Coping with increasingly higher prices for goods

THE EDITOR: My little snippet of a letter on Monday was a desperate attempt to say something, if I can’t do anything, in reaction to the 33 per cent increase in the price of flour, as is the case exponentially for all products, urging the people to exercise the discipline to buy less, only the necessities, thereby creating a cumulative surplus on the shelves, inevitably bringing prices down.

Lo and behold on Saturday I paid $6 for a doubles, previously $5, even as I would have been resisting the “sixers” who would have immediately made the call for increases as if their lives depended on it, or simply because it would have been the natural reaction of people in business, big or small.

But I didn’t mind paying the $6 with the increase in the price of flour, as I may have to do in the future with all flour-related products. But certainly not with any splurge, making a real effort to follow my own advice of reversing the economics of supply and demand.

The flour price increase would have been used by suppliers to justify any increases to their advantage, but by reversing the economics of supply and demand, the customer would now enjoy reduced prices precipitated by accumulating surpluses on the shelves.

With no salary increase in sight and retrenchment on the horizon, with falling production in oil and gas at a time when such prices are excellent and agriculture only a word, inter alia, the net effect is only crime and more crime, not merely for its own sake, but for the sake of simply trying to survive when the money is not available.

And with all this at the feet of a government which has not managed effectively to avoid this oncoming tragedy, your survival cannot depend on the latter, or on taking from what others have worked hard for. Your survival depends only on your own resilience and initiative to use the little money you have in a disciplined manner for your own personal survival.

For those who seek to exploit you with much higher than usual prices in these dire circumstances, they could jump high or they could jump low, talk about the pandemic and freight, about supply and demand and inflation and higher interest rates, inter alia, their only reality would be their shelves piling higher with unsold goods, with the inevitable result of a reduction in prices.

Won’t it be a little nice to see the shoe on the other foot for a change? But I won’t be unkind, for we need them as much as they need us.

If only they could think about us sometimes instead of only about themselves.

DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

via e-mail