Three years ago. Is it becoming a reality, today?

Comment: Today, three years later, we see these predictions all around us. A friend located in the Ancaster – Dundas area sent me this message, a month ago:

As a small international business person I have gotten an accurate detailing of how the supply chains have been damaged by lock-downs, overspending by governments, vaccine mandates, health problems for the vaccinated and the unavailability of labour. My accountant is saying he has never seen so many people asking for higher wages and signing bonuses (just like pro athletes). A young engineer I hired is now having health problems due to the COVID vaccine he took. /…/ Since my business inventory of raw materials is being used up, I have noticed significant price increases to resupply, This requires my business to raise its prices – or my profit will suffer. It’s a perfect storm for all businesses.

It is true but this is not the only explanation for the price gouging that is going on, especially in the “necessities” market. Once our governments gave in to the request of the business community to reduce government regulations, we have witnessed unprecedented price increases resulting from inflation, greed, and corruption. Monopolization of markets eliminated competition as well as small, family run and low cost, operations. Our anti-trust laws are not being enforced. People are suffering, especially the consumers at the bottom of the chain. They have nobody to download their losses on, they collect all the bills and have to pay all the cost of this crisis so that the profits of the businesses “don’t suffer”. Governments use taxpayers money to rescue the banks, while the economy sinks deeper and deeper. Consumer protection is dead. I wonder what we need the governments for, anymore. They cost us too much and they don’t protect us. Actually, it seems that they are targeting us in many different ways. I won’t go into this topic here.

On July 6, The Epoch Times published an article, Cost of Many Basic Grocery Items Has Increased 3 to 4 Times Inflation Rate: StatCan, in which they stated,

If it seems like every grocery trip is costing more and the quantity of food that comes home is getting smaller, that impression might be accurate. The cost of grocery staples is so high that it has increased by more than three or four times the rate of general inflation, according to new data from Statistics Canada. /…/

Just one week earlier, The True North published a similar article, Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro under investigation for alleged anti-competitive practices, in which they reported,

The Competition Bureau announced on Tuesday that it’s investigating Canada’s major grocery chains for alleged anti-competitive practices, citing suspiciously rapid price hikes that can’t be blamed on the pandemic.

Food, housing, and other necessities fall into the same category. Even pharmacies, not long ago, began charging $10 – 12 dispensing fees for every item on every prescription, instead of charging less than $5.00 for processing of the entire prescription, as it had been the case before. They now require a prescription for a life saving, previously over-the-counter, nitroglicerine spray, so that they can charge you a dispensing fee for it. I inquired, what exactly they do for this dispensing fee. They explained that they have to document the usage data for the government. I don’t need that. If the government needs that, they should pay for it. I would be satisfied, if they went to the shelf, picked up the meds I need, and sold it to me at the cost price. Just like they do at the beer store, when I buy my beer. They go, bring the beer, and they don’t charge me any dispensing fee. That simple 🙂

Some years ago, I had a diabetic cat. I had to buy a special low sugar cat food. It was coming in 10 lbs packages and, in 2011, it used to cost $32. The price increased quickly and by 2017, the same package with the same food was priced at over $80. I asked the vet who was raising the price, they, or their supplier? They assured me that it was the supplier, “We pay more for it, so we have to charge more”. Then, I called the supplier in Mississauga and asked them the same question. They told me that, during the last few years, they only increased their price once, by $1.00, because they switched to better packaging. Who was telling the trut and who was lying? Obviously, somebody was lying.

It seems that all you need to do in order to release the greedy dogs from their leashes is to deregulate the economy and the market. There is no solidarity or compassion, no sharing in good and bad times, no “proudly serving our customers” anymore. It’s all about profits, at any cost, as quickly as possible. So that they can get rich before the economy collapses. It seems that there is not much time left, either.

I will write about housing and housing crisis later. This is just another illustration and another evidence of corruption. This is what happens when developers (and other corporations) are allowed to give political donations (and other bribes) to politicians and political parties. This must end.

But “We, the People”, are not better ourselves. In the past, we welcomed the offshoring and outsourcing of our real economy and our technologies to “cheap countries”. We lost some jobs, job security, and some pensions, we lost full time, seniority, many benefits and paid holidays, but we were bribed by the promise of less work and less expensive products from China and other low cost “world factories”. At first, the imported products were of low quality but, as the quality improved, so did the prices. Today, we pay in excess of $400 for a “made in *****” jacket that used to cost $80 and was better designed, made in Canada or the US, and made of better materials. We cannot buy a good quality cotton T-shirts or underwear and the available, half-plastic imitations are now 5 – 10 times more expensive than the good stuff used to be – (remember the Biway stores?) And we lost the skills, the know-how, the cadres of engineers and technicians, the technology, the industial base, and scientific research facilities at an alarming rate. We could not manufacture simple surgical masks, when the “killer-pandemic” began.

Psychologists have known for decades how difficult it is for people on disabilities to get well and go back to work. Lockdowns and the “pandemic” had the same effect. Many people expect to be paid more and do less. People want to work from home. Businesses reduced their working hours and their staff to max up their profits. Managements look for expensive, (but sharing), contractors instead of doing the repairs and maintenance within their own organizations. The gap between rich and poor is increasing and clearly visible, as soon as you leave the cities and drive into the “green belts” or visit some resorts and marinas up north. (Maybe this is why they want to lock us down in 15-minute cities and make driving long distances unaffordable. I have seen this phenomenon after 1995, when rich cottage associations financed the creation of some provincial parks that kept boaters, anglers, and camping parties away from their islands and properties. Not just from their land but from the vicinities and the surrounding water, as well.)

Most outrageus is the fact that our governments seem to support all these austerity measures. I kind of undestand that. The more we pay for various products and services, the more taxes the government collects, so that they can give more tax breaks to the corporations and give themselves huge bonuses and salary increases – while the rest of us become poorer and sicker of this sh*t. The more retired people “die (early and saddenly) of causes unknown”, the more money the government saves on pensions and health care. The more we demoralize children with sex-and-gender-related topics, the less spending on academic materials and equipment for schools. And the list goes on.

To what extend this situation results from corruption vs. incompetence vs. treason does not really matter. The outcome is still the same. In politics, intentions don’t count. Results do. My opinion.