Shortages

[Kapitan]

My question about growing food was on an individual basis, rather than on a mass scale. That is - can the average 30-yr old suburbanite or 50-yr old city dweller figure out how to grow enough food to survive, preserve for the winter, or slaughter their own meat in the face of an extended shortage situation that could turn into an extended lack of civilization situation? Likely not - many people don't even know that pork was once a pig - they just see already butchered packages of meat in a store.

To be honest being a "city boy" ive been know to kill the odd cactus so I don't give much hope of me growing food stuffs, id bet it would be the same for most people.

I have been in supermarkets where moms and dads have said to kids do you know where milk comes from? yeah mommy from a carton in tesco so again not much hope.

As covid lockdowns continue, shortages may escalate. At some point, some natural event (Hurricane Ida here in the US, for example) will knock out electricity for an extended period of time, or shut down some essential industry that supplies the rest of a region, country, or the world. That then further exacerbates shortages down the line. I don't know how long it'll actually take to recover from that type of cascading failure.

On the maritime scale were looking at being back to normal provided nothing else happens by around late Q1 2022 maybe Q2 2022 that gives you an idea of how out of sync we are, thats important as 90% of world trade is done via sea, and the majority of food stuffs is shipped by sea.
Note this is in a perfect situation IE no more lock downs, no natural disasters and no covid.

The question is when do things like shortages expand into full-blown societal breakdown? Do we need a breakdown to get western nations off of the "order it from Amazon, if it breaks we'll get another one" built-in obsolescence cheap Chinese production consumerism?

Amazons core distribution is based on transport road and air predominantly, with a limited amount via sea, so if they are all out of sync you can bet even the mighty Amazon will (and is) suffering.

Naturally it is a scale of economics, its cheaper to import products from China because labor is so cheap so western economies cant compete product for product.
In Canada its cheaper to buy saudi oil and ship it to Vancouver than it is to get it out of the ground in Alberta.

How do you increase real wages of average people, spur growth in production to end shortages, and stop the throw-away model that western society is in right now?

You need a throw away culture in order to spur growth and product development, take the early 1900's as a prime example how many times have you heard "in my day things were built to last" well that is one reason the crash of 1929 happened consumers stopped buying because they had all they wanted.
Products went unsold because the consumer simply said well i have one of these it works I don't need another.
With that mindset we would all still be driving model T fords and using a washer and dryer inherited from our grand parents, the throw away culture has led to growth and spending in a domestic economy.
Having the latest gadget has become all the rage take I phone for example every so often a new phone and they stop supporting the old ones, then they go on big marketing campaigns and if you haven't got the latest gadget your stuck in the past almost vilified for it.

The western capitalist model is based on debt, it uses fractional reserve banking to create money from nothing, without the issuance of loans the banking houses couldn't create currency, when they issue a loan they create currency from nothing, hence why we have a FIAT monetary system that's not tied to a commodity. (1971 president nixon decided that one)

As to housing costs and wages - that seems to be a significant issue in every Western democracy. People have continued seeking more and more education in the hopes of increasing their earning potential. In countries where higher education is "free," it's at the expense of the taxpayer. In a place like the US, the phenomenon of "federal loans" means that costs will rise to meet what they can get from the person incurring the loan. The result, in either case, is a larger percentage of people staying in school far longer, resulting in incurring a larger initial debt or reducing their wage-earning years. I can't speak to other countries, but here in the US, you could graduate from a high school in any state and be ready to enter an apprenticeship, find a blue-collar job making a living wage, or go to college with the expectation of having an academic career or graduating with marketable additional skills. You could, up until the probably 1980s, earn a living wage and raise a family on just a high school diploma and a single earner. Now? Colleges and trade schools have to teach remedial math and english before they can teach job skills or a course of academic study. We have people with college degrees in worthless courses of study who can't get a job. We have two-income families (each earning a high 5-figure or low 6-figure salary) living paycheck to paycheck.

I agree with your statement here, I think the swiss have it about right they cap the number of people doing degrees and further education to 20% of the graduating year.
This means you have to be very good at all your subjects to be considered for a place in a swiss university and also critically the majority of places are for swiss citizens only.

