February 27, 2023

Monday musings from my blog. 

The sun is out and blue sky glows down on our paradise. Okanagan valley is alight with the first signs of second spring. It tried to snow over the weekend but it was merely a dusting of mother natures paintbrush. No matter what has happened in the human world, nature keeps on shining.

In February 2020, the human world was a different place. Nature remains the same, but everything has gone crazy for the billions of parasitic creatures that call this planet home. Yes, humanity is a parasite on this planet, one that may inevitably cause its own downfall. In the meantime, I looked up how much things have changed since the last days of February 2020. 

It’s hard to believe three years have already flown by.

The median price of a home was just under $ 600,000.00. At the time it was seen as unaffordable and over-priced. By February 2022, that median price had almost doubled to $ 1,150,000.00. An insane increase not foreseen by very many people. That has since dropped to just over $ 900,000.00 a number still in the stratosphere.

For the increasing majority of people who can no longer afford to buy a home, the price of rent has also shot through the roof. In February 2020 a one-bedroom apartment could be found at the somewhat reasonable rate of $ 1400.00 per month, now that same one-bedroom rents out at $ 1900.00 per month if you are lucky enough to find one. It’s no wonder the rate of homelessness has gone way up. 

Fuel prices also shot way up. From a low of 99.9 in February 2020 it now sits at 156.9, that’s after it was over $2.00 per litre at the height of the pandemic. 

Going out for dinner has also become a luxury more than ever. I for one have reduced the amount I eat out and have begun to cook at home a lot more than I did in the before times. 

The price of groceries has also risen to the point it costs a family of four an extra thousand dollars to feed itself for a year. Yet wages remain much the same as they were three years before – if you can find anyone who wants to work.

We have new phrases in our vocabulary we never heard before. Social distance, covid, and several other terms came into our world in the last three years. The hope is those same terms will disappear over the next three years. 

The hope is the last three years will remain a strange blip in history. 

As spring blooms forth the so-called experts are conflicted as to where our economy and our society are headed. The hope is we have avoided economic collapse. Except so many people are barely staving off their own economic collapse. 

The hope is we are through the worst of it and the price of everything will stabilize. Of course, the prices will never return to where they were before the coronaverse wreaked its ugly head. Corporations will never claw back prices, they will just continue to reap the record profits they bring.

It’s no wonder there are so many conspiracy theorists out there. 

Society needs to find a way to bring back balance in the economy and our lives. It all begins with you and with me. We need to push back against price gouging, find creative ways to save money and stop supporting the huge corporations who hold us, hostage. 

It’s hard to support the local butcher over the mass grocery store, and harder still to find a baker or a deli owned by the person down the street. Tim Hortons doesn’t need our money, neither does Mcdonald’s or Dairy Queen. Yet my daughter’s generation has been indoctrinated to buy from these corporate giants. The phone, the TV social media push the next generation into the cookie-cutter world of corporate greed. 

That conspiracy is real.

One step, one thing at a time. Stop supporting corporations and support your neighbours instead. 

We can build back better. It takes one day, one step at a time.