Reading the Economic Auguries. Analysis of Chicken Guts. Louis Shalako.

It's the economy, stupid.

Louis Shalako

Economic indicators.

Excuse me while I rip the guts out of this bird and read the auguries from its entrails...

The price of fuel is down a few cents, yet still fairly strong since the very early days of Covid when it went to a very low $0.88/litre in Canadian dollars. (In an ironic twist, it was $1.39.9/litre when I checked online, half an hour later, when I got to the rez, it was $1.51.9 Cdn. What sort of conclusions we can draw, other than the fact that the price of fuel is volatile, is a good question.) Condo rents in Toronto fell seven percent. Grocery inflation only 1.4 % over previous month. 1.5 % the next month. This after climbing 22.5 % since May 2020. That hardly seems like good news…

The Bank of Canada rate has been lowered by 0.25 %, yet the next cut is now seen as less likely in July, and it would have only been the same quarter-percent again. From a personal perspective, our order for the week before the first big holiday weekend of the summer is down significantly. Our customer may have simply been overstocked on pizza dough, yet there must also be a reason for that (or this) state of affairs. They can look at last year's numbers just as easily as we can, but it is this week's numbers that really generate the cash flow...we were sort of expecting 60 totes and the order is only 45. (Now we're overstocked.) Also. A story takes some time to put together. A day later, we get our delivery from Ricco, sacks of flour and salt and the like. I asked the driver if things were busy.

He said they’re ‘slow—very slow’. Like our customer, they also can look at last year’s order for this week, (and a lot of other people’s orders besides), he even mentioned ‘twenty-three or twenty-five sacks’, where this year, just before the big holiday weekend, our order is fifteen sacks of flour. This is purely anecdotal, but Ricco also has to anticipate demand, so they can put in their order. One sack of flour is good for about sixty dough-balls, and we also had a skid full of flour, so in that sense we always have a pretty good reserve of materials and ingredients. We also agreed that the rich are still getting richer, perhaps just a little more slowly than before. They may have to save up a little longer before they buy that independent little island-state in the Pacific, and what the hell, eh—their personal fortune is only two or three billion down, and the market will continue to climb for no particular reason.

***

Unemployment went up by a notch, yet it is still low enough to be considered full employment when you consider the large numbers of #mental_health_addictions people living and dying in homeless camps all over this great nation...wage growth remains strong, Ontario public spending on social programs continues its long, slow and agonizing death of a thousand cuts. The bougies continue to purchase big, ugly houses and all the other useless toys and status symbols so precious to the type.

Meme stolen from the internet.

#Louis

Last year, clients of ODSP received a raise in July, and it was six percent. One wonders if they will chisel this time around—they have to base the raise on a preceding 12-month period. Which twelve-month period probably depends on choosing the period with the lowest overall rate of inflation, (It’s not so simple as just going back to last July), also, they could chisel by giving the raise in November, which was the normal pattern in the past. They could, conceivably, pick the lowest overall twelve-month period and then wait until November. If that ain't chiseling, (or chiselling), I don't know what is. I go off disability in August, which makes it somewhat academic in terms of personal impact.

We’ve all seen some variation on the old ‘inflation is caused by poor people having too much money’ sort of memes and posts on social media, largely as a result of pandemic emergency relief programs—you may recall that one third to one half of the workforce was sent home as a public safety measure, but inflation had begun its inexorable climb before that, that is also true of housing inflation. You have to understand some folks absolutely hate any kind of equitable redistribution of wealth, which they like to call entitlements. God created you, he did not entitle you to any kind of living. CERB was for employees, there were programs for businesses, also affected by pandemic closure. I doubt if too many of them refused such assistance, although getting them to pay it back will be like pulling teeth from a rock…some of those businesses will never reopen, and one wonders if such payouts became a part of someone’s retirement plan.

Our business was an essential service, we kept working. We were ‘essential workers’, and heroes, right up to the point it was over and then we went back to being irrelevant to any real political considerations…at least as far as the bougies were concerned.