After all the more degrees you give out the less value a degree has, in many western countries now you can get a degree in just about anything.
Brighton UK university was offering a degree in surfing I do believe, I mean what exactly will a surfing degree get you?
And if your having to go back and do remedial math's and English before doing a degree course or having to do it alongside a degree then realistically isn't that saying something about your lower education system?

The degree I did was meant for my profession, its actually very niche so its tailored to transport logistics and supply chain.
I don't have the best grades from high school, the only reason I was able to even do the degree was because I have time in service in the profession which qualified me.

Two income families earning the average UK wage £25,000 per year each will be saving for atleast 12-15 years just for a deposit and likely they would have had to live with their parents before striking out, anyone who was trying to do that renting has very little chance.

Government says that 2% inflation is healthy in reality if you have 2% inflation per year and wage stagnation year on year you loose 2% of your purchasing power as a consumer, so is it healthy of course not.

I have to say though those who choose to do university education should pay for it, it should not be subsidized by the tax payer.
Yes the debt is like a millstone around your neck for years but why should someone who has little hope of getting into a university thus likely to earn a lower wage for life have to subsidies those that do go to university and likely go on to be earning more than the average wage.

I also think the individual has to take some responsibility as well, many of my generation (I think I'm a millennial 1988) seem to think it is there right to free education, housing, jobs etc well they need to understand its not a right its a privilege.
Many of my old school friends went to university got degrees and masters came out and because they couldn't get a job in the field they studied just didn't work citing its not the job I want or qualified for.

I have done jobs I never wanted to do because the money was more important than anything else, its only now I am doing the further education.
The key point here is I am doing it now because I can pay for it without incurring the massive debt.

In reality the friends that I had that went to University became detached from reality, I cant have that car because it doesn't fit my status, or I can only live in this area and my house has to be £500,000 or more and stuff like that.
My Mrs was of that same mind, when we got approved for a house here in Canada the bank said yep your good to $475,000 my eyes popped in shock, but she was ready to go by that house for $475,000.
It was only when she realized that we would have very little hope of paying it all back before we died that she came onto my wave length, We don't live in the city where a shoe box costs half a million, but what we do have is 3 lots and a 4 bedroom house at $175,000 and a mortgage that's affordable.
The house I have if it was in Winnipeg would be close to a million, so yes we made sacrifices.

I guess I came at it from a different approach I did what was needed to be done, I saved up, lived where I needed to live even if I didn't like it and then worked my way up to where I am now.

Yes I have debt, I do have a mortgage, I do have a line of credit and I do have a vehicle loan, however my income and out going balance up and I still make enough to save money.

The entire system needs a re think and not just in the UK Canada or the USA but globally, if I can figure this out and make it work then why cant no one else?

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

To be honest being a "city boy" ive been know to kill the odd cactus so I don't give much hope of me growing food stuffs, id bet it would be the same for most people.

I have been in supermarkets where moms and dads have said to kids do you know where milk comes from? yeah mommy from a carton in tesco so again not much hope.



On the maritime scale were looking at being back to normal provided nothing else happens by around late Q1 2022 maybe Q2 2022 that gives you an idea of how out of sync we are, thats important as 90% of world trade is done via sea, and the majority of food stuffs is shipped by sea.
Note this is in a perfect situation IE no more lock downs, no natural disasters and no covid.



Amazons core distribution is based on transport road and air predominantly, with a limited amount via sea, so if they are all out of sync you can bet even the mighty Amazon will (and is) suffering.

Naturally it is a scale of economics, its cheaper to import products from China because labor is so cheap so western economies cant compete product for product.
In Canada its cheaper to buy saudi oil and ship it to Vancouver than it is to get it out of the ground in Alberta.



You need a throw away culture in order to spur growth and product development, take the early 1900's as a prime example how many times have you heard "in my day things were built to last" well that is one reason the crash of 1929 happened consumers stopped buying because they had all they wanted.
Products went unsold because the consumer simply said well i have one of these it works I don't need another.
With that mindset we would all still be driving model T fords and using a washer and dryer inherited from our grand parents, the throw away culture has led to growth and spending in a domestic economy.
Having the latest gadget has become all the rage take I phone for example every so often a new phone and they stop supporting the old ones, then they go on big marketing campaigns and if you haven't got the latest gadget your stuck in the past almost vilified for it.

