Sobriety as an Inflation Hedge
The government isn’t going to help you, it’s time to help yourself
Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I think the world is going to hell in a handbasket. The war on the middle class that has been in progress since the 1970s is beginning to inflict serious casualties. The last two years of fraudulent lockdowns and authoritarian hysteria have facilitated the greatest transfer of wealth in all of history from the middle and working classes to the top 1%, and the attrition continues in 2022 as central banks hike up interest rates and people begin defaulting on their home loans.
And all this is only just getting started. This is their so-called Great Reset, and it’s going to get ugly. If you’re not familiar yet with this term and what it entails, Michael Rectenwald writes succinctly about it here and in several quality follow-on pieces: Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
A simple search on Rumble, Bitchute, or even YouTube will also furnish you with all the nightmare-inducing content you’ll ever need on The Great Reset.
You could also read the manifesto straight from the horse’s mouth, or the horses ass as the case may be. World Economic Forum founder and chairman Klaus Schwab actually wrote down all his plans in a book called, wait for it… Covid-19: The Great Reset.
But even if they hadn’t made it abundantly clear what their aims are, surely even the most credulous and politically disengaged folk must be starting to notice that things are not as they should be. And certainly not as they are being pitched to us by our friendly six o’clock shills on the TV news. Be it the constant saturation of ever-increasingly unhinged woke commandments; or the rank hypocrisy of the climate change mafia – people like Great Thunberg who refuse to call out the world’s biggest carbon emitters, China and India, while demanding people in the West sever themselves from fossil fuel dependance immediately; or the sudden uptick in heart attacks and strokes in young, fit and healthy people…
And even if all this escapes the hypothetical man (or woman, or trans person) in the street – then certainly, the rising cost of living cannot.
Inflation is here, and it’s here to stay. It is deliberate, and it will get worse. Part of the Great Reset agenda is to price most people out of asset ownership. There are two ways to do this – one is to confiscate people’s wealth outright (taxation or appropriation), the other is to inflate the currency. And this is what they have done in the mass money printing of the past two years.
I’ll say it again. This is deliberate, and it will continue.
What then is the average person to do? Most of us do not have multi-million-dollar asset portfolios that will appreciate alongside the inflation to carry us through this raid. The average worker might own part of a house, have a few thousand in savings, and a retirement fund with maybe a couple of hundred grand in it.
None of this is immune from the looters. As interest rates continue to climb, more and more people will default on their home loans. And the value of the money people do have in the bank is being rapidly eroded.
And if you think your retirement fund will backstop this larceny, then think again. Ever wondered why they make it so hard for you to manage your own retirement investments? It’s because it’s not really your money. They take that money you put in every month and use it to service the toxic debt that is baked into this colossal financial bubble they’ve created. It’s their money, and they’ll do with it as they please. If you have faith that it will still be there for you in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time, all I can say is good luck.
Personally, I am planning to liberate my retirement money from the ‘asset managers’ and set up a self-managed fund as soon as possible. But they don’t make it easy. You may wish to look into this yourself. The rules will be slightly different depending on what country you are in – but I guarantee you one factor will remain common: they’ll make it so difficult, that you’ll feel like it’s all too much of a hassle. This is deliberate.
What then are we to do?
There are many mitigation strategies that can help set families and individuals up for resilient futures – everything from homesteading and community gardening to crypto investing. My purpose here today is not to delve into this enormous topic but rather highlight one simple, immutable truth.
If you want to survive the storm that’s coming (and save what money you do have while doing it) then you have a better chance if you’re sober.
Even from a basic household budgeting perspective, when the grocery bills start climbing, what is the first thing that one should trim? Why, luxuries of course. Luxuries like alcohol. Unfortunately, many folk do not see alcohol as a luxury, but rather a necessity. Addiction is good like that, and I’m not throwing shade here, just speaking from experience.
But the fact is that alcohol is indeed a luxury, and an expensive one too. Not as costly as cigarettes, but not cheap. Let’s do some quick math, I’ll use myself as a case study.
I probably used to spend about $150 a week on booze. This is a conservative guess, as many weeks would go well over $300, especially if I was drinking out at bars and restaurants. But at $150 per week, that’s $7,800 of after-tax income on alcohol per year.
However, this figure alone does not tell the full story. With boozing also comes other expenses – Uber rides, expensive restaurant meals, unnecessary UberEats deliveries because you’re too hungover to cook, impulsive online shopping decisions made while under the influence, visits to the casino, drugs… the list goes on and on and will look very different for everyone. But even factoring in the basic items common to most drinkers – taxis and food deliveries – we might find that our weekly alcohol-related spend climbs to $250.
That’s $13,000 per year.
I don’t care who you are – that’s a fair chunk of change. Indeed, for a middle-income earner on say $90,000 that’s about 20% of your after-tax salary (depending on the tax rate where you live).
The cost of living has easily increased by 20% in the last year. I hate to state the obvious here, but if your employer has not offered to bridge this gap, then perhaps recouping that 20% by ditching the drink and all its attendant costs might be a smart move?
And even if you don’t drink like I used to, even if your spend is only half what mine was, that’s still an extra several thousand dollars a year you could have in your pocket – not a bad inflation hedge.
Look, I’m not preaching here. I still like to get hammered from time to time. But, as I have previously written, I now make sobriety the rule as opposed to the exception. And through this I have saved many thousands of dollars which I’ve been able to invest as I’ve seen fit.
My journey toward as a more sober existence did not start because I was trying to offset the outrageous inflation we’re now experiencing. I began getting sober in May 2020 – long before prices began rising. I did however have a very bad feeling about the future once the inconsistencies in the Covid narrative became clear and ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ turned into two years because... reasons, and I can remember thinking that things were going to get rough and that my best chance of getting through it all was to cut out the booze and get myself together.
So far that strategy has worked out pretty well. I was right, things have gotten rough. And while I did not specifically foresee the current inflation at the time, my sobriety has nonetheless proven an effective hedge.
The real hedge of sobriety is of course in the strengthening of the body, mind and spirit. Regardless of one’s finances, surviving epochs of hardship and evil, such as the one we are now entering, is contingent upon strength and courage. And one thing I know to be true from many years of experimentation is that the drunk man is neither strong, nor courageous.
I will write more on sobriety as a hedge against evil soon, but in the meantime, if your grocery bill is making you wince, maybe consider scaling back on those luxury liquid items, you might be surprised how much you save.