So, the Inn of the Good Shepherd is giving out fruits and vegetables, and expanding that service…

When you consider that you could get an English cucumber for $0.44 this week, and that last week, I got five pounds of potatoes for $1.68, it says a lot more about low wages, high rents and the appalling state of Ontario social policy, than anything else. This is especially true insofar as it relates to disability pensions thirty to forty percent below the poverty line, and the ludicrous $733.00/month welfare payments for a single adult. This is why the stigma, is so valuable, to the bourgeoisie.

You have to admit, it saves them a piss-pot full of money.

In the case of Michael Parsa, Minister of Children’s, Community and Social Services in Ontario, one wonders at all the useless photo ops that appear with depressing regularity on his official Facebook page. The whole point is that they are making funding announcements, which all looks very good on paper or screen. Except that the overall spending trends indicate more of a cop-out than anything else. It is propaganda, and official propaganda always emphasizes the positive. Opposition propaganda always emphasizes the negative, of course.

(Around here, we like to think of ourselves as fair, objective, and impartial. – ed.)

Speaking objectively, Canada, with a population of 41 million rational agents in economic theory, is also connected to the global economy. In that sense, we are subject to outside influences, as an example, every little thing globally, seems to affect the price of fuel, noted above. The cost of housing is so much more dictated by internal factors—we’re not importing houses from China, or exporting wheat to the Ukraine, just to make the point clear. Canada is sixth in global energy production, and when the price is high, a kind of prosperity ensues—a hard habit to kick, as it were. As for rational, in a recent survey, it was suggested that forty percent of all Canadians were suffering from some sort of mental illness, which by extension, must also include a similar sampling of pollsters…but that, as we say, is a story for another day.

In the modern automobile, with all of their electronic sensors and processing units, there are still a limited number of variables to be analyzed. You push on the throttle, and the engine revs up, the vehicle goes faster. You take your foot off the gas, touch the brakes and she slows back down again. You turn the steering wheel, you go left, you go right. Turn off the key, and she stops in your own driveway.

The economy, (stupid), has a minimum of eight to ten billion variables, representing every single human being on the planet Earth, and then some, such as weather, plate tectonics, sunspots, every other living creature on the planet, and then all the physical, chemical and vegetable forces at work at any given time.

My personal opinion is that the Bank of Canada will be extremely cautious about hitting the gas pedal on that economy-thingy, and even more cautious about stomping on those brakes. It’s a fine balance, this is especially true when the more privileged and therefore political classes are feeling the pinch of the glass slipper—more than anything, they fear turning into a pumpkin at midnight.

One big party for the Michal Parsas of this world...

All right, allegories aside, even if the rate of inflation came down to two percent and stayed there for a while, it will be some very long time before the Bank of Canada rate comes down to anywhere near that same figure. As for the nominal, 0.25 % rate that had persisted for many years beforehand, I doubt if we will see that again in our lifetimes, bearing in mind this writer is turning 65 and retiring off of disability very, very soon now.

My advice to the Bank of Canada would be to hold off on that rate cut for another quarter, but what in the hell do I know.

Only what I read in the papers, ladies and gentlemen, and that is the sad and lonely truth.

 

END

 

Inn of the Good Shepherd Giving Out Fresh Fruits and Vegetables.

Graph of auto fuel prices in Canada, 2022-24.

Food Prices from 2017 to 2023.

Food Inflation Ticks Up. (CTV)

The Impact of Inflation on Wages. (CBC)

Study of Wage Disparity by Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Canadians Paying Too Much Rent.

Toronto Condo Rents Drop Seven Percent in Six Months.

CERB. 

Canada Revenue Agency Recovery Efforts. (CBC)

Forty Percent of Canadians Report 'Minds Eroding'. (Bogus poll)

Editor’s Note. Louis says ‘percent’ where some other style books say that as per cent. Oh, and he prefers Cdn rather than CAN when referring to the Canadian dollar. He's been studying economics on the internet for some years. He's not too sure if 'chiseling' should have one or two 'L's. He might even be too lazy to look it up, and probably don't give a shit anyways. Other than that, he really is quite all right.

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Thank you for reading, ladies and gentlemen.