The western capitalist model is based on debt, it uses fractional reserve banking to create money from nothing, without the issuance of loans the banking houses couldn't create currency, when they issue a loan they create currency from nothing, hence why we have a FIAT monetary system that's not tied to a commodity. (1971 president nixon decided that one)



I agree with your statement here, I think the swiss have it about right they cap the number of people doing degrees and further education to 20% of the graduating year.
This means you have to be very good at all your subjects to be considered for a place in a swiss university and also critically the majority of places are for swiss citizens only.

After all the more degrees you give out the less value a degree has, in many western countries now you can get a degree in just about anything.
Brighton UK university was offering a degree in surfing I do believe, I mean what exactly will a surfing degree get you?
And if your having to go back and do remedial math's and English before doing a degree course or having to do it alongside a degree then realistically isn't that saying something about your lower education system?

The degree I did was meant for my profession, its actually very niche so its tailored to transport logistics and supply chain.
I don't have the best grades from high school, the only reason I was able to even do the degree was because I have time in service in the profession which qualified me.

Two income families earning the average UK wage £25,000 per year each will be saving for atleast 12-15 years just for a deposit and likely they would have had to live with their parents before striking out, anyone who was trying to do that renting has very little chance.

Government says that 2% inflation is healthy in reality if you have 2% inflation per year and wage stagnation year on year you loose 2% of your purchasing power as a consumer, so is it healthy of course not.

I have to say though those who choose to do university education should pay for it, it should not be subsidized by the tax payer.
Yes the debt is like a millstone around your neck for years but why should someone who has little hope of getting into a university thus likely to earn a lower wage for life have to subsidies those that do go to university and likely go on to be earning more than the average wage.

I also think the individual has to take some responsibility as well, many of my generation (I think I'm a millennial 1988) seem to think it is there right to free education, housing, jobs etc well they need to understand its not a right its a privilege.
Many of my old school friends went to university got degrees and masters came out and because they couldn't get a job in the field they studied just didn't work citing its not the job I want or qualified for.

I have done jobs I never wanted to do because the money was more important than anything else, its only now I am doing the further education.
The key point here is I am doing it now because I can pay for it without incurring the massive debt.

In reality the friends that I had that went to University became detached from reality, I cant have that car because it doesn't fit my status, or I can only live in this area and my house has to be £500,000 or more and stuff like that.
My Mrs was of that same mind, when we got approved for a house here in Canada the bank said yep your good to $475,000 my eyes popped in shock, but she was ready to go by that house for $475,000.
It was only when she realized that we would have very little hope of paying it all back before we died that she came onto my wave length, We don't live in the city where a shoe box costs half a million, but what we do have is 3 lots and a 4 bedroom house at $175,000 and a mortgage that's affordable.
The house I have if it was in Winnipeg would be close to a million, so yes we made sacrifices.

I guess I came at it from a different approach I did what was needed to be done, I saved up, lived where I needed to live even if I didn't like it and then worked my way up to where I am now.

Yes I have debt, I do have a mortgage, I do have a line of credit and I do have a vehicle loan, however my income and out going balance up and I still make enough to save money.

The entire system needs a re think and not just in the UK Canada or the USA but globally, if I can figure this out and make it work then why cant no one else?

I think that the entire western economic model is irretrievably broken - going back to when we came off the gold standard. Not by itself, but when you have fractional reserve banking with nothing to peg real value against, it's a problem.

Now, there is no real definition of what constitutes a living wage in any given country since it's all one currency pegged to another. Best we can do is pegging it to the value of a barrel of oil. And we saw how that value went into the negative region last year "We'll pay you to take a barrel of this oil." That oil has a real value that is obviously out of synch with it's speculated price.

And that is likely also part of the problem - market speculation that has nothing to do with the actual value of commodities or company stocks - but how you can manipulate things based upon temporary changes in reserve currency exchange rates.

