While there is an enormous amount of uncertainty, obfuscation and intentional misinformation coming out of the latest ill-fated military adventure in the Middle East, if we can be certain of anything it is that the real direct as well as indirect costs of this fiasco are enormous.
It is widely reported now that many/most/all of our bases in the region have been destroyed (These Boots Are Made For Dying) and just in the last couple of days it has been revealed that an attack on the Prince Sultan base in Saudi Arabia resulted in the destruction of an E-3 Sentry (AWACS) plane, a plane that is difficult to replace and critical given how many of our ground based radar have already been destroyed. Also 3 KC-135 refueling places were also destroyed in the attack. Today the word is that another F-15E was shot down over Iran, there are pictures of what appears to be wreckage and some videos of what appears to be search and rescue choppers.
How many billions were spent on those bases and radar installations that are all shattered now? The U.S. military seems to be finding out that helping Ukraine with targeting is coming back to bite us in the ass as Russia returns the favor.
That says nothing of the munitions we are burning through, both offensive and defensive, that we simply don’t have the manufacturing capability to replace in a timely fashion. As the U.S. and Israel run out of interceptor missiles while Iran keeps launching, it raises the question of what happens when Iran uses it’s larger and more sophisticated armament against Israel and U.S. military assets.
When you are talking military expenditures in the tens or hundreds of billions it is hard to comprehend. Instead let’s ask this question: How is this impacting the average American?
We know that middle class Americans are struggling mightily. After 4 years of Bidenomics, coupled with the Covid era wild spending in no small part thanks to Trump, inflation raged out of control for several years. The thing most people don’t understand is that inflated prices don’t usually return to prior levels, at best the rate of inflation can be lowered. “Lower inflation” just means “prices not rising as quickly”.
Some stuff came back down like egg prices which were just ridiculous a few years ago, they are around $1.65 at our local Walmart. There has been a building frenzy around here of laying hen chicken barns springing up, each one housing up to 27,500 laying hens and producing at peak more than 25,000 eggs per day. That sounds like a lot but consider that McDonalds alone uses 5-6 million eggs every day according to Grok.
Amish guys love those things because it is something they can have their wives and kids do while they are gone at work. Those barns cost over a million to build but they have the construction down to a science, it’s a little complicated because they don’t hook up to the power grid so they all run on a diesel generator and it can’t stop running or the chickens suffocate pretty quickly (same with hog barns).
Beef on the other hand? That is expensive and promising to get more expensive. To get steaks and hamburgers you need a big steer, like 3/4 of a ton or so. To get that big steer you start with little baby calves.
When you get a day or two old baby calf, you need to bottle feed it and for efficiency sake most of them are raised in pens with hundreds of other baby calves. That means diseases can cause havoc and they are pretty fragile as it is. It’s not unusual for a few to be dead on the truck when it arrives and more regularly drop dead early on.
Not that long ago a baby calf was a few hundred dollars, so losing some hurt but not that much. Now? I saw an invoice for baby calves last week and they were $1,800 each. That price continues to climb each week with producers anticipating that they will breach the $2,000 mark soon. I know at least one guy that raises cattle that isn’t putting any calves in right now, the risk is just too great.
That price is before you give them a single bottle of milk, or vaccinations for that matter. The cost to get them to full size is enormous so in order to make money you need to sell them for a lot. That translates to much higher retail beef prices:
In February of this year ground beef prices hit $6.739/pound. For all of Trump 1.0 it was under $4/pound. Almost $7 for ground beef makes food a lot more expensive for families. Even boneless chicken breasts, much cheaper than ground beef, is hovering a little over $4/pound versus a little over $3/pound for most of Trump 1.0.
It is startling to look at these charts and remember just how much more expensive everything got and how quickly it happened.
The big thing right now is the price of gasoline, and diesel of course. This chart from GasBuddy tells the sorrowful tale….
After a four year stretch under Trump 1.0 where gas mostly hovered in the mid $2/gallon range, it started to rise sharply during the Biden Administration AutoPen Regime, never really dropping below $3 and at one point hitting a high of over $5.00/gallon. Once Trump 2.0 took office it dropped significantly, with a low of $2.72/gallon late last year.
Then we went to (not-a) war with Iran. This is a three month chart….
Gas is over $4/gallon in many places around here and diesel is over $5.
Our economy, fake and gay though it may be, runs on cheap fuel and cheap debt. You can order a dizzying array of consumer goods from Amazon and have them delivered in a day or two because cheap fuel makes it possible for planes, trains and trucks to deliver items right to your door for “free”.
