went to 12% where as the USA was low single digits. Although in saying that the UK had very low grocery prices compared to the USA to start with. You can for example buy quite a few food items for $1 or less in the UK. A loaf of bred is about $1.

A loaf of bread from the Wal-Mart bakery, not the cheap stale sliced bread crap in the bread aisle, used to be a buck here, too. And that's another thing that doubled in price.

[Sima Tuna]

No bread is $1 in my area. No bread. None. The stores here have a "day-old" bakery section, where they put clearance bread that will soon be at its final sell/consume date. That bread isn't $1 either. It's usually around $3. If you're lucky, you MIGHT find some old bread there for under $2.

I blame the "pandemic" only in the sense that the media told consumers supply chain issues would cause spiraling prices. Then we received spiraling prices. Customers became accustomed to those prices, and so corporations decided to expand that price-hiking scheme long after supply chain and cost issues should have been resolved. Obviously, that's a simplistic take which isn't admitting to the very real possibility some items do continue to be expensive because of supply chain interruptions continuing on from the pandemic, and also from the Ukraine war and any other conflicts which affect global trade. But yes, I do think corporations are making a hell of a lot of money gouging the shit out of customers right now. I'm not talking about luxury purchases here. I'm talking about the bare essentials of life tripling in price. Basic food items.

Meat... Hell, meat starts at $5/pound here for the low quality stuff. You can get cheaper but you'll be shopping the sales (what I do.) Anything else, $5 and up per pound. Cheese is $3.50 a pound on a good day. You'll be lucky to pay that much.

I used to love browsing the bakery and picking up a sourdough loaf or bread bowl for a buck. That went away right quick. Even the $1.50 small ones went away. It's all $3 and up, now.

https://civileats.com/2023/05/22/food-p ... fits-play/

according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, corporate profits accounted for 54 percent of food price increases between 2020 and 2021. For the four decades prior, only 11 percent was attributed to corporate profits, the rest to the cost of labor.

“Basically, what corporations have been able to do—and they brag about this constantly in earnings calls—is that they’ve taken these cost increases and they passed all of that onto consumers,” said Chris Becker, senior economist at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic think tank. “But they’ve been able to go well beyond that and jacked up prices by so much that they’re actually having skyrocketing profit margins. On every unit they’re selling, they’re making a higher share of profits relative to what they’re paying in labor input costs.”

[BryanM]

But we're called conspiracy theorists for claiming the guy with his hand on the price dial is twisting it up...

Free market economics means I can just resort to growing wheat in my small residential plot of land in town, right?

[neorichieb1971]

Oil makes 80 percent of everything. Oil is going up up up. I'd put most of inflation in that camp.

[linko9]

I legit pay 4x more on groceries than 5 years ago. Part of that is no longer living one block from a Trader Joe's, but still wild. And yes, the $10 gallon of organic milk is essential.

[BryanM]

Oil makes 80 percent of everything. Oil is going up up up. I'd put most of inflation in that camp.

They really did just crank up the prices and kept them there. : /

The fuel apocalypse is another wonderful interconnected part of the doom ball. There's a finite amount of the stuff in the ground, and we've been burning it off as fast as we can. A billion years to charge it up, gone in a 150.

The current solution for climate change is to block out the sky Matrix style. Things are going to get much worse before they get worse.

Unless a miracle happens and the robots save us all, for no reason, I guess. Doom is the default state of being sure, but good lord, these times....

Like I've said before, the possibility of the 90's being the peak of human civilization horrifies me.

The doom itself I find reassuring. I watched the propaganda video when I was a kid (Bambi). I know who the people in charge of civilization are. These are the ends their base animal incentives would bring us to. 1+1 = 2, the world continues to make sense.

[Sima Tuna]

So what happens when we use up the last of the oil? I checked and seems we have about 47 more years. So if you're reading this forum and you have kids, your kids may well witness this event. What then?

[neorichieb1971]

I don't see oil itself as the problem, its the mindsets of people that love it.

There is a massive anti "Electric vehicle" stance going on in social media. But what these people don't realise is that sharing the oil burden with electric vehicles actually prolongs the usage of oil.