Fully agree that entitlement is a problem. I did ok in high school - good grades with college scholarships offered (but not completely paid for). High school was not a big challenge. I knew that if went right into college, Is probably not do well. So I joined the navy, became a nuclear trained janitor, got out, completed a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 3.5 years instead of the normal 5, and have been employed ever since. I make a very good salary. My wife, with 20+ years as a school teacher, makes a very good salary.

Combined, we are considered in the upper middle class, strictly from a wage-earning standpoint. But, we bought our first house in 2005 at the height of the market before the 2008 crash. We had to pay, between having to put a new roof and septic and boiler, and the difference in sale price vs mortgage balance, close to $75,000 when we sold and moved to a townhouse in a town with better schools for our kids. We also live in a state that has income tax and with very high property taxes.

Our "real" buying power is a fraction of what it could be. Someone living in a lower cost of living state, making our salary, would likely be able to afford a palatial estate. When we were looking at buying our new house, we were approved for a mortgage that was insane, but the price point for a single family home in that office range only offered homes in need of significant work or that were smaller than we needed. We ended up deciding on a townhome because of this. The mortgage company was like "You're only spendi g $300k but we approved you go to $500k. Why not get more house?" We explained that our original plans were to throw $50k as a down payment to lower the mortgage and buy more house since we could finance the entire loan since it was a VA loan, but we couldn't due to the costs to get out of our old home - so anything in a single family that was still at or below $500k wasn't worth the asking price. They looked at us like we were crazy for not taking on more debt than we were comfortable with. Spend $3000/month on a mortgage? No thanks.

People see the price, and forget that you're still having to pay for property taxes and insurance, so a base monthly mortgage payment is possibly double what you think it will be. There are people who are mortgaged to the hilt to have a giant home and an expensive car - but they have nothing in the home and are eating instant ramen...

[Kapitan]

Fully agree with your sentiments, to me its about show and keeping up with the Jones.

I have nice things because I'm lucky an accident of birth if you will, i had a very good job in the UK paying a lot of money so i could afford the nice cars others my age could not.
But that was hard work doing at least 80-90 hours a week, i find a lot of people these days want to be doing 35 hours a week and earning a million a month.

A close friend of mine said that I had it easy and that her job was stressful, she worked 32 hours a week, so when I chirped up and said what do you do the rest of the week she was like well I don't.

We had a little experiment back in March 2018 i said to her you can come work with me for two weeks and she did for 3 days before saying its too much, after that she filly understood why I earnt so much, at the end of day 3 I was already on 42-45 hours worth and this was just my middle of the week.

Point is there's a living wage and a wage, living wage should be paid to the people as a matter of course.
Having done a very high paced job I can understand why bankers and the likes get large bonuses and perks its very simple they are pulling 20 hour days a lot of the time so they sacrifice a lot to make a wage and rightfully should be paid accordingly for the skill set.

(I don't condone their greed though when it comes to stuff like market crashes)

[Catfish]

Seems there is a general shortage of workers, lots of news in the german tv channels yesterday.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-...shire-58410363

This was also in the news yesterday, water purification in England cut to make up for lack of disinfectants, supply chain failure
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...mical-shortage

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19...ical-shortage/

And empty shelves..

https://metro.co.uk/2021/09/03/food-...sues-15202901/

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-...ec-2021-09-09/

Not good news. I take it, while it is not the only reason, brexit does have an impact.

EU workers are still denied to work in the UK. Some will not even want to come back after brexit and this special experience, especially when loans are so low, and while they have to apply for a visum now. And to be honest England is not exactly making it easy getting working visa even now, certainly due to brexit and national politics behind it.

So train UK citizens to make up for losses of whatever cause of course, but 1. takes a lot of time and 2. some will not want to do the work foreigners did before.
Same here of course. I take it the EU can compensate and balance for a while, but in the end brexit and driver shortage will also have an impact here.

And if this all was not enough yet, gas prices are soaring in whole Europe with gas reserves being already tapped early in september. The winter is said to become brutal
https://electroverse.net/uk-fires-up...rtage-worsens/

the UK is thinking about firing up coal plants; gas prices never were that high in Germany. Maybe North Stream II was not the badest of ideas.

