It's not economics that created the cost of living crisis but neoliberal ideology-where we are all expendable.

The cost of living crisis is one of the most cruel devices used by the 1% to harness ordinary people into ideological compliance with fascism. The cost of living crisis enriches the few and enslaves the many with an efficiency that any tyrant's secret police would admire. The cost of living crisis terrorises its victims. It makes those caught in its tidal surge of unaffordability in housing, food, prescription medicine, entertainment, transportation feel exhausted, and confused. Victims of food and housing insecurity are as despairing as shipwreck survivors clinging to debris that is  losing its buoyancy.

Photo by Samuel Steele on Unsplash

Our cost of living crisis has no off-ramp, except societal repression or an all-out world war. It has bred not only hopelessness in people but fear, anger and outright hatred against minorities. And, bizarrely- a distain against those who have most suffered from the cost of living crisis- homeless people. 

If we lived in a just society none of this would have happened. We would have built safe guards to prevent insecure housing, low wages, grocery food price profiteering or the privatisation of our public healthcare systems. We kind of did build that society when the Welfare State was constructed. But we allowed its destruction by the political and news media class who where working for the 1%.  Neoliberalism isn't a vicious circle but a straight line towards authoritarianism. Mass poverty is the necessary ingredient to make the journey from democracy to dictatorship a quick ride and it is happening in our life time.

Poverty is insidious because it debilitates self-worth and stifles ambition outside of animalistic fight for survival. It deactivates optimism and makes one see threats that don't exist. You become short tempered and your horizon is only allowed to stretch to maintaining food in your belly and a roof over your head. Everything feels tenuous because it is. One wrong move, one missed payment or just one more illness and you are put you out on the pavement.  You are shamed, mocked and eviscerated as someone who just didn’t have the right stuff to keep your head above water in a system designed for us to fail.

If I am honest with myself I don't see my financial situation changing except becoming more worse My father’s books will be finished. I will write more books myself until I can’t. It’s all about legacy now and not living.   Poverty will be my constant companion for the allotted time I have left. It’s not that I am not bright or industrious. It is just that I have illnesses and am now sixty. Outside of writing, I have few employment opportunities. So, I write because it gives me the sense whether it is true or not that I am being defiant against my fate.  I can control the panic it causes in my brain by leashing it to the words I use to define this decent. I think at least unlike my ancestors who died in horrible poverty I can bang the side of my prison walls with words and say "I am mad as hell and I will not go quietly."  

 During this cost-of-living crisis era, the poor draw deep into their Neolithic DNA to survive. We search for food like ancient gathers, once did. But instead of constantly roaming across fields and savannahs in pursuit of sustenance during a drought- our cost of living crisis keeps us fixed in place. The expired fruit and veg carts at grocery stores are now picked over before noon arrives by intrepid shoppers. The financially strapped- flit from bargain shop to bargain shop trying to collect dried noodles, tuna, sweets, and tinned fruit hoping we have enough to eat while we wait for our “ship to come in.” I find immense satisfaction when I can find a whole chicken at 50% off because its best before date was the day before.

The poor and financially pressed can't move away from their poverty because nowhere is affordable. You can’t leg it from a 21st century cost of living crisis because it is ubiquitous. So renters take the petty passive aggressions of their landlords in fear of eviction. We wait to report repairs needed so as not to seem like the “bothersome tenant.” It’s just the alternative to the yes sir, no sir, three bags full demeanour to landlords is so grim.

 The number of homeless people fifty years of age and older grows at a rate that makes me think I have stepped back into a colourised version of the Dirty 30s. When I when I walk past my city's soup kitchen. the amount of old people in the queue is a dismal reminder of why Canada has the highest number of legal assisted suicides in the world because people know you can’t grow old with any dignity unless you’ve got a lot of money.

I noticed some of the regulars who lined up for food are now gone taken by the winter or bad drugs. A man in his mid fifties I was friendly with died from an overdose of heroin laced with fentanyl, in February.  I liked him and remembered when he was housed but got kicked out for renoviction.  

The cost-of-living crisis has ushered in a new era of hunger, and with it will come more hate, fascism, racism, and violence. The rich know this, and they know, that if you are hungry and in constant pursuit of affordable food and housing, you have no time to rebel. They know most people can be marshalled to hate others more vulnerable than them which keeps the status quo of inequality. When there is no time to reflect because you are robbing Peter to pay Paul, you just don't have the peace of mind to understand that the rich are your true enemies. 

Fear of homelessness, hunger loss of prestige make populations compliant to every humiliation thrown at them. It's the belief we all have- that the worst will be spared us- if we collaborate with the system that oppresses us.  I see more people becoming like me, living on the cusp of ruin and trying to remember better days over a lunch of bread and margarine. I honestly don't know if I will survive this cost of living crisis. I'd like to. But if I don't I still have hope left that what comes after this cost of living crisis and the dictatorships waiting in the wings is the eventual sound of tumbrils rolling across cobbled streets.

Thanks for reading and supporting my Substack. Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. A yearly subscriptions will cover much of next month’s rent. Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John