If everyone uses oil it runs out quicker. Its as simple as that. I would rather the farms, airlines and military use oil based machinery until the impending dooms day exclusively rather than everyone use it and that day come a bit quicker. Some folk don't need a V8 to get their groceries its as simple as that. If you can get by on a EV and you can afford it, go for it.

The other aspect of oil its regional. And just like games we can suffer from region lockout. Its my understanding that the grade of oil that is best used for normal cars/trucks is the heavy kind found in the middle east. That the USA has refineries that are geared specifically for heavy oil standard. Apparently the USA has a different type of oil of a lower grade but their refineries are not geared for it. Correction accordingly to internet there is heavy oil in U.S. mostly in California, Alaska, and Utah. Whether those places are drilling at capacity remains to be seen.

So because we need heavy oil, the US is supplmenting from the middle east. According to the net Biden wants to drill more locally but for whatever reason that doesn't seem to be happening.

Whilst I might be simplifying things. The UK had the greatest empire the world has ever seen under the energy source coal. UK had the best coal, it burnt better than most grades in the world and we made steel, steel made weapons and we took on the world or anyone in our way. In the early 1900's coal moved aside for oil, with oil, the USA grew and grew with the combustion engine and now we have the mighty USA. So when you look at the USA you need to understand its whole success was based on oil. I mean, they were largely unaffected by 2 world wars at least regionally speaking, but most of the jigsaw pieces were in place to boost the USA no end.

But what happens when the USA shits on other countries for decades at a time, puts sanctions everywhere, weaponizes the dollar.. Well what happens is that unions like BRICS come about. What is BRICS. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. Whilst they have been present for 10 years the fruits of their labour are only just coming about. In the past year Saudi Arabia leader of OPEC (Oil producing export countries) have joined and its now called BRICS +. Quite a lot of Africa and even France wanted to join.

So about 3 months ago Saudi agreed to sell oil without using the petro dollar (US dollar). In the past 60 years all oil is sold in US dollars. Sadam Hussein went out on a limb 20 years ago and sold in Euros and got blamed for 911 to justify the military action that went against him. Inflation is fought with interest rate hikes, which the fed have done that. But what happens if Saudi (OPEC) decide to cut oil production at that exact time? Well they sell for a higher price for no other reason that they can.. and they can buy USA bonds at 5%+ interest. Its a checkmate.

So what about today. Well Saudi is selling to China in their currency, Russia is also selling to China in their currency (mostly because of the Ukraine war sanctions). Russia can't offload their energy to Europe anymore as the USA saw to that, so who else to sell your energy to than China who is just next door to Russia. All these mechanisms are avoiding using the dollar so I would imagine it will get weaker in the next year or so. Japan will be screwed because they keep bolstering up the USA by buying USA debt. China historically had the most USA debt but are dumping it billions a week and buying up gold reserves. Because as I understand it when the US dollar weakens, the gold goes up.

So what am I saying :

I believe 2 wars, oil prices kept high by Saudi, some of other bullshit with Taiwan chip making, all this phone technology that Trump tried to ban from China.. I believe its all coming to bite our asses now.

Dollar weakening against gold, Checkmate. Inflation fought with high interest rates whilst oil production is cut, Checkmate. Trying to fight 2 wars whilst your $33.8 TRILLION dollars in debt, Checkmate.

Its just my perception, but I think about 50% of the world is fed up with the USA barking orders and making threats and have joined up to weaken the USA. Biden being President doesn't help he is such an idealist he can't past his own agenda.

So back to oil, yeah its the reason the USA is wealthy. Its not a coincidence that other countries fuelling the USA have woken up and took a stand against the USA. Remember the USA is a mass importer it doesn't make much anymore. That puts the USA at the mercy of whoever is willing to sell to you.

[BryanM]

So what happens when we use up the last of the oil? I checked and seems we have about 47 more years. So if you're reading this forum and you have kids, your kids may well witness this event. What then?

Consequences are likely to be felt sooner than that, and I'm not entirely joking about the Dick Cheney immortality serum thing. We've got a pretty good shot of getting a front row seat.