Now what could be done against all this in a short time.. preventing bad decisions in the future, or at least thinking beforehand, will not help now.


B.t.w. where are Farage and Cummings?

Nigel does a tv show with the usual right wing hate paroles
"GB News is positioning itself quite openly as a nationalist television channel that propagates the war of cultures and tries to score points with topics such as illegal immigration and transgender lobbyism. So that's why Nigel Farage. He should fix it."
https://translate.google.com/transla...sten-1.5365184

Cummings is miffed about he had to leave before he could make Johnson lave
"Speaking of Brexit, Cummings said no one could know if it was a good idea to leave the EU . "I think anyone who claims to be certain about it has a screw loose," said the ex-advisor.
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/...-17446978.html

[Kapitan]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Seems there is a general shortage of workers, lots of news in the german tv channels yesterday.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-...shire-58410363

This was also in the news yesterday, water purification in England cut to make up for lack of disinfectants, supply chain failure
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...mical-shortage

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19...ical-shortage/

And empty shelves..

https://metro.co.uk/2021/09/03/food-...sues-15202901/

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-...ec-2021-09-09/

Not good news. I take it, while it is not the only reason, brexit does have an impact.

EU workers are still denied to work in the UK. Some will not even want to come back after brexit and this special experience, especially when loans are so low, and while they have to apply for a visum now. And to be honest England is not exactly making it easy getting working visa even now, certainly due to brexit and national politics behind it.

So train UK citizens to make up for losses of whatever cause of course, but 1. takes a lot of time and 2. some will not want to do the work foreigners did before.
Same here of course. I take it the EU can compensate and balance for a while, but in the end brexit and driver shortage will also have an impact here.

Now what could be done against this in a short time..

I do agree we need to do something in the short term, back in the 1980's the government used to fund class 1 licenses and that overcame a lot of issues in the transport industry back then, something similar could be applied again.
That funding proved its weight in gold because many who gained their class 1 on that scheme still drive today and haven't been out of work since thus a net contribution based from government subsidy.

Right now we have a 5.6% unemployment rate, if there's so many jobs why is the unemployment rate so high? well yes many people don't want to do the jobs migrants have done, but you know what why should I or You the tax payer subsidize them because they don't want to work?
If there are jobs out there even as a stop gap they should be applying oddly its a condition on their unemployment benefit so I'm told, yes its harsh and yes its unpopular but I do think its high time to get the ones who are freeloading off the system into the work place.

As Humphry Appleby said oddly I find him quite correct on how to deal with unemployment

Brexit has had an impact I don't deny that, but again a lot of our food comes in via container (even from the EU), either deep sea or short sea.
With a massive global log jam of containers and ships being out of position it has created havoc in the just in time method not just in the UK as noted earlier its here in Canada and the USA as well, I also have colleges in Denmark, Germany, Turkey, Poland, Estonia all reporting shortages of food and drivers so yes its affecting the EU as well as the UK.

A lot of our issues and just like the EU have done, we downsized our warehousing in the 1990's thus were unable to stockpile because we became so heavily reliant on the just in time method, most goods spend just hours in a warehouse not days or weeks like they did back in the 1990's.
Warehousing is a severe problem note the lack of not just in the UK but many other countries using the JIT method.

The UK is also not big on rail freight and for good reason, we don't have the capacity on the rail network to ship in the volumes other EU countries do, our network is set up for passenger transport not goods, in fact rail accounts for only 8% of goods moved in the UK, on comparison Germany and France do much better in this field than us.

The chemical (Liquid Naphthalene UN1993) they use in water purification comes in to Fawley Southampton at Nalco via ocean going tanker (post panamax and VLCC) This product doesn't come from the EU it comes from Canada, it is railed around the country and taken by road or onwards by sea in coasters, so not a brexit issue here more of a tanker problem caused by covid, don't forget a lot of crews were trapped onboard their ships during 2020 some still are!

In the short to medium term we should open up a points bases immigration system like Canada USA Australia uses and allow people based on what we need to come to work in the UK, and we should offer a permanent resident system so after 2 years you can claim permanent resident status giving them leave to remain indefinitely (those who already have more than 2 years and can prove it should get it automatically without doing another 2 years).

