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This rhetoric is just trying to butter us up for the impending next round of price gouging.
If something seems too expensive, don’t buy it and opt for goods with less headway for markup. Start cooking scratch meals and cut out the prefab stuff; you’ll take more time for food prep, but it will save you thousands in medical bills later on.
Yup. Your new best friends are rice, beans, white sugar, molasses, (did you know that brown sugar is just white sugar plus molasses?), salt, all purpose flour, oatmeal, and lentils. Bought in bulk. And use your local ethnic markets for spices and bouillons; They’re often 3-5 times cheaper than your local grocery store.
You can just buy one or two things per paycheck, if you can’t afford all of them at the same time. Or hell, get some friends together and split a bulk bag. I have a 10 pound bucket of rice (split from a larger 25 pound bag) that I have been working on for literal months. A 20 pound bag of rice can keep you full for so fucking long, as long as you store it properly.
Then you just add extra things when you can. Maybe you have potatoes, an onion, a clove of garlic, and some pork this week. So you make a loaded baked potato soup. Also, learn to dress up instant ramen. A scoop out of a giant bag of diced frozen veggies will do a lot. If you can afford it, add a soft boiled egg too.
“Nobody has time for flour, cuz you need to wait for it to rise!” Use baking powder recipes, or flatbreads instead. Learn to make biscuits and scones, if you want to bake. Tortillas are stupid easy to make; They’re literally just flour and water, pressed flat (fucking use an empty wine or beer bottle if you don’t have a rolling pin) and cooked on a flat hot surface like a skillet. I could literally fit the entire tortilla cooking process, from raw flour to finished tortillas, into an uncut 5 minute TikTok tutorial if I wanted to. Congrats, now you have tortillas for 2¢ each, instead of a 10 pack for $5. And they’ll fucking taste better than the store-bought ones, because they’re fresh and hot.
“I don’t have a rice cooker so I can’t make rice!” Do you think people have been using electric rice cookers for thousands of years? My brother in Christ, people have been cooking rice using the “just put a fucking vessel over fire” method for over nine millennia now. Will you likely fuck it up the first time, and accidentally make porridge? Yeah. But that’s a learning opportunity, and you only spent like 5¢ making that mistake because the rice is so fucking cheap.
“I can’t afford fancy cookware!” Go hit your local thrift store. I guarantee they have an entire shelf full of cast iron cookware and baking sheets for like $1 each, that you’ll be able to hand down to your grandchildren.
PLEASE GO PANIC BUY
United States of Corporations
I'm going to make another sticker that instead says "You voted for this."
“I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there,” he said. “And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, ‘If you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.’ ” - Trump
What a god damn clown. I can't tell if he's to stupid to realize what he's doing... or knows exactly what he's doing, and giving the most moronic responses to his actions. Basically, I can't tell where on the IQ range he is, from "can't wipe his own ass" or "actual genius"
He's exploiting exactly the same weakness that llms exploit to appear so smart: he just sounds confident all the time, and since people use confidence as a shortcut to evaluate accuracy, anyone who isn't paying attention to the actual substance is going to just nod and smile at the confidence and assume everything is perfect.
"Can't wipe his own ass" except he knows how to game the US system to benefit himself better than possibly anyone else.
Great. When do they start calling me essential then require me to work while everyone else is on lockdown?
Being called a hero want enough reward for you? /s
I see what you're saying about this whole hero thing but how about instead like a few months just feeling like I belong in this world and enjoy existence?
Ok let’s not go over bored here buddy.
You can have an hour of free time at best
I think they’re just trying to get us to panic buy stuff again
No, they don't know what the fuck they are doing.
There is a difference, the difference being that they don't understand how badly this is going to end for everyone.
This won't be "covid like" shortages because covid was chaotic and unpredictable whereas this is a result of a very predictable progression of the U.S. into fascism.... and the shortages as a result from that as other economies disentangle from the U.S. economy will be long lasting and indefinite not transient like the crisis point of a pandemic.
There is no "weathering" an existential loss of trust.
And people probably will.
For the most part, the US has staple foods covered internally. We import stuff like coffee, but grains and potatoes and chicken/pork/beef are all here. I expect that when people see the shelves for electronic trinkets go bare at Walmart, they will panic buy food. This will end up like covid food shelves; a bunch of scary videos of food shelves being empty, but then restocked within a week.
