Almost Everything is a Scam. Part 4: The Frankenfood Scam
Just in time food delivery; a scam of epic and massive proportions, and almost everyone is a victim!
Don’t stop reading! I know you will want to cut me off in seconds. Hear me out! For countless thousands of years man hunted, fished and grew his own food. Heck, even right up to the “Victory Gardens” after the world wars did we grow our own food. But once electricity and refrigerators came on the scene, folks got lazy and slowly stopped farming, gardening and all that jazz. Now we pay others to do all our dirty work for us.
Consider these things:
Growing veggies and fruits in the hot sun? OMG no! That is dirty farmer work, I want a nice cushy job in the City or a factory or (insert job of your choice here).
The slaughtering and butchering of farm animals? OMG no! I just want it all wrapped up tidy for me and for sale at the store.
The last 70-100 years have seen mankind get very weak and no longer self-sufficient. Everything is specialized now. Have you ever thought of the cost on this thing?
Someone has to plant, care for and raise all those vegetables and wait for harvest and then pick them, pack them and transport them to the store. Then it has to get put out for sale. Days might pass just in the transport and then days more in the produce isle. You have to drive to the grocery store costing you more gas and time. You have to shop for it and then pack it again and bring it home and unpack it; putting it all where it needs to go. You have to eat it all up quickly too before it spoils.
So every week you and every other person in your country (talking the West here, USA, Canada, etc. and not second or third world countries) has to pay a fortune. How much? Well, for a family of four we are talking $200 to $300 a week pretty easy. Way back, I mean in 2013, USA today wrote an article on it and this is the “gist” of this:
“The latest numbers for a four-member family: a thrifty food plan, $146 a week; a low-cost food plan, $191 a week; a moderate-cost plan, $239; a liberal plan, $289 a week. Some food waste is built into these costs.” (May 1, 2013 USA Today)
Seven years ago. Think about this. We must be at $200 to $400 by now. I have seen a ton of inflation in 7 years. $10,400 bare minimum for a “thrifty plan” and what for a liberal plan? $20,000?
I don’t want to get off track but I did my math. My baby mortgage, baby sized property taxes and all utilities and fix up costs on my home per year add up to a grand total of $24,000 a year. That’s just for a house.
I know for a fact that each car costs $10,000 a year. My wife drives a bit more than the average person I think, running kids around all the time. I mean it’s like 20 out of 30 days. We spend $7,000 on fuel alone, $1,000 on insurance, $250 on registration and I did not add in the repairs but yeah, $10K.
I am fairly sure we blow through $15 to 20K a year on food, especially if we add in the restaurants and the fast food on top of all the groceries. Do you see how high the cost is? We are talking $50K bare minimum to sleep eat and drive. Not one other thing.
I did not write an article on the medical scam yet. We will get there, but yeah, $12,000 on doctors and dentists last year. No wonder Americans are fleeing America and seeking greener pastures in South America and overseas as well.
So we have all this food sitting in massive food warehouses where we all flock to buy. And the entire nation’s food supply is “just in time”, meaning if the trucks stop moving for any reason, all food is wiped clean from the store shelves’ in 3 days. In a week or two everyone is starving and dying and rioting in the streets. God forbid there should be some disaster that stops the machine. Folks today do not have a clue how to plant or farm. We cannot harvest, can or root cellar. We don’t know how anymore! We don’t know how to raise animals or kill them, clean them, butcher them up and preserve the meat. No one even wants to do this anymore (speaking corporately as a nation as a whole… I know there are individuals that are very self-reliant and enjoy living off the land).
Now, some might say to me heck buddy, it’s a business and look at all the time it saves you and you really don’t want to do all these things yourself, do you? I mean look at the convenience of just going shopping for a few hours and bam! It’s a week’s supply sitting in your fridge and pantry. Yeah, I get it. I get that part. I see it from both sides but my point is if you look at the cost per cucumber, lettuce, apple, tomato, etc. it’s pretty pricey.
There is so much “handling” going on that it’s padded with a lot of profits for the stores and not to mention everyone in between. I mean $15K a year? $20K a year in total? This is really kinda high and due to our wonderful monetary degradation that punishes savers with this fractional reserve banking and inflation that never stops due to constant and forever QE, the price that we all pay for this is never going down; only a slow and constant gradual up curve. Forever.
I view all of this as a scam. Housing is a monster scam. Property taxes (mine rose 450% in 17 years) are a giant scam. Credit card companies that get away with loan sharking up to 33% interest are a huge scam. Cars are a monster scam. Repair centers at $125 per hour with grossly inflated parts are a scam. Monsanto grown “Frankenfood” being sold to us with no real nutrition in it for $15-20K a year is a scam; forcing us all to buy from “GNC” or any one of a few hundred additional online companies marketing every vitamin and herb and mineral and nutrient you could possibly think of to us all. I could spend $100 to $200 a month on “supplements” easy! If I wanted to. Why is everyone doing this? Because the nutrition is not in the food!
“Organic”, if you prefer this way, will add 50 % to 100 % cost increase and now you see the real cost of survival don’t you? It’s about $30,000 USD a year for a family of four to eat really darn well. I mean great. Now, you tell me this is not a giant scam.
Maybe the “back to the landers” are on to something. Perhaps “5 acres and independence” is not such a bad idea after all.
Here are my closing thoughts. I have noticed something over the last 20 years, something that I have seen accelerate in the last 10; Americans fleeing high tax states like California, New York, Connecticut and most of New England and they are pouring into Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina by the millions per year. Why? They see the light at the end of the tunnel. They are struggling to make it and have wised up and said we’ve got to do something! Anything to ease this pain. Tens of thousands of Americans more every year flee America itself and go south. Some move to S.E. Asia and other low cost jurisdictions. Money goes where it’s treated fairly and better conditions abound.
So in closing I will reiterate my suggestions to you. If you have not read all of these articles yet, please do so and think about this. Get out of debt as much as you possibly can. Live within your means and if things are too expensive where you are, move away. Get out of dodge and get to a place that is warm, safe, low cost and perhaps you can even take up gardening. Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and a dozen other veggies are very easy to grow. It’s a start! You can do that for a year or two, one hour a day is all you need. It’s relaxing and fun and think about the savings. Each year you can try and go a little more intense and 10 years from now? Who knows maybe you can grow 50% of everything you consume. Is that worth $1,000 a month in savings to you? Organic too, I might add. Think of the time that will save you running to the store. Untill next time, thanks for reading.