Using Plastic To Buy Junk (Food)
Did you know that McDonalds is now the second largest merchant vendor for credit card use?
What does that tell us about the state of the economy? It tells us that people don’t even have the cash to buy a burger and fries!
What is going to happen if the proposed cuts in lines of credit take place? The talk is of credit card companies slashing lines of credit by two thirds.
Credit card spending is shooting for the moon as consumers, (wait, strike that . We are more than consumers, we are living, breathing, feeling people), as people are forced to put most of their expenditures onto plastic.
Credit card balances have risen more in the last 10 weeks than they did in the last 10 months combined and now the plan is to pull over 2 trillion dollars of credit lines.
What this means is that the rug is going to be pulled out from under you. The safety net that you were relying on to to see you through any rough times will be gone.
What will you do if you lose your job and your available credit is somewhere near zero?
This system that we played so happily in, for so long - I can buy what I want, yes I can, cus I got money from the plastic man! - is now squeezing us hard. The shocks are coming hard and fast and no end, no relief is in sight.
This is the time to plan how you are going to survive this catastrophe. Those of us who saw the writing on the wall some time ago, have been storing food and buying equipment to enable us to become more self sufficient. Instead of watching tv or wandering around the mall with plastic in hand, we’ve been learning how to grow food and figuring out how to cut our expenses to the bone.
I’m not going to be standing in line, waiting for food to feed my children. I’ve got some land and we can (with a lot of work) provide sustenance. I’ve got trees growing that will be cut for firewood for the woodstove, when our current 3 year supply runs out and you can bet that I’ll be planting some more too.
We’re building an enclosure for the chickens that we are getting next week, our neighbor is giving us a rooster, that is meat and eggs covered. Right after Christmas we will plant seeds in starter pots so that they are ready for planting out in early February.
We lost some fruit and nut trees to the seizure of some of our land for road construction, so we need to replant those, the apple, peach and plum trees will take a couple of years to start producing, the almond trees will take 5 or 6. Luckily we planted 10 more almond trees from seed 4 years ago so they will hopefully produce soon but they won’t produce anywhere near the quantities that we got from the old trees, for many years .
We are thinking about getting a couple of goats, we should get them, they will give us milk (and butter and cheese), they will eat weeds and save us a lot of mowing, especially on steep banks which have to be cut with a trimmer.
I’ve got my solar water heating (mostly) sorted out.
My point in describing my plans to you is this. Don’t wait for some politician to come to the rescue, don’t wait for the bankers (funny how that rhymes with w….) to turn the credit taps on again (not going to happen). Don’t react. ACT.
If you don’t have any land, band together with your neighbors and start a community garden or farm, you can provide food for yourselves and sell surplus to the rest of your community. Sell for less than the big stores and you’ll be doing everyone a favour. Get some chickens and goats, maybe a pig or 10 on there too.
If local ordinances give you trouble, then get them overturned. You are the people that local government is meant to serve. Your needs should shape the policies. Government serves you, you don’t serve it!
Get the issue on the agenda of the next town/city council meeting and get the rules changed. While you’re at it, if you are persecuted by the no line drying rule, get that vanity serving rule thrown out too. Who cares if some uptight snobs think washing lines look untidy. Those rules belong to the era of cheap electricity (which is over), to a time when most of us didn’t know or didn’t care about the pollution that our daily activities unleashed. Well we know now and I hope enough of us care.
Don’t end up in a food line where you will be part of the problem, get active now and be part of the solution.
How will you feel when your kids are hungry and your credit card gets declined at YukDonalds?
What will you do to put food on the table?
Will you try and take what doesn’t belong to you from people who worked hard to get their act together?
Don’t go down that road because people who have been preparing certainly did not forget to stock up on measures to defend themselves and their property.