These higher fuel prices are going to translate to higher prices for everything.
Going back to the local Amish. A number of them make wooden pallets which is something you don’t think about until you need them. They take lumber and pare it down to the correct size before nailing it together per customer specs. Lots of Amish teen girls work at these shops because it pays ok, is very flexible (Amish take all sorts of days off for family events) and they can load boards into automated feeders.
They don’t grow their own trees of course, so they have to buy truckload of boards while other local sawmills get log trucks daily to make into different boards. Most of the lumber for pallets comes from elsewhere, Michigan or Canada usually. The higher fuel prices mean their cost for lumber is going up, a cost that has to be reflected in higher prices.
Of course since their shops running on diesel motors instead of power from the grid, that cost is also going up. The nails they use to fasten the pallets together also get shipped to them and that is another line item getting more expensive.
Once the pallets are made they need to be trucked to customers and you guessed it, that costs more now as well. The fuel costs on lumber coming in and pallets going out are tacked on to the cost of pallets as a fuel surcharge. It isn’t a huge amount of money per pallet but it adds up as do the countless other ways the products on those pallets become more expensive.
That is one very small factor in the vast U.S. economy but they add up and what they add up to is the middle class being squeezed out of existence. As this war is a war of choice and a war on behalf of Israel with absolutely no benefit to the American people, these costs are likewise nothing but the latest indirect tax on the American people.
Even if Trump declared “mission accomplished” right now and pulled out completely, the damage is largely done and for absolutely nothing. At least the tariffs were used to force negotiations and concessions, whether you consider it a successful tactic or not, but these costs are just more pressure put on average Americans with absolutely no benefit and the added bonus of dead and maimed Americans, a number that is being hidden from us.
The true comprehensive cost of this fiasco are impossible to calculate but it is enormous by any measure and the people being harmed are the very people that supported the Orange Man, many who voted for him half a dozen times.
Trump might have been a shrewd businessman but he doesn’t know shit about what is beneficial for the American people and given his endless parade of terrible hiring decisions it makes one question if all of his “success” in business was just smoke and mirrors driven by his loud personality.
Or maybe everything we see has been planned all along, with trump being part of this diabolical scheme.
Higher prices – cui bono?
Ultimately Blackrock, State Street, etc….the world controllers.
Heads they win, tails you lose.
JC,
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Other winners are bureaucrats.
Everyplace with a purchase tax is usually based on the percentage:
.. 12% of three-buck fuel… not too shabby.
.. 12% of six-buck fuel… rolling in high clover!
Wars require fire bombing civilians to be won. Iranians by and large supported the mullahs as the Gazans supported Hamas. Without fire bombing we will not be victorious decisively if at all. We don’t have the stomach for the slaughter. They do however. We should never have started this if we didn’t plan to decimate their civilians. Where can we go from here? An Afghan type victory (that is, surrender) is probably what we’ll get.
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Food costs are gonna go crazy, becuase in addition to all that you listed, pretty much all of the American west is dry as a bone. “Extreme Drought” doesn’t really begin. From California to the 100th meridian, there’s zero water here. The snowpack is effectively zero. (you can see dirt) and it should be at it’s highest point (multiple feet deep). Salt Lake City, driest winter ever. Denver, already under watering restrictions. Lowest snowpack EVER in the Sierra Nevadas of California. Burnt to a crisp. Where I live, we’ve had 3 inches of snow. ALL YEAR. (should be like 40 to 50), we had a little sprinkle last night of rain, 0.1 inch (1/10th of an inch). That’s the first moisture since late February. March is typically the snowiest month.
Most of the irrigation companies are already laying out how much the farmers will get and it ain’t much (ain’t much to give), so darn little is gonna grow. Worst part is, you have to plant it and fertilize it, otherwise you can’t collect your crop insurance. So you go bust slowly rather than all at once. There’s zero grazing for the animals (cows, lambs, sheep), and there’s going to be zero winter wheat crop. The only way to keep your animals alive is going to be to truck in hay. AT $5/gallon diesel and it’s going to have to come from east of the Missouri, because everything west is burnt to nothing.
out here in the west we all see this coming, but the entire east (who got a lot of snow this winter) has no idea, but it’s gonna hit everyone.
Buy it cheap (ish) and stack it deep
But, but, but, Cheeto kike says they are defeated?
Never mind the WEF,UN connections for Susie Wiles.
Admiral Epstein the WAR master will lead us to glorious victories.
Honk, honk.
