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Stagflation, demand-pull, cost-push, shrinkflation, skimpflation….. The neighbours asked me to explain it all and here are their replies
Cost-push inflation occurs when prices increase due to increases in production costs
Ok well, I save my own seeds, use my own made compost for seeds, use rainwater for irrigation. No inflation here
Demand-pull inflation can be caused by strong consumer demand for a product or service.
Hmmm… When I decided to run a vegetable box scheme I worked out how much I needed to earn. I then reduced this sum by installing a wind turbine, solar water heater etc etc. Then I calculated how much I now needed to earn. From there I etimated the number of veg boxes and the number of clients. This hasn’t changed so I have no need to raise my prices and profit from incresed consumer demand. I don’t need more clients to live well. No inflation here either
Skimpflation is when people are paying the same for something that worsened in quality
Seriously? Producers will deliberately cut production or service costs somewhere without telling people? So people are getting a worse service etc ? That’s not possible for me, I won’t do it. And I don’t need to as my costs haven’t gone up. No inflation here either
Shrinkflation, is when a company reduces the size of a packet or the quantity in the packet but the price stays the same.
Nahhh. I’m not going to do that either, don’t want to don’t need to. Same quantity of fruit and veg in the same size boxes.
Ok. I can hear the yes-buts heading my way! Like “your other costs are rising, you have to buy in some things.” Well yes that’s true so let me check :
Going out for a beer. I go to the local bar and they sell locally produced beer and sodas. They buy these from local producers who buy their ingredients from other local producers.
Going out for a meal. Same story. By the way our restaurant only has a few individual tables. We rejected the dominant, and frankly, recent model of tables for 2 or 4 or 6 etc for a big table that can seat 30 people. It’s much more fun.
Clothes. I don’t buy them very often and the ones I do are locally made from locally produced fibres etc .
Gas, electricity, fuel … we produce our own from a local and community owned enterprise. Gas produced by methanisation. Electricity produced from locally made windturbines and hydroturbines. Fuel made by pyrolisis to produce wood gas. and a massive community led programme means that our houses are super insulated (using locally produced fibres), so less wood and gas etc for heating.
Health costs. We figured out that prevention is better than cure, which isn’t a very complicated thing to understand frankly. So we eat good quality locally produced food with an emphasis on food diversity. We are all quite happy with our work. We live in houses and apartements that have been retrofitted to make them adapted to human beings, We got clean water to drink and we have eliminated most of the sources of pollution and accidents. We are doing ok, hale and hearty!
No, it’s not like some sort of medieval setup. For a start we don’t have anyone telling us what to do, we work it out ourselves. So we have no political class to support with our food and water. We rejected monocrop cereal based agricultural systems for polycultural tree crop based systems. This massively reduced the time and energy needed to produce food. We haven’t rejected technology, but we do make big efforts to make what we have got last as long as possible.
I don’t want to exagerate. There are still some things that we need to bring in from the global economy but we are working to reduce or eliminate these needs. Everytime we identify a leak (the need to buy something in from the global economy) we set up a design group. This group explores ways that we can set up a local production. One of their priorities each time is to find biological solutions to any locally unmet need.
We worked out early on that some things are difficult for us to produce but easy for another community down the road. In these cases we work with the other community to create links of interdependance. We exchange what is easy for us to produce, and difficult for them and vice versa. We now have a web of bioregional economic and cultural interdependancies.
I don’t want to exagerate, we’re not entirely immune to the ups and downs of the global economy but we are getting there. And so are the other towns and villages in our bioregion.
Next week my village is inviting a village down the valley to dinner. It’s going to be fun!