Assuming a technological singularity doesn't suck us into a black hole where we all live in elon cubes forced to solve rubix cubes for the rest of eternity, there's two basic futures ahead of us:

One where alternative energy sources work out, mostly. Maybe thorium fission reactors work out. Things will remain mostly the same, though to speculate on what it means for plastics and cement would need someone actually versed in materials fabrication.

(You can read about how the research on that over at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was shuttered on behest of Nixon's corpo pals. Who wanted to pocket the money from the submarine reactor design as-is, and had no interest in what was the best way to make a reactor on land. The space shuttle held back our space program for over 30 years. If thorium reactors are serviceable, canceling research into them back then is arguably the single most evil thing anyone has done. (Accelerationists would say the same thing about stalling AI research today.))

The other, we revert back to burning wood. The steam engine and trains become absolutely core again. Personal travel reverts back to horses. Farming reverts back to the primary profession, as everyone spends all their time on not-starving. Civilization basically peaks. We effectively regress to a world looking like The Postman.

[neorichieb1971]

We can't go back to the 1800's without a super huge drop in population. The machines that oil brought us gave us more time to breed. Like I said 80% of everything is oil made, that includes people.

After oil, regions will become largely independent of each other, since without oil things just don't make sense the way they are now.

[null1024]

Buying groceries is like fucking pulling teeth. Everything is expensive at the grocery. I am probably spending twice as much as I did like three years ago, with no corresponding pay increase.
The price at the pump sucks too, but food costs have absolutely been fucking me more than anything else by far.

I also started avoiding Walgreens and the gas station convenience store and shit because they jacked their prices up even higher than the grocery did. Just absolutely wretched pricing.

[neorichieb1971]

Buying groceries is like fucking pulling teeth. Everything is expensive at the grocery. I am probably spending twice as much as I did like three years ago, with no corresponding pay increase.
The price at the pump sucks too, but food costs have absolutely been fucking me more than anything else by far.

I also started avoiding Walgreens and the gas station convenience store and shit because they jacked their prices up even higher than the grocery did. Just absolutely wretched pricing.

You paint a bad picture of life. It seems to only affect some people either politically or financially.. The rest of the quiet ones are just taking up the ass or are just too rich to notice it. I did a little shop yesterday it was supposed to be milk, eggs and bread and anything else we took a liking to. It ended up costing £77 and was discounted to £64 due to bulk buy deals. I said to the mrs we only came out for a quick shop and we've spent nigh on $100.

[spmbx]

So what happens when we use up the last of the oil? I checked and seems we have about 47 more years. So if you're reading this forum and you have kids, your kids may well witness this event. What then?

That figure is kinda random though, since i think it's based on current consumption, and based on current proven and current (economic) viability of extraction. So it might as well turn out to be 100. One thing is sure that it's finite though.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Well it sounds like the both of you have your head above water. Thats a good sign.

I'd suspect that's in part because I'm fortunate to be in a dual income, no kids situation. I'm not sure how I'd manage if had kids to look after or put through school and college/university. The housing market is absolutely insane, and I look back on what income was vs costs when I was a teenager and with the skyrocketing housing and food costs it all feels radically different.

[BulletMagnet]

“Basically, what corporations have been able to do—and they brag about this constantly in earnings calls—is that they’ve taken these cost increases and they passed all of that onto consumers,” said Chris Becker, senior economist at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic think tank. “But they’ve been able to go well beyond that and jacked up prices by so much that they’re actually having skyrocketing profit margins.

Beyond even this, it's worth remembering that not only are individual corporations constantly inflating prices well beyond what they could possibly need to simply pass increasing production costs on to consumers, but entire sectors of companies supposedly in competition with each other are actually colluding to ensure that no matter what happens everyone raises their prices simultaneously to deprive the public of any real means of "voting with their wallets". One recent standout is Cal-Maine, the largest egg producer in the US, which publicly cited avian flu as the reason its prices skyrocketed alongside everyone else's, even as it boasted in its own quarterly report that not a single one of its farms had a single case. This being what it is, it shouldn't surprise you that they and their competitors were already doing this decades ago.

