The cost of living crisis was a sucker punch to the poor.

This cost-of-living crisis was a sucker punch. It was delivered by the 1% because they don’t want anyone getting above their station through proper wage increases.  We didn’t expect or deserve it. But rising prices for food, accommodation, heating, and commuting knocked the wind out of many because incomes weren’t allowed to keep pace. I am not winded by this cost-of-living crisis; I am flat out on the canvas and being counted out of the fight. I honestly don’t know if I can struggle to my feet and continue this bare-knuckle economic brawl in the fixed ring of capitalism.

I am not alone because millions are like me in a similar state of economic duress. Yet we don’t organise to demand our due and too often allow the news media to marginalise us as the unfortunate ones in a land of plenty.

At grocery stores, I find most things on offer deeper than my pocket or of such poor quality that buying them feels like exploitation because it is. Chickens are on sale this week at one location for $9. These are one-kilogram birds raised on antibiotics and pumped full of water after death to make their anorexic flesh look plump. I’ve had them before for my dinners. I’ve always wondered if a 3d printer version of this type of poultry might have a more appealing taste than the waterlogged flesh that comes from these bargain store birds whose lives were grimmer than the wretches eating them for dinner.

But beggars can’t be choosers. These are the deals doled out to us by the grocery store oligarchs during this cost-of-living crisis world of ours. Take it or leave it. Go to another store and try your chances there. I did and found no deals. But I did find there you can buy 12 cherries for $4. Overpriced cherries from Chile indicates the cost-of-living crisis hasn’t put all of us in the same boat. No, much of the top ten to 15% of income earners will get out of this crisis without a scratch. But once this is over, they will act as if their limiting vacation trips abroad to one a year was a sacrifice as meaningful as being on the beaches of “D-Day” on June 6, 1944.

We are not all in this together. The poor like me aren’t even in a lifeboat with the diminished middle class. We are steerage passengers locked below deck and sinking with the ship.  Seeing those cherries reminded me of a time long ago when in the early 2000s, I traipsed into a newly opened Tiffany’s in an upscale part of Moscow. I was gobsmacked by the riches before me. I watched those who had benefited from Russia’s new gangster economy drop tens of thousands of dollars for tiny baubles. It was a different story outside the store because Moscow's streets had more beggars than parked cars.

I think the west has caught up because, since Covid, there is a more overt gangster quality to those who run our economies.

Today, London, Toronto, New York, Paris and even my small city are as economically unequal as the Moscow I encountered long ago. The shops for the wealthy in our countries are filled with punters with loads of undertaxed disposable income. While outside them, the homeless proliferate our streets like the unburied dead that lie uneasy on a battlefield still fresh from a recent conflict. 

Most of us walk past the unhoused in hurried embarrassment, guilt or with apprehension that they will do us harm. As for me, I engage and say hello to them when I see them on my daily walk. But that might be since the covid pandemic began;  I really haven’t been in the company of others for long periods.  I can keep my distance but still interact with them as human being to human being.

It’s a strange exile; I live. I am in contact with many people online. But, I have separated myself from attending parties, visiting friends in other cities, or eating indoors in restaurants, during these times of pandemic.  There is no social safety net to speak of- and healthcare is on ration. I did my cancer rodeo alone during the first lockdowns from covid in 2020 and 2021. That wasn’t pleasant or easy. It did teach me you don't want to get seriously ill if you are on your own because you will die on your own.

Getting long covid worries me because I have co-morbidities. In my present condition, I can walk 15km a day without being out of breath, but a bout of covid has a great chance to leave me for either- a short while or forever gasping for air like my brother, who died of pulmonary fibrosis connected to a ventilator.

Me getting seriously ill this time means my luck has run out. That frightens me because Canadian law allows those with extreme health issues, who are impecunious an option for express check out from existence as if life was a hotel stay at a Holiday Inn Express.   I don't want anytime soon to need to investigate whether assisted suicide is right for me. I still have things to do and happiness to pursue.

The rub is our era has become as intolerant as the epoch of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. I fear that there is a great possibility in the future, technocrats who serve the 1% will make that choice for death by assisted suicide for me and millions of others. They will just cut off our means to survive or our access to public health care and let you decide whether you jumped or were pushed out of the window. So my advice to you all is learn to fight back now before it is too late.

Thank you for reading another post from me at Harry’s Last Stand. Your subscriptions help preserve the working class legacy of Harry Leslie Smith, “The World’s Oldest Rebel.” I was my dad’s carer and co-conspirator in his Last Stand project that lasted from 2010-2018 and comprised 5 books, hundreds of essays, and tens of thousands of miles travelled. His history is everyone’s history whose ancestors lived in the harsh times before the Welfare State, and came from the working class. Those times are coming back so preserving the works of my dad’s Last Stand are so important now. His fight is our fight. Remember if you can make your subscription paid but if you can’t it’s all good because times are tough and if you are here, you are fighting for the same things as me. Take Care, John

Photo by Senad Palic on Unsplash