Iran is clearly playing rope-a-dope. They aren’t stupid, and I’m sure they planned this out with Russia and China. The three of them play the long game, unlike us. They clearly studied the activity in Ukraine. I’m sure they hardened their infrastructure with all that Obama money. All they have to do is send some cheap drones or old missiles, with a few of the good ones mixed in, and watch Big and Little satan blow millions in interceptor missiles. More in a single volley than we can replace in a year. They also can be certain that the average doofus in the US has no capacity for pain.
Do you think that Lacretia is going to be ok with gibs rationing for the war effort? Yeah.
I read a piece the other day that combined with what we did in Venezuela, it’s orangeman trying to preserve the petrodollar. Think things are painful now? When the dollar stops being the currency for trade that’ll be excruciating.
We are most certainly being lied to. Think about it – warning times are none existent in Israel, we’re moving batteries from Poland and Korea to cover. Iran is hitting assets in any country that helps us, as well as datacenters. They aren’t dumb. From what I’ve seen so far, they’ve been planning this for some time. I can’t argue with Iran making everyone suffer for our dumbshit move.
The other thing is all those congressional pukes are getting fat on defense stocks. Think about all the stuff we’re soon to be out of. Like Tankers and Awacs. Think about that – both that were hit were built on a 707 platform. I thought they were replacing them with 767 based platforms. Did they kill that program? That plane is nearly as old as the B52.
It’s astounding to think that the KC135 is still around and the KC10s are all in the boneyard. I remember when the KC10s were brand-spankin’ new. The KC46 is in the fleet now– haven’t seen where they are in CENTCOM now or if they’re going to be part of the tanker bridge to move other aircraft to the theater.
Some of the RC-135’s I flew in back in the 80’s are still flying! I regularly check adsb beacon sires and very rarely see a KC-46. Lots of 135’s though. And yes, I know they can turn that beacon off.
Some Amish will use limited electricity. I have seen them use grid electric for their woodshops, but not at home. So some of the livestock buildings might be on the grid.
I hate that bastard
Yep seconded that…Hope you are doing better Brother…
They also can be certain that the average doofus in the US has no capacity for pain.
Bring on the pain it’s the only way people are going to notice they are headed for slaughter…
Hmmph. I remember 15 cent gas.
Apparently Trumpet is now asking for $1.5 T (yes, trillion) for war.
And then there’s the price of everything else that depends on petro products in their manufacture (plastic, many pharmaceuticals, lot’s more).
Absolutely. There’s also the fact that Teva Pharmaceutical (based in Israel) was the target of at least one Iranian attack, and their facilities were damaged. Just how badly is not being owned up to yet (as with most collateral damage from this shit show) BTU they are a major producer of generics. Wouldn’t it be awfully convenient to the “masters of the universe” if they were taken largely out of the supply chain for an as yet undetermined amount of time?
Buy veterinary phamacuticals now.
Much cheaper than Walgreens and it’s the same stuff.
I forgot about the Israeli pharma thing. Bad news for the trannies then. (If the stories about how their drugs are produced in OGA. It’s remarkably difficult to get information about where those are made. Weird, huh?)
You are 110% correct Arthur. And the cost of this fiasco has not EVEN begun to show up.
The war has greatly impacted the production of fertilizers. All of the increased cost of fertilizer will be passed on to the consumer through higher food costs.
Also impacted is the cost of helium used to manufacture computer chips. If they can be manufactured. When the I-Phone shortage kicks in, people will go bat shit crazy.
On the plus side, as John Wilder said in his Wednesday post, when feathers hit the fan and food becomes less available to Africa (they currently import 85% of their food), the long overdue rebalancing of population to resources will finally come about.
The downstream effects of this will likely be at least as bad – quite possibly worse – than what we saw at the height of COVID. That was mostly a byproduct of production and transportation shutting down for periods of time, due to panic over spreading the illness. Facilities remained intact, and only the workers had to return to start getting things sorted. This situation is in fact far worse, as production capacity has been badly damaged, or outright destroyed I some cases.
The transportation issue just with the Straight of Hormuz has already spiked energy and fertilizer prices worldwide (some places worse than others) and will start to have chain reaction effects elsewhere (if it isn’t already) due to the number of vessels and containers being held up. Further, much of what has been damaged/destroyed in oil/LNG/petroleum production capacity will not be back online for years, some maybe gone for good. In any case, hostilities have to be contained before anyone will even start thinking about rebuilding and repairing, for fear they’ll just get hit again.
