Real changes to work, family, community, and staples will come with inflation [see photo].
Rising prices for potatoes in a high tech world is a looming threat to all of us. Of course it is not an equal threat to those with excess means as to those with modest means. But it is a greater threat to those who live on their phones, online, or work offsite than to those who plant, grow, and harvest potato crops.
Are potatoes more important than phones in 2021? Are you prepared for a life where your money is worth less each day and you no longer possess the purchasing power you need to eat potatoes? Are the invisible elements of social media still a valuable for you when you can not afford to buy a potato? Are lives about to be destroyed by the invisible economic forces that creates unrelenting price inflation for potatoes, labour, shelter, healthcare, etc?
Price inflation will slow everything in your life. Build a new house and it will take longer than you expect. This happens when the resources you need are here today and gone to tomorrow. This happens because the price you expected to pay a carpenter, bricklayer, painter, etc is no longer the going rate. Look at those points in your life where price inflation is already evident. Of course it may not yet be a big factor in your life because at present these are small price increases but what happens large price increases hit you? First you will immediately substitute one good for another [fish for meat or both for rice] or one service for another [subscriptions will be swapped out for free services] but while this action is rational it is not enough.
As a child... I remember waking one bright Sunday morning at my Uncle Jack's farm. He was angry, swearing, and storming around the kitchen. Why? Overnight a truck had backed into his field and stole all his potato crop. The only sign of this brazen theft was the tyre tracks in the newly turned soil. They had used the cover of night, and noise created by a dance down in the local hall, to dig up a field of potatoes put them on a truck and drive away. I was shocked because I could not understand who would bother to steal potatoes. I was even more shocked because I did not understand the importance of a potato crop to my Uncle. They are only spuds I thought but Uncle Jack saw his blood sweat and tears not potatoes. He had been violated by these thieves in the dark.
Inflation is a thief in the dark.....
Richard.
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