About the Economy

Sometimes I get a little clueless to world news, but Mark pointed this one out to me. There are food riots going on in West Asia and the Middle East. Food prices everywhere have been rising, the economy is in high fluctuation and I've seen 'unrest' headlines, but none specifically calling them 'food riots' until he directed me to a few articles. It makes me want to till our garden and plant lots of corn for the coming season. That won't help anyone else... but you haven't seen Mark eat sweet corn. He could probably eat an entire field in a few days unchecked. Good for us it freezes well.


Those articles are interesting reads.
From rice in Peru to miso in Japan, food prices are rising
How Food Shortages Provoke Economic Nationalism

How have the rising prices of food and resources in general affected you? Have you noticed things being made more cheaply and/or less quantity for the same or even greater prices?

Other observations:

• Cheap plastic things are being made even cheaper. Some of them SMELL awful, as if the plastic was uncured or made differently. Some of the baby things that are sold I wouldn't let Esme get near her mouth because they still have a very strong 'fresh plastic' smell days after opening them. We are having a harder time finding suitable replacements for some of these things. I'm more apt to make something for her, or buy a vintage, handmade or more expensive item just because I know it will last longer and probably has better materials/workmanship in it.


• For the past few years there has been a boom of babies born to everyone we know. Maybe we've been a bit more sensitive though, expecting ourselves. This could explain some of the belt-tightening across the economy as more people have to stretch the same dollar further to support their growing families.


• We had a very hard time giving away large puppies. It seemed people didn't want to commit as easily to feeding a large dog as they used to. Everyone was asking why we didn't have little dogs like chihuahuas or yorkies.


• With the housing market crashing, how many people are going from owning their own home to renting again? That will affect the country economically, politically (not my land, why should I care what law gets passed about it) and socially (less neighborhoods, how many of you know your neighbors anymore?).

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A Good thing this economy shift might bring about: More Americans turning to home industry, or at least learning how to do important things for themselves again. Americans used to actually PRODUCE and MANUFACTURE things right here in the United States. Somehow we fell out of that in the past few decades and saw an increase in the 'service industry.' I predict there will be further downfall in the service industry reducing some but if it results in more things being made in the USA again it could be better for us all long-term. Before, it was cheaper to produce overseas and import to the US. That has changed with higher fuel and freight prices and the fact that the cheaper merchandise has been diminishing in overall quality as well.

Also: I saw this line in an article the other day. 'The 37 year old will tighten her belt by dyeing her own hair, making meals at home and bathing her own dog.' OH MY. Uh, if you don't already do those things for yourself then you DO have a lot of belt-tightening to happen in this economy. And then some.