BARFmail - Packer Speaks from Internet Chainletter

[_Gadianton]

Gaz,

4.05$ a gallon might hurt, but nothing like it will hurt if everyone quits their jobs and becomes "self-sufficient". The amount of time you can put into growing your own crops would probably be more profitable at a second job. The sewing idea is ok, but not for the reason you think, trades command some serious money and if I had sewing skills I'd buy an industrial machine and put it to use.

Gas is just one thing. Other things are cheap, and interest rates are low.

by the way, if ya'll have such a great knowledge of the future state of the economy, why don't you open up a commodities account and short oil futures or black beans? You can use all the spare cash you make filling your garage with buckets of wheat and thread. A lot of good it will do you if you happened to pick the wrong disaster scenario and can't move it out. Your best bet is to work more, make more money, open up several credit accounts which are zeroed out, and be a little more frugal.

[_harmony]

...open up several credit accounts which are zeroed out, and be a little more frugal.

Why open up credit accounts (which I assume means credit card accounts?)?

I think everyone can live more frugally, given the motivation. And $8 gas might be sufficient motivation!

[_Mercury]

I just paid $4.05 a gallon yesterday. That hurt. There is not a doubt in my mind that this will get worse. And the cost of shipping food, especially to the desert wastelands and other far away places, will raise the price on the grocery store shelves. Food storage and gardens and intelligent shoping are going to become a necessity. Hopefully lots of relief society women kept their moms instruction manuals on canning, sewing, cooking with raw ingredients, etc....

Time to let the cell phones and cable TV go here in the next year?

Nice post Harmony. I actually didn't hate you after reading something you wrote. Is this the start of a new age?

Economies of scale Gaz, the previous fuel crisis saw the price of gas quadruple. We again are seeing the price of gas quadruple. Supply is not meeting with demand and there are variables that are out of the control of market adjustments at this time.

[_Gadianton]

I could also ask why anyone would want a half tonne of wheat rotting in their garage. It's the other side of the coin for disaster planning. If you have a number of credit lines open with zero balance, first of all it helps your credit score, but, you also have back up in case of an emergency. If worst came to worst, you could unleash the golden parachute and take the bankruptcy.

Gas prices may double but if interest rates cut monthly interest payments in half then depending on how you do it, getting that new car may even be more feasable than ever.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

My little family is pretty poor, thus not a lot of extra dough for food storage. Thus we planted a little garden this Spring. It's a little, but hey, it's what we could do.

[_Gazelam]

Hopefully lots of relief society women kept their moms instruction manuals on canning, sewing, cooking with raw ingredients, etc....

You mean where you come from it is not normal to cook from 'raw ingredients'?

If what you start with isn't uncooked, why on earth do you feel entitled to call the process 'cooking'?

This opens a window onto vistas of culinary horror that I don't even want to start thinking about ...

LOL, : ) I was refering to flour as opposed to bisquick. noodles from flour as opposed to prepackaged, that sort of thing. Tomato sauce from a tomato as opposed to canned. etc...

[_Mercury]

My little family is pretty poor, thus not a lot of extra dough for food storage. Thus we planted a little garden this Spring. It's a little, but hey, it's what we could do.

(insert insensitive class warfare comment here)

[_Gazelam]

...open up several credit accounts which are zeroed out, and be a little more frugal.

Why open up credit accounts (which I assume means credit card accounts?)?

I think everyone can live more frugally, given the motivation. And $8 gas might be sufficient motivation!

Good heavens. Harmony actually understood what I was getting at. Simply living more frugally.

I take the unification between myself and Harmony in this thread as some sort of storm crow of strange future events.

[_Mercury]

And the cost of shipping food, especially to the desert wastelands and other far away places, will raise the price on the grocery store shelves.

Desert wastelands = Las Vegas, Phoenix, and anything south of Payson in Utah?

Nice post Harmony. I actually didn't hate you after reading something you wrote. Is this the start of a new age?

Sounds to me more like the end of the world as we know it!

Vegas IS a wasteland. Especially North Las Vegas :)

[_Gazelam]

My little family is pretty poor, thus not a lot of extra dough for food storage. Thus we planted a little garden this Spring. It's a little, but hey, it's what we could do.

I knew an LDS family that installed a pony wall by their kitchen. You could flip open the top of it and drop cans of food in various slots. They would buy more cans fo food than they needed in small increments, and drop them down the slot, the supply was always fresh because at the bottom of the wall were drawers where you could take out the bottom can when you wanted the product.

So they had a wall of food that was in good condition, and it wasn't an imposition to aquire !