I know this is the sort of rant that belongs in The Other Thread, but it really, really bears repeating, because some folks still don't seem to see it: when you vote for "pro-business" candidates and policies this sort of wanton, unaccountable behavior is precisely what you are giving the green light to. If prices are rising and alternatives are vanishing it's not because companies are being held back by regulation - it's because they're not.

As far as personal experience goes, I don't have a heck of a lot to add to what others have already recounted; things have eased up somewhat but are still considerably less affordable than they were mere months ago, and now that this price-gouging profitability is the new "normal" for shareholders it'll never go back again unless it's outright forced to. Coping-wise I find myself stocking up on discounted items, particularly canned goods and other stuff that lasts awhile, and sponging off of them once the brief respite ends, though unfortunately not everyone has even the meager wherewithal needed to follow suit.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

If prices are rising and alternatives are vanishing it's not because companies are being held back by regulation - it's because they're not.

Sadly, voters have shown a tendency to be swayed by outright fabrications, and the political parties which lie and claim the problem is market regulation are somehow believed, despite it being very easy to point to numerous examples of the necessity of market regulation for both price control and consumer safety. Of course, the political parties pushing most heavily the false narrative that market deregulation is a moral good do so because it makes them and their investors more money to have the market deregulated, allowing for cutthroat capitalist business operations.

The idea of operating a socialist capitalist system where it's capitalism but with strong social underpinnings as seen in many healthy European countries is a more and more alien thing to Americans who genuinely think that operating a healthcare system for-profit is somehow a good thing. People are so used to living without adulterated foods that they don't fully appreciate the increase in standard of living that strong market regulation has brought them. China still sadly regularly has deaths from poisonings due to adulterated stuff like milk or baby formula; that's exactly the sort of thing that market regulation and food safety enforcement prevent.

The same thing's happened with vaccinations; people have forgotten the horrors of diseases like measles, rubella, and polio, and so completely ignore the usefulness of the technology we used to mostly rid ourselves of them. You would think that any society that's experienced something as awful as polio would understand the importance of mass vaccination to prevent the spread of diseases, but we went through such a long period of no major mass epidemics that conspiracy theories were able to take hold, and the next major infectious disease ran through society unchecked, spurred on in large part by people who refused to get vaccinated.

[GaijinPunch]

I'm quite a frugal person by nature. During the 2008 cluster fuck when I was making dollars and living in yen, and the yen was quite literally, 2x the value it was just last week, I had to learn to tweak my lifestyle. I realized I was spending money on shit I really just didn't care about. I was getting a couple of coffees a day from the Starbucks across from work. They were $4 at one point, and a few months later they were $5. And they didn't taste good. I started doing a lot of purse string tightening which helped.

I'm in a much better place financially now, but I still have some seriously high costs. So, I'm back to looking at what do I enjoy and at what price. I've been buying and making my own coffee since WFH, but now I'm trying to buy it in bulk, and not splurging on some of the more ridiculous brands. Alcohol is another one that I've very recently had a come to Jesus talk with myself about. If I have a bottle of scotch, I'll have 2-3 a night until it's gone. At a very minimum of $40 a bottle, it's not great on the wallet. More importantly, I'm trying to stay at my ideal fucking weight and at just south of 50, it's a challenge. So, I'm drinking way less. Even took November off entirely, which all parts of my body needed.

Other things that don't plague me but b/c I'm lucky: I drive very little. I filled up my gas tank about once a month on average since the pandemic started. I have another friend that lives in SF, and drives to Redwood City where my office *was*. At one point she was at $400 a month for gas. That it is a massive cost I've not had to deal with. W/ California taxes in a moderate bracket that's probably $7500 or so on your salary needed to break even.

Rents are also down in SF. I've put in a formal request to my management company for a rent reduction but I've not heard back. Time to ping them. If they continue to fuck around I will move. I can save $300/mo it seems, but have to deal w/ the ball ache of moving, and probably pay close to a grand.

So yeah, I definitely feel it. It's not affected my quality of life, but I've remained employed and have been fortunate enough to tweak my situation. If you were already struggling to make ends meet, it would be very tough times.

