(OPINION) Have you noticed that store shelves are starting to get emptier and emptier? During the panic shopping that was sparked by the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, there were very intense shortages of certain items, but those shortages did not last very long at all.
But now there are widespread shortages in just about every sector of our economy, and they are starting to become quite painful. Unfortunately, we are being told to expect the shortages to intensify as we head into the holiday season. That is extremely alarming because in many areas the shortages are already quite severe.
I had been away from the news for a couple of days, and when I came back there were lots more stories about our ongoing shortages. For example, the following comes from an excellent piece by Matt Stoller… There are shortages in everything from ocean shipping containers to chlorine tablets to railroad capacity to black pipe (the piping that houses wires inside buildings) to spicy chicken breasts to specialized plastic bags necessary for making vaccines.
Moreover, prices for all sorts of items, from housing to food, are changing in weird ways. Beef, for instance, is at near-record highs for consumers, but cattle ranchers are getting paid much less than they used to for their cows. In my entire life, I have never seen anything like this. Even the Federal Reserve is admitting that we have a major problem at this point.
In fact, in the latest Beige Book the Fed referred to the shortages a whopping 80 times. In certain parts of the country, these shortages are really beginning to sting. A reader just emailed me about what is going on in his section of Connecticut, and he said that I could share this with all of you… I am just a regular guy in Connecticut, who has been watching things very closely, especially from a Biblical perspective.
I wanted to quickly share with you an experience my wife and I had about two weeks ago at a medium-size, family run grocery store near Waterbury, CT. Seemingly overnight, we noticed there were little yellow signs on the shelves, where certain SKUs used to be. Not entire lines, but individual SKUs. For example, a flavor of oatmeal, certain cereals, etc. The signs said something to the effect of: “This item is no longer available due to supply chain constraints”.
I would say there were a few hundred signs in total throughout the store. It wasn’t until we got to the juice/water aisle that we noticed the larger problem: there was no Gatorade (?) and no bottled water (gallon jugs). I have befriended the manager over the years, so I asked him where the water is, and he told me “…they only will give us so many bottles”. I asked who ‘they’ is, and he said the manufacturer: they were being rationed.
As he said this, a truck driver happened to walk by and joined in on the conversation. He told us that he just got back from Maine, after a three-day trip- a trip that normally takes him a few hours. He said he, and all of the other truck drivers, sit at the warehouses for days, waiting for their trucks to be filled. To be clear, I asked him how long it normally takes, and he said a few hours at the most.
On our way out, I remembered that we needed dog food, so we went to the pet aisle, and there was no cat litter, and no dog food, save a few little bags of the cheapest stuff. All of the things Steve Quayle has been saying about food and water shortages suddenly became reality. I always believed him, but now I was seeing it, at the very local level. We then decided to go to PetSmart to get the dog food. Empty. The entire dog food shelf was empty except for a few bags! READ MORE