Then there’s the issue that the petrodollar is facing ever more challenge on the international front. I don’t think most people even begin to understand the inherent advantage that has granted this country for decades, nor what the full implications of it coming to an end would actually be. Iran has now created a means of forcing a lot of the rest to the world to abandon it, or it’s “no oil for you bitches”.
Finally, there is the ill will and resentment forming against the FUSA over the economic damage already done to the rest of the world by all of this, and I don’t see any quick exit from the conflict, much less anything remotely resembling resumption of the previous “normal” baseline. We may not care what the rest of the world thinks of us, but we will feel the sting of their resentment and thirst for retribution in ways not yet imagined. The consequences of this will be felt for years to come, and too many damned fools think prices will magically go back down if Trump can wrap up the BS with Iran in a couple more weeks (which I honestly can’t see happening).
As usual, the (typical) American perspective is short sighted and incapable of sussing out the problems yet to be revealed, that are multiple layers deep.
Resentment for certain, BRD. I watched a whacked video recently in which the guy warned Americans that this may not be the best time to be exploring Europe.
Imagine “The Ugly American” walking through Rome, Italy (for example) demanding a waiter bring catsup for his eggs–all while every Italian (and everyone else on Planet Fucked) is experiencing the unnecessary hardships of the trickle-down assfuckery that is the World Economy when DJT essentially butt-fkd every person on Earth, economically speaking.
Americans, once more, are not welcome abroad. Be aware, jacktards.
“Heads on swivels, fools!”
Higher food costs especially because of limited supply. Already reading where the hit on fertilizer has impacted this season’s planting. Miss that window and you have to wait a year.
Well, Deagel did say that there would be a lot fewer of us in 2025. Maybe this was all just part of the plan all along with a small adjustment in timing. Perhaps Trump is chief executive officer executing a plan that was laid out for him by his betters. Let’s assume I’m wrong: but tell me what more Trump could do to wreck this country than he is already doing? There’s plenty of evidence online showing Mr. Netanyahu’s quote about what should happen to the goys in Dumerica.
The system (purpose) is what it does. – John Wilder
Dont our politicians or generals never learn?
I am reminded of 1914 when the german High Command wargamed the war and thought that the british would make a short blockade of the german coast, meaning the ships of the Royal Navy would come close to the german coast. But instead the british made the long blockade, close to their harbour. And the german High Command was: WTF? Why dont they do what would be the most advantageous to us?
Recently the german army showed the first Leopard 2A8 tank with anti-drone systems.
In Facebook on a german military thread I asked how many times this anti-drone defense could fire, how many reloads are and how fast can it be reloaded.
Standard military questions you would assume.
Instead I was branded a Putin sympathizer and other names. Fortunately they didnt call me a Defeatist, you know how people reacting in a sane way were labelled in the 3.Reich before they were executed.
Sometimes I feel like living in the last days of the 3. Reich, because of all this talk of how it will all be good and Ukraine will win the war, Iran will surrender, everything is only for your own good and our weapons are gamechangers and anbeatable (Wonderweapons like the V1, V2 anybody?).
They all disregard the main rule: Beginners talk tactics, experts talk logistics.
A real command would look at the situation, maybe decide to build drones to intercept the enemies drones (you know, to use a 3 mio USD missile to intercept a 5.000 USD drone is not economical and war is all about economics) , test it and when this works out tell the politicians that this is the best result, but dont go to war, because the enemy may spring a surprise we dont know. Or as a german politician once said: Talking for 5 days is better then fighting a war for 1 minute.
But if you question the official doctrine then the EU will put you on a list, like Colonel Baud of Switzerland. Your accounts are frozen, and nobody may help you. If someone gives you money or food they can be also put on this list.
re : businessman Trump
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I suspect anything he owns was part of a master/slave package from that certain old familiar ‘foreign influence’ we cannot criticize.
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Of course, as we now know, those people scammed trillions of American tax-dollars through U.S.A.I.D. and their thousands of other skim-scams.
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An aside:
That certain old familiar ‘foreign influence’ we cannot criticize require billions of American tax-dollars — monthly — just to keep their crummy little country from returning to sand-dunes.
And they claim to be TheMasterRace®, destined to rule the entire planet… with a few million brown toiling in the fields.
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But first, they need to get rid of us pesky Northern European Heritage folk because of our tendency to invent stuff and keep it maintained.
One example would be CIVILIZATION.
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Are the juice delusional?
Paranoid schizophrenic inbred half-wits?
Yes and yes.
It’s a mess in so many ways. Trump’s business “success” was generally based on making deals and pretending he’s doing awesome.