[BryanM]

when you vote for "pro-business" candidates and policies this sort of wanton, unaccountable behavior is precisely what you are giving the green light to.

I mean, who can you vote for that ISN'T pro-business? In a general election where they might actually win?

Like I've said before, we're fundamentally fucked as a species.

... sigh, I used to defend the democrats on the internet, despite never voting for or liking them. "It's as good as we'll be allowed to get." You'd never recognize me back then, BM. I vigorously defended Obama sometimes from disingenuous conservatives ~2009. Pointing out that "Chicago politics" was effectively a slur, because it implies there's something different (gee, I wonder what) about that city's politics, versus politics everywhere else. Which there isn't.

Capital has its hand firmly up their bums. Caring about politicians is as useful and intelligent as getting angry over King Friday...

... I've firmly reverted to believing technology, not politics, will be the primary driver of change. Everything could be on fire, everyone could be starving, and we'll still re-elect Donald Trump's corpse for the sixth or eighth time or whatever.

Sadly, voters have shown a tendency to be swayed by outright fabrications

I honestly just feel pity for these people. They're not human to me, but that's why they make me feel so damn sad.

Who are we to judge them for believing the things they've been told all their lives? Mr.Burns whispers in their ear from cradle to grave. They want to believe their individual actions matter. That they're not heavily controlled by the whims of systems. They want to believe that the people in power could be "good", that reality can't possibly be as bad as these noisy doomers claim it to be.

Selling people on what they want to hear is the easiest trick in the book. Nobody got rich telling people things they didn't want to hear.

It all reminds me of how I'd play a Risk game when I was little kid. "Don't mind me and Australia. We're just hanging out here, doing nothing to nobody. Don't worry about me, worry about the others. See all those guys I got in Indonesia? It's my whole freaking army! Yeah, you don't want to mess with that, it's not even worth it man trust me."

How many people even understand that homelessness and crime aren't "problems", they're intentional features that serve a useful purpose. Fear is a fantastic way to herd animals.

[neorichieb1971]

Do you know what all this leads to?

No kids.

Nobody wants to bring up kids in a shoe box room that costs $£1200 a month.

In the end it will mean most will go through life without off spring, so thats another issue and it seems to be affecting loads of countries. It will take time to see, but its a lot of shooting of the foot now with consequences later.

[BryanM]

Haha, yeah that's... that's uh another apocalypse. Population collapse. That's come up a lot too... (God there are so many apocalypses even I - a doomy apocalypse connoisseur - am having trouble keeping track of them all.)

I remember posting about South Korea being the vanguard of this. It seems like they're down to 0.78 kids per woman. For a steady population you need around 2.1 children per woman.

South Korea might be the hardest hit, but pretty much all wealthy first world countries are like this now.

[GaijinPunch]

Do you know what all this leads to?

No kids.

This is Japan in a nutshell. 40,000 yen for a fucking backpack.

[neorichieb1971]

Do you know what all this leads to?

No kids.

This is Japan in a nutshell. 40,000 yen for a fucking backpack.

What the hell? I went in August to Japan (too hot but thats another story) I never saw much extragavance in prices like that (except games). I always thought Japan is losing population because of home sizes and prices.

I think Japan has its own cultural issues with sex, relationships, socializing and stuff like that on top of its economic woes which seem to get worse by the month. I don't really understand the economic part though as when I'm in Asia almost every car is a Toyota. I mean like 70 to 80% of cars are Toyotas. Thats got to boost some sort of economy for Japan. I believe South Korea has hit Japan hard in the electronics sector and apparently thats due to price and marketting. I heard a rumour that Sony still makes the best products but its only flagship sector for profit is in the Playstation brand.

I'm ready to buy Japanese product but it needs to be cheaper. I used to own flagship Pioneer Hi fi equipment, Sony Trinitrons and Panasonic camcorders. I don't own any of that now. So I can imagine other folk might have gone down that same road.

[spmbx]

Population decline is kindof the elephant in the room and is what is needed. The only problem is decline is not setting in in all regions at the same pace, so that'll give huge problems in the next decades.