Optimism on my foodie agenda

I sometimes feel guilty, on grocery day. Times are hard and money's tight. Yet in my cart I have brown eggs, hamburger and chicken from Good Natured Family Farms--a regional company. Clinking around in the cart is my empty, returnable milk bottle from Shatto, which I'll return for another half gallon of skim that isn't much less than a whole gallon in a plastic jug.
Despite our big pay cut, I haven't been able to let go of these vestiges of better times. But sometimes I hear a nagging voice. "Spoiled. Selfish. Pretentious. Rich and silly." And let's not forget "elitist."
I started buying these products gradually. First came the ground meat. There had been an E coli outbreak and also some talk about mad cow disease. The smaller supplier would be less risky, I decided, because the ground meat would come from fewer cattle.
I started buying the milk because it was fun to buy in a glass bottle, but continued as I read more on bovine growth hormone. The chickens just tasted better. But then I started reading about conditions in large factory chicken farms. The free range eggs followed.
I didn't mind paying a little more. We had the budget for it then.
Now, though, I beat myself up a little each time I put one of those items into the cart. We decidedly don't have money to splurge on higher grocery bills. We need tires and a front-end job. What kind of a sissy would sacrifice her budget because of unfounded worries about food safety?
Then came the recent egg recall, and suddenly my concerns don't seem so unfounded and my higher-end groceries seem like money well spent.
The past decade has brought a steady stream of bad news from the food companies. I started buying these products to regain just a little control over what we eat. We started gardening long ago for many of the same reasons. Except gardening saves you money. I always figured the savings offset the higher price of meat and dairy.
But it got me thinking: Does this response make me an optimist or a pessimist?
I always came down on the pessimistic side before. All that thinking about food safety. The recalls and poisonings are just temporary aren't they? Just fleeting blips on the radar field of an all-wholesome food system.
But today I'd argue the opposite. Buying better quality makes me an optimist. I am following the manly man American tradition of solving my own problems and guiding the invisible hand of the marketplace with my own God-given pocketbook. Buyer beware. If more people join me, the food supply really will get safer. And maybe the earth will get a little cooler.
So I'll continue to spend a few dollars more on more wholesome locally grown products, because today it doesn't seem so much like a frill. In fact, quite the opposite. It's a whole lot less expensive than the doctor.

Those were the days

I remember giving a speech back in ninth grade on inflation. (Yes, I was that type of nerdy student. A partner and I later did a project on the gold standard. This was all for an English class. Lucky I'm a girl or I surely would have been beaten up regularly.)
The speech is still pretty clear in my mind because I hated giving speeches and because this one went well with the use of a visual aid to keep my hands busy.
Since this was before the days of PowerPoint, I made a poster with a circle on it. It was really pretty simple. As my little taped man moved around the circle, I'd talk about supply and demand, wages and prices. As wages went up, demand went up, and as demand went up, prices went up until supply caught up. If it didn't, then there'd be pressure on wages to go up again.
It was the first time I thought that I got how the economy worked.
I look back wistfully on that day, because if one thing is clear, I'm completely at sea in the new world of global economics.
In early 2009, I used to watch the stock market, hoping it would be a predictor of how things might go for my family. Surely, if there were jobs and a healthy middle class with wages steady or rising, then this would be a good thing for demand and for business, right?
But I found that the stock market seems to be an entity to itself, operating in a planet on the far side of the sun from where I sit. When jobs come back, that's a bad thing because business will have to pay more for labor or treat their workers better. Good consumer confidence, or a surge in retail sales--that's a good thing, right? Well, maybe, but a stronger dollar ruins everything.
In fact, nowadays the stock market only seems to affect my life if it's on the downswing. The big crash of '08? We felt that right away. The big rebound of the ensuing months? Not so much. True, our savings were regained, But then we weren't doing anything with that but trying to save for old age and college. Our everyday life didn't change like it did when we took the pay hit.
So I've been hitting the books. Recently, I read three economics books back to back: The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?, by Ian Bremmer; Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager by Anon, N+1 and Keith Gessen; and IOU: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, by John Lanchester.
Result: I understand a bit more about state capitalism and derivatives, but I don't like them any better.
Other result: It's becoming increasingly clear that--just like global warming scientists--the people who know the system best are not going to be listened to, and we'll all suffer for the stupidity and short-term greed of the majority.
Harsh, I know. But the more I read, well...
Lanchester, an English novelist whose book is both as fun to read as Diary, but still manages to explain the complicated financial terms, was the most dour.
"Looking back, it turns out that we've just lived through an economic golden age. It turned out to be a fake golden age, one based on debt and on an unsustainable credit bubble and underpinned by a financial system which was, it turned out, taking crazily miscalculated risks--but we didn't know that at the time. In fact, most of us had no idea it was a golden age; we didn't know that we were living through what for many of us will turn out to be the best economic times of our lives. I wish someone had told us...."
In the time right after the first big corporate collapse, he says, Westerners had a chance to reflect on why ever increasing riches don't seem to make us any happier. "We in the West can do something that no people in history have done: we can show the world that we know when we have enough."
But he also says he doubts that will happen, because we don't really feel all that rich, even though by world standards, we are. And we are all about to start to feel poorer, because we're getting the bill now for the excesses of the past.
Sad, but true. But, when you've spent all your life as an outlier, paying off your credit cards, living in an older home that you can afford, shopping from the used and unfinished furniture stores (and sometimes the trash bins!) to keep from overspending, this assessment is a little hard to take.
But oh well. There's very little we can do about it. Except maybe quit playing the worker ant and saving for a happier tomorrow that will never come.