That'll mean you may not be able to get things at the grocery store when you want them for a while.
I had happened to buy a small chest freezer just before covid, and that ended up being such a good investment just then. Looks like it will be again.
The USA is highly dependent on China for animal feed supplements (all the vitamins and minerals and amino acids that they add to raw grain to make it a complete diet for factory farm raised animals).
About 50% of all the staple crops are exported, and that market will collapse. Farmers may choose not to plant anything if the market prices are too low to cover their operations.
Normally all the trucks and train cars get filled up and take our food products to the ports , empty, then fill up with imports. Since we will not be exporting, the costs of running empty trucks and trains all over will double the transport cost components. Even for distribution of domestic food items the transport system will not be efficient any more.
It's a complex system of interdependencies that will unravel in unexpected ways.
We are definitely not covered for what will happen.
As someone who doesn't live in the US, I'm looking forward to watching this unfold.
It's going to hurt Trump. I'm sorry a lot of Dem voters will be collateral damage but honestly, an economic shit storm of biblical magnitude is pretty much the only thing that can save you IMO.
Lmao hurt Trump? His cultists will be eating rat soup to survive and insist that the economy is great and America is on its way to being Great Again™, and that rat soup is just a necessary sacrifice on that path.
The cultists, yes... but they're not the ones keeping him on his throne. If enough rich people lose enough money he will be impeached.
As an American I agree, though I have to point out something those of us living this shit nightmare know...
This won't hurt him. At all. His supporters by and large are what you'd expect from full on Stockholm syndrome victims.
They excuse, Sanewash, and pretend it's part of some plan to make them great.
His supporters? They can soak in their own bloodbaths and say it was Obama's fault or some Hillary conspiracy.
The one issue voters who sat out last time, the middle of the ground twats who thought their vote didn't matter, the Palestinians who thought Kamala's stance on Israel wasn't strong enough... Those are the people who have to suffer enough to motivate them to not be so fucking indifferent to things they don't fully understand.
It's unclear if it's going to save america, considering it's 1:1 out of hitler's playbook. He crashed the economy with tarrifs before going all in.
...as someone who opposed the fascist-in-chief by civil means and will be wholly caught up in the economic maelstrom, i'm looking forward to watching this unfold, too: it's the only thing which might save us from full-blown armed conflict and martial law...
Y'all are gonna roast the shit out of me, but I really have a strong urge to buy toilet paper before all the weirdos start clearing the shelves (which I am fully aware makes me one of the weirdos)
Bidets are good, decreases your TP expenses long term. Just a bit to pat dry.
I wonder where most bidets are manufactured
Buy them now while you can leverage remaining on shore inventory.
Also, get your car maintenance done now.
Glad I've lived poor. Can easily weather the tide
It's kind of a sad superpower, isn't it? Especially when you see people who have always been coddled living in luxury, start complaining.
rump proves he still has no idea what a tarriff is:
“I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there,” he said. “And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, ‘If you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.’ ”
Some things should suddenly get much cheaper as well, like Pork.
McRib comimg back!
There any sense on what would be good to stock up on now? When I've searched this, the advice is usually pretty worthless. Just advice indistinguishable from general prepper stuff. I've seen recommendations to stock up on things like flour, things that the US produces domestically in abundance. But some necessities are going to be more vulnerable to disruptions in shipments from China than others.
Anyone find a good guide or have a sense of what basic household necessities are going to be most vulnerable to disruption of trade with China? I'm not concerned with things like consumer electronics right now, those are luxuries. I'm talking basic food and household staples. I don't need the standard prepper list that's meant to prepare you for grave natural disasters. What's really needed is an analysis of precisely what necessities are most likely to be interrupted by this.
Has anyone seen such a list, or have a sense for what necessities are most vulnerable here?
I have the worst timing …. I’ve been trying to eat my way down to an empty freezer. I bought a chest freezer in covid and kept it full ever since, but it really needs to be defrosted. I still have more stuff in there than can fit in all my coolers and in the fridge.
But maybe I should restock while I can and try again to defrost in four years
You think things will be better in Trump's 3rd term? 🤔
Let me put it this way. Today I spent over $700 on a massive amount of groceries and various toiletries.