Via the all-knowing Sharon Astyk comes this pretty scary fact:
The second-largest merchant-vendor for credit card use is now McDonalds. This suggests that many consumers are in serious distress if they need to get their $4 Big Mac and fries with a credit card.
All the signs indicate that this credit crunch is very bad and getting worse quickly. People are finding it harder and harder to afford food on top of the other debts they are carrying. 2009 looks set to be pretty grim. It makes me think even more about backyard farming, cooperative efforts, bulk food, and food storage. We need more community resilience!
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December 3, 2008 at 5:24 am
BDO
I won’t question the politics of the credit crunch, but I will question the consumer, since I am one. Where do we get our values and education on debt when we go into to debt to buy McDonalds food? That is scary. No wonder we, the consumers, owe $14 trillion and growing every day. I like the idea of community resilience if it helps change our idea of debt as being a scary thing and not a means to a “better” lifestyle.
December 3, 2008 at 7:38 am
David
Thanks, BDO. I agree that we’re facing all kinds of problems. The “give me convenience or give me death” society that has been built up since the mid-20th century has been amazing in terms of many improvements in longevity, overall health, and levels of education and prosperity. But there has been a hidden dark side which is now being revealed as the good times start to fall apart.
We somehow convinced ourselves that we had beaten debt, poverty, and disease. But we haven’t. We have instead developed a society that rewards reckless behaviour, and the terrible thing is that it’s the poor and marginalized folks who are really going to get it in the neck, along with everyone else who was enticed into spending beyond their means. Helping folks afford to keep eating is going to be a huge task in the next while, especially once their credit is no good even at McDonald’s.