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Food and Gold

100 years ago, the average household spent up to 50% of its income on food. Today, that figure is nearer 10%, giving us all more disposable income for consumer goods, bigger mortgage repayments, and exotic holidays.  Food is cheap, almost too cheap, in fact.  As some farmers struggle to turn a profit and big supermarkets control the supply chain.

(Chart showing food prices as a proportion of income)

Of course, some of this is due to technological improvements in farming and manufacturing, but much of it is due to fiat currency inflation versus gold.  Perhaps it can’t last forever – we may well already be being prepared for future food shortages and increases in food prices. You may have already noticed shortages during the crisis or increases. On a personal level, visiting the supermarket regularly, a 20-25% increase in fruit, vegetables, and dairy products has occurred since March 2020, when Corona began. That’s interesting, as these products are all the ones with the shortest shelf life, that are most immediately impacted by price rises. Others, like dried, tinned and frozen goods, may be in huge stock at warehouses down the supply chain behind the supermarket facade, and price rises may take longer to feed through. Observe these headlines from recent times, as to what they may be planting the seed in your head to germinate for:-

“UK potato farmers fear another washout for this year’s crop. “

The Guardian, August 2020

“Bread price may rise after dire UK wheat Harvest.”

BBC News, August 2020

“Coronavirus: Meat shortage leaves US farmers with ‘mind-blowing’ choice.”

BBC News, May 2020

If you wonder how far food prices can rise during a monetary crisis, then here is an example of prices from “Fiat Money Inflation in France,” an excellent study of the hyperinflation that occurred there during the French revolutionary times, which coincide with the decline of the French empire before the handover to Great Britain.

Now, how well covered are you for those kinds of price rises in basic commodities, the essentials of life?

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Income and Gold

First, let’s get the really bad news out of the way.  You’re probably extremely underpaid for what you do.  In fact, you probably get paid around one-sixth of the salary that a worker got in 1970 for the same job.  There has been a huge real decline in income, masked by fiat currency inflation, meaning many of us are worse off than ever.

This goes a long way to explaining why life has got harder and most households now require both parents to go out to work to keep the family going.  A less common occurrence back in 1970.

To look at this another way, to return to 1970, our salaries need to increase by six times.  Yes, six times.  Imagine that, a world that rewards work and self-sufficiency over clever monetary tricks.  Sadly, such a world is not here yet.

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Currency Delivery in 2020

The whole Corona crisis has also shown how digital the world has become concerning money. The furlough scheme is a major example in itself. UK Businesses were expected to log their furlough claims using the internet. The IT infrastructure and software to support this was in place in record time – major IT projects can often take months or years to design, develop, thoroughly test, and release. It’s then an example of how the currency can now be distributed quickly to millions, through the central government, to businesses, then distributed electronically to customer accounts in banking computers. Not a single physical coin or note ever having existed.

Many other nations introduced a furlough scheme, but the USA did not. In this case, they mailed out Corona stimulus cheques of $1,200 to everyone. Lamenting, while doing so, that it was a shame that it was taking longer because they needed to get signatures on every cheque. Then, that it would have been so much easier had they had more direct banking details, such as a nominated bank account, to send the money out to the recipients electronically.

As to spending, well, more and more of it became electronic as internet shopping took off even further. Still, some preferred physical currency to a certain extent. However, one of the early casualties of Corona has been cash – the number of shops now insisting on electronic payments only and media stories saying that cash can help spread the disease is a clear signal that the system no longer wants people using old-fashioned coins and notes. Also, remember Gresham’s law about bad money forcing out good? There is probably a case that people are genuinely retaining more banknotes and coins at home, just if they are needed for some kind of emergency. However the Corona crisis goes, it doesn’t seem like good news for savers or freedom.

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Furlough

The Corona / COVID-19 crisis has invented a whole new multitude of ways to distribute money to favoured interests and individuals. In addition to being unemployed, you can now get your full salary for doing nothing, while someone else you worked with has to continue to do their job, on the same salary, with all of the commitments their job requires. In the UK that has become known as ‘furlough’.  In many cases, it goes way beyond those in employment – the self-employed can also make claims to get their earnings covered. Staying at home, being paid full salary, having all the time in the world to do the house up, improve the garden, or even find another job to boost your earnings even more – a concept in the UK that has become affectionately known as “double-dipping.” It all sounds idyllic, doesn’t it, but there must be a catch, and, of course, there is.

