An Economic Tipping Point?

It’s that time of year for many companies. The time of year when accounting departments start studying the spreadsheets and begin pushing for spending less in the next year. So, I learned a long time ago that starting cost saving initiatives with vendors typically needs to occur at the end of August and beginning of September. This, in and of itself, has little or no bearing on what we normally discuss here at Identity Dixie. The reason I bring it up is this year an interesting pattern has emerged.

We buy metal and we work with metal, so we buy petroleum products in order to do that. Frequently, those markets run the same trends: one goes up, the other one goes up, one goes down, and the other goes down. This year, that is not the case. The metal market is starting to plummet, and the petrol market is continuing to climb. Why is this significant? I will enlighten you.

We are a small fish in a very large pond when it comes to purchasing metals. We buy some standard mild steel and aluminum, nothing fancy or exotic, save for some stainless steel. As with everything during the Fakedemic of 2020, logistical costs caused the price of everything to go up. In turn, this caused many consumers and buyers to hedge their bets when it came to ordering materials: laying out purchase agreements for locked-in pricing and guaranteeing specific tonnages of metal purchased over the next three months. As a smaller company, we did not have the buying power of larger companies, so we agreed to purchase “x number of materials at x pricing,” whether we used it or not. This worked well for us, and while our purchases are not sending the sales guy’s daughter to college anytime soon, we remained, and still do remain, a consistent customer. The sales rep can count on that order coming in monthly. We provide security for him, and, in return, he provides a reasonable price for us. Last month, we met to see where we could reduce costs and he excitedly came back and said, “Metal prices are dropping, I can give you a great deal. Not just pre-Fakedemic pricing, but Trump-era pricing.” To our small company, this appeared like great news. Perhaps things were turning around.

When it came time to meet with some of our suppliers that use petroleum-based products, we were expecting something similar; although, not quite as radical as we can all see the prices at the pump. So, we knew that prices have gone up recently on refined products. Still, we expected that logistics might have played a role in the price drop. What we found was quite the opposite, our vendors were offering cost savings through more expensive products; these would supposedly last longer (not an uncommon tactic, sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s not).

This created an interesting problem, for markets that typically rise and fall in a somewhat comparable pattern, they were (are) diverging. So, I went back to our metal supplier and asked, out of simple curiosity, “Why are the steel prices dropping so low right now?” His answer was simple, “No one is building right now, so demand is way down.” Everyone can see all the construction going on and the new sub-divisions and the gaudy McMansions, so I pressed further. He clarified that no one is building commercially. The big buyers are not going through their stockpiles like they were before and it’s slowing down the purchase of new materials.

The economic slowdown that we have been expecting for a year or two is now happening. The petroleum market is still climbing because it is being artificially inflated. This trend will continue. We are rapidly approaching the economic crash. With building slowing down, the need for labor will diminish. As 20,000 invaders cross the Texas border on daily basis, where will they find work? Not in the construction industry, as they were previously, or the other low skilled jobs that were not being filled due to the high wages in other markets. This will create an overabundant labor pool, which will result in lower wages and less need to raise wages to find better employees.

Meanwhile, the continual artificial inflation of the petroleum market will continue to raise the costs on standard everyday goods and consumables. Those of us that are not on government subsidies will pay that price because our employers will not raise wages in a labor rich environment. The government will just fabricate more subsidies, leading to even more destruction of the middle-class.

We must continue to build parallel communities and alternative economies. It will be the only way to maintain freedom of choice, and voting harder will not work.

Secede from modernity and find the freedom your forefathers fought so hard for.