To get a visa to go to Canada while we were in the EU was challenging for normal people, same with the USA and Australia, a lot of younger people have now seen that because were out of the EU it has become easier.
The biggest concern for the USA was anyone and everyone could go to the UK change passports and get into the USA which is why they had so many restrictions even though the UK was on the visa wavier program.

Even I had nightmares getting the green card having to prove I was born in the UK while many who held a UK passport born outside the UK were denied, so in one respect it has freed up travel to these countries (not that it was too difficult in the first place mind).

Overall we do need to sort out the unemployed in the UK at 5.6% according to the figures well there shouldn't be a shortage in a lot of industries.
I had to do jobs i hated why should the people who don't want to work be any different.
Unfortunately the welfare culture in the UK has got to the point of if i go to work I get less money I'm better off on state handouts.

Naturally there are genuine people out there who cannot work for various reasons and its those I feel sorry for, because its those who actually need the help and unfortunately its those who want to simply sit and sponge of the state that really screw it up for the genuine ones.

[Catfish]

"The hard reality of Brexit is hitting Britain. It's costing everyone but Boris Johnson"

" [...] While food shortages have been common in many countries over the course of the pandemic, Brown believes that one issue unique to the UK is making life extra painful: Brexit.

[...]
First, a lack of truck drivers, who take fresh items like cauliflowers to and from freezing facilities, meant that the ESG cooperative at one stage had to throw away a week's worth of production, at an estimated cost of £1 million ($1.4 million).
Second, Brown says that many of the seasonal workers, who would come from countries like Romania and Bulgaria for a few months to harvest vegetables, are now in short supply.

It seems that the consequences of Brexit are finally being felt up and down the UK. And far from the sunlit uplands promised by members of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government, a shortage of European workers in these vital areas means financial losses for businesses and empty shelves as the UK hurtles towards Christmas.

[...]
The current driver shortage is estimated to be between 90,000 to 120,000, according to a spokesperson for Logistics UK. While Brexit is not entirely to blame, the fact that the UK no longer has easy access to European drivers has created a headache for the industry.

The government, critics say, failed to adequately prepare for the inevitable consequences of Brexit and mitigate its initial impact.

Despite this, Brexit's fallout is not being used by Johnson's political opponents, who are instead whacking him over domestic issues. But why?

"The problem with these sorts of stories is they happen incrementally," says Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester.

"One of the very tragic things about these stories is that in order for the public to really pay attention to them, something really dramatic has to happen. Unfortunately, that might be an overworked lorry driver crashing into a family car or children falling ill through malnourishment."

Until that point, Johnson can largely deflect the blame for these problems onto the pandemic. Ford notes this goes down well with his base of "Leave" voters, many of whom are sick of being told that Brexit was a disaster, and often willing to believe other explanations.

But Brexit really is starting to bite. It was never going to be the case that the UK would immediately fall apart. But little by little, many of the assurances made in 2016 and during years of negotiations are cracking."

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/12/b...cmd/index.html



"Britain no longer in top 10 for trade with Germany as Brexit bites"

"A December 2020 survey of Germany's BGA trade association showed one in five companies were reorganizing supply chains to swap out British suppliers for others in the EU.
That trend was becoming more marked, though British businesses were even worse off, said Michael Schmidt, President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Germany, making any turnaround before the end of this year unlikely.

"More and more small and medium-sized companies are ceasing to trade (in Britain) because of these (Brexit-related) hurdles," Schmidt told Reuters.
The sharp first-half decline was also driven by pull-forward effects before the new hurdles, such as customs controls, kicked in in January."


"For many small British firms, Brexit meant losing access to their most important export market... It's like shooting yourself in the foot. And this explains why German imports from Britain are in free-fall now."
He voiced hope that some of the decline might be temporary. "Companies are normally always in a good position to adapt quickly – but this needs time."


https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...es-2021-09-08/

[Catfish]

So no shortages frome there at least ..

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-58556453

You can't make this up
As usual the comments are the best