If the various schemes introduced to pay employed people to do nothing sound like a major extension to the welfare system, then that’s probably because they are. Some people were bound to question the point in being productive, when for the same amount of money you could do nothing. Not everyone will feel that way, and some will be upset and stressed about the loss of work, but in terms of bending minds, taking power from people, and getting them used to rules, it is very reminiscent of the 1980s deindustrialisation of Northern England. A period when hopelessness and despair took over from community, self-sufficiency, and a strong work ethic. The schemes may also be the start of something that has been thrown around for several years now and never gained traction – Universal Basic Income. The concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) is quite simple – every citizen is issued with a basic amount of government fiat currency per year, enough to live on. It never caught on because too many people could see through it – whatever the UBI level is, it would become the new zero, and self-sufficiency and freedom would surely be eroded. To say nothing of the existing gold base supporting more and more newly issued currency units every year.

Where the extra fiat currency has come from to fund all this, it is hard to see any real statistics on. We know that at some point, public borrowing must rise, and indeed, that is being presented through the news to make it palatable to the public, but increasing borrowing takes time. Wherever it came from, the consequence of these policies must be Inflation. Quite simply put, there must be a lot more currency units in circulation than there were a year ago, and even if the majority of those units are in bank accounts right now, doing nothing, at some point, they will begin to enter the market and circulate. At that point, prices must begin to rise. Whether this happens tomorrow or in a few years seems to be the only question.

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Work 18.65

After the reboot, many people found that this app had actually been removed from their phones. Despite the fact, most of them still wanted or needed to use it. Many others found the terms and conditions had changed dramatically, and there was no way to reverse that if you wanted to continue to use the app. Work 18.65 might soon see a massive series of swift upgrades – Work 18.99 is even a strong possibility in the not-too-distant future. Others, meanwhile, are finding it difficult ever to download the app again.

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Education 4.18

This app will get you used to the prison mentality and prepare you for your future role as a low-level member of the proletariat in society. Unfortunately, the free version of this app will give you no financial education whatsoever, so that you remain blissfully unaware of what money is and how it works. This is partly because you’re planned to be a consumer of financial products that you don’t understand, to help fund your own future slavery.

There are paid-for versions of this App in most countries that provide a much higher quality experience and will prepare you better for a role in the upper echelons of society, with a high up role in Government 9.11 a possibility. The paid-for versions are extremely expensive. However, the advanced app Education 18.23 has no free option, and everyone must pay for it – over a large number of years, through something called a student loan, issued in fiat currency, and requiring repayment with interest added. Already in life, we find the creation of money as loans, to be repaid with interest added, as the biggest financial manipulation going and the best means of chaining down the slaves early.

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Government version 9.11

The big government surveillance society that has accelerated around the millennium, the one that curtails individual rights and freedoms, culminating in introducing a variety of regulations in 2020 to restrict your travel and ability to transact and trade with fellow human beings to survive. In any other era, that would be called fascism. In 2017, the then U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May referred to a terrorist attack as “hating us for our freedoms.” The irony of that should not be lost on any of us, for just three years later, we have no freedoms now too. Even your right to self-expression is gone, as you now have to wear a mask that hides the facial expressions that go with what you say. When wearing a mask, it’s probably not a good time to make ironic or sarcastic jokes with a hidden smile.

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Inflation

Inflation is an awful thing. It increases the number of currency units in circulation, robbing and diluting the hard-earned savings of normal people.

Note, inflation is an increase in the number of currency units in circulation, not an increase in prices, despite media stories about increased prices being inflation. Even the Bank of England, perhaps accidentally, confuses the two. They often aim for an inflation ‘target’
of 2%, supposedly the centrally-decided ideal set of price increases for a Goldilocks, not too-warm, not too-cold, economy to function. However, when they refer to this inflation target, they mean an increase in prices. Normally, the amount of extra currency pumped into circulation yearly exceeds the 2% figure by a large margin.

The BBC too, it seems, has the same misconception as the Bank of England. Take this story UK inflation rises after Eat Out to Help Out ends, published on 21st October 2020, for example. Here we find an explanation of Inflation that is, at best, accidentally wrong and at worst, intentionally wrong.

What is inflation?

Inflation is the rate at which the prices for goods and services increase.

It affects everything from mortgages to the cost of our shopping and the price of train tickets.

It’s one of the key measures of financial well-being, because it affects what consumers can buy for their money. If there is inflation, money doesn’t go as far.

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Atlas Shrugged

How a society can collapse and how the government responds when the most productive members cease to participate was covered in the novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand. Like Marmite, this book is either loved or loathed by readers, but its view of a dystopian 1950s America in slow-motion decline is not too similar to now, in some ways.

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Lobbying

Lobbying, in some ways, is the bypassing of individual citizens’ rights by a rich minority to give their interests precedence. It certainly seems to be at odds with the one person, one vote concept, as an individual in a poor neighbourhood in a remote town could never get airtime with politicians in the same way. In the case of an organisation like ‘Open Society,’ they have a very international reach. Lobbyfacts.eu reports OSEPI has 16 Lobbyists working in the EU, too, and they had 56 meetings with the European Commission in the past year.