It's all in the branding

When a scientific study can be summed up with this opening line--"People think they're more liberal than they really are"--well, I just can't resist.
Where? Where are these people who find the liberal label so irresistible that they have to claim it, even when they aren't? Certainly not at any gathering I've ever attended in the states of Kansas or Missouri. Most people I know are scared to death to use the L-word, even if it does fit them. Who would be crazy enough to identify as a liberal when the shoe doesn't fit?
Nevertheless, that is the lead of a recent story in the New York Times about a British study of political attitudes worldwide.
The researchers asked 136,000 people over the course of 20 years to rate themselves as righties or lefties, on a scale of 1-10. Those answers were then compared with how well people agreed with the statement, "Incomes should be made more equal."
The result: People thought of themselves as more left-leaning than their answer to income distribution indicated.
The researchers theorized that the more educated people--who identified themselves much more inaccurately as left-wing--were in fact, fiscally conservative. They were liberal on social issues, yet voted with their pocket books as fiscal conservatives.
Well, okaaaay....I guess the fact that this was a study of people in 82 countries makes it more understandable. It's far more accepted to call yourself a liberal elsewhere, where there's a more live-and-let-live approach to social issues than in the US. At least in Europe. Perhaps "conservative" just doesn't have the same cache there and elsewhere as it does here.
But you have to wonder about a study that's been going on for 20 years. In that amount of time, the popular definitions of liberal and conservative have changed.
It's kind of like Sarah Palin now calling herself a feminist because she believes in woman power to enact all kinds of restrictions for women on abortion. You see, right-wing feminism means seeing your gender as equal and rising up to recognize the power of life. This has startled some of us who've taken all kinds of verbal abuse for years over this very term. If there's one thing we've learned, it's that being a feminist is the same as being an anti-Biblical, scaly demon who is an abomination to nature and God. Now it's okay? What next?
This from a wing of the Republican Party that has spent the past three or four years debating whether people who disagree with them are "true Republicans" or just pretender in-name-onlies who need to be purged.
Hmmm....Does this mean we'll soon see Karl Rove and his ilk lobbying to be called liberals because they believe in liberty from taxes and regulations? Will Rush Limbaugh suddenly stop talking about "femi-nazis" and start schmoozing with the "femi-nicies?"

But back to the study. Apparently one other thing researchers found was that people who think of themselves as lefties, and who really ARE lefties, also were happier than their right-of-center counterparts.
Happier about what is not clear. But yeah, I can see it. Maybe they're just happy not to be so confused.

Things seem better. They do.

Having a birthday is always a good time to look back a little and assess where you are.
My birthday was last week. And all in all, I've got to say I'm feeling a lot better about just about everything.
This is not because of any recent economic news. We've been bombarded with warnings about a double-dip recession and deflation. The newspaper industry isn't in any better shape than it was. Unemployment and age discrimination remain prevalent.
And, honestly, our family outlook hasn't improved that much, either. We're still living with a huge income cut for the foreseeable future. Our savings are still down. And our daughter--who still hopes to go to college--gets older each day.
So my feeling better doesn't have anything to do with outside events. It's because we're still here. In our house. With at least part-time employment.
Yes, there's a lot to be said for survival.
And a lot to be said for remembering how bad things were. We are at the point now, where I can look back to last year and say, "Wow. Compared to this time last year, we are on Easy Street."

Last year I spent many sleepless nights wondering whether we could possibly survive on 33 percent less money. What would happen to college loans we couldn't repay? How would we deal with those super high utility bills in the heat of summer and cold of winter?
For one thing, we were blessed with only a moderately hot summer last year. By the time the cold weather hit, I had learned the tricks of the new budget. So we never had to blow off the utility company.
In fact, our hard-core resistance to spending for even the smallest of life's pleasures kept us from frittering the lump cash sum we got when Mike had to go part time.
Of course, it gets tiring, always having to look at the unraveling and threadbare bathroom towels and never getting to eat out. Among other things. It gets tiring, always having to tell your daughter no.
So we took a chunk of that money and went on a big trip last month. Because we earned it. No apologies.
And it felt great.

This time last year Mike was being mercilessly pummeled from the right-wing blogosphere in a very personal way, and I had to watch as these people kicked him when he was down. Believe me, fury is not a pleasant emotion. Now, though, the fun has apparently gone out of it and they've moved on to other targets.

Last year, I was consumed in fear. The thing I was mostly afraid of was what would happen to my daughter's future if we became insolvent.
I'm no longer so afraid of that--not because we're any less likely to become insolvent, but because I've realized how short-term a problem her future is. Only three years until college. Come what may, we have the resources to hang on that long. And on the bright side, our reduced resources may make it easier to get the grants and scholarships that are a matter of course for most of us in what used to be the middle class.
We've just got to get her to college. And once that happens, we'll have some more options as well.
So it's been a better year. Dammit, I might even say I felt optimistic about the months to come. But I don't want to jinx it.

Speaking of economic good fortune, last week's birthday makes it possible for me to now get into the city swimming pool for $1.
There's a brighter tomorrow ahead. Happy birthday to me.