October 2021 Inflation | Page 7 | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

It was obvious why March 2021 Food Bank usage was 20% higher than March 2019. We were still in the deep throes of the pandemic 2nd wave and inflation wasn't even a factor then. Data mining to provide spin for the article (just like Vatox's World Bank reference which tells us nothing about where we are at in Dec 2021. Hint: We are no doubt back to 2019 levels based on the definition of Labour Participation).

On a forward basis, I agree inflation will be a factor squeezing the budgets of the marginalized but I wonder what March 2022 Food Bank usage will look like (and March 2023) relative to March 2021. Some of it depending on whether we will have a major Omicron wave. We will obviously re-visit all this a year from now.

HermanH said
Of course, they need to justify their existence. I've contacted my local Food Bank and learnt that they do nothing to show people how to GET OFF needing their services. They just keep handing out food. No attempt at educating users how to save money. Just keep shovelling (predominantly) junk / high-calorie / low nutrition food into hampers.   

Give a man a fish, he will survive a day. Teach a man to fish, he will survive a lot longer.
Except our welfare system when it comes to food bank is to strictly give a fish....

savemoresaveoften said

Give a man a fish, he will survive a day. Teach a man to fish, he will survive a lot longer.
Except our welfare system when it comes to food bank is to strictly give a fish....

Unfortunately, it is not always as easy as showing someone how to fish, cook, or budget.

Some people have issues that can't be fixed by knowledge alone. One woman I dated uses the food bank after she rans out of money during the month. I thought it was just once in a while. It turned out to be chronic.

The root cause was she was ordering delivery for at least one meal each day. I suspect she was spending over $400/month for delivered lunches and dinners from restaurants!

I mentioned that $400 of groceries would be quite a lot of food for one person. Other friends mentioned partly prepared frozen foods in case one doesn't want to cook from scratch.

But, all that advice seem to just go in one ear and out the other.

I donate to the food banks. I encourage others to do so too. But, I recognize it is not a long term fix for a variety of challenges people have.

Loonie said
You can dismiss it if you want, and I can dismiss your speculation about the reasons too. Inflation is a big factor for people who have little income, period.
However, you slice it, when income doesn't equal cost of living, that's the reason. There are lots of shit jobs out there that don't provide enough hours or enough money for basic living costs, let alone the savings that AltaRed fantasizes about everyone having. 

The thing is there are numerous opportunities today to have a full time job at $15/hr minimum wage if one actually wants to work at it. $15/hr x 35 hrs x 52 weeks is $27.3k per year - essentially the CERB benefit amount. Clearly not enough for one person to support a family of four, but clearly enough for one person to support themselves, or for 2 dual income earners to support a family of four ($54k per year). It is not a grand existence of course but it is doable. That is the basis of the entire discussion of 'universal basic income' or UBI. There simply needs to be a willingness to work 35 hours a week and/or to work some overtime as well. That is what our immigrants do. They are not afraid of work. That all said, there are folk who cannot physically work that much or have mental incapacities that prevent it. Those are the folk society should have the capacity to support.

Our pre-pandemic working poor who came through 2020 with CERB benefits should have been putting some of that money away. $500/week was more than some of them were making employed and especially those seniors who had part time jobs. IOW, the pre-pandemic working poor made out quite well and why poverty levels did go down nationally during the pandemic. That is why the savings rate DID go UP in 2020 and why so many people were able to pay down credit card debt in 2020. Those that pissed it away on online shopping and opening discount brokerage accounts rather than banking it for 2021 and beyond don't have my sympathy. They could now be tapping into it as YOY inflation increases kicked in the past 4-6 months. So yes, that group of people receiving CERB benefits had the opportunity to bank some of it and should have savings.

I do get that folks beyond the working poor (lower middle class?) who were making $40-60k per year pre-pandemic and lost their jobs and had auto and mortgage loan payments to cover could not live off $500/wk and thus the more likely folks to have to hit the Food Banks to cover the gap until jobs returned. Employment has now come back in a significant surge and there is no longer a need for those folk to need to go to Food Banks. It is also not a coincidence the surge in the number of people working in October coincided with the ending of CERB benefits. The math is rather simple to understand.

It is also a good reason for March 2022 statistics to likely show reduced Food Bank usage, and a good reason for Vatox's World Bank graph to show a return to 21 million or so for Canada's Labour Participation for 2021 when it is published presumably Spring 2022. Despite Vatox's denials/assertions to the contrary, I do know how to read a graph.

Ultimately, none of this macro-math is a difficult thing to understand if people would objectively look at the numbers. It is quite highly predictable and logical.

I don't see where politics is part of this discussion. However, personal views on social ideology became an unnecessary add-on in this thread. The debate should have remained whether current monthly YOY inflation numbers are transitory, structural, or something in between. Only time will tell us, which is where this thread started.

I’m single and i really question whether a single person could live on 27000 a year, particularly in vancouver. If they did it would be really difficult. People don’t understand how expensive it is to pay for your own living costs. That said, inflation is easier to deal with as a single person, you can always go vegetarian to deal with food costs.Personally, i don’t think inflation has affected me a lot. I think its the families who are hurt the most by inflation. Poverty is a complex problem and i think its important we don’t reduce it to just you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps or just claim people aren’t working hard enough. I have no doubt single people are disproportionally represented in poverty as are probably indigenous people and maybe other ethnic groups.

Vatox said
The answer is higher interest rates.  

Ask and you may eventually get them to tame supposed structural inflation. US based but https://apnews.com/article/business-economy-prices-inflation-e5b8ab50495920c7c6c4d8cf98aaebe5

In order to have a decent life in Toronto, not extravagant at all, one must earn at least 22.08 /hr. This may enable you to avoid cockroach and mold-infested dwellings, put enough food on the table, and be mentally healthy without continually putting nose to grindstone. In Vancouver, it costs 20.52 /hr.
Most, if not all, other places are a bit cheaper.
There are many reasons why people live where they do. I won't get into them here.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that Canadians can live wherever they choose and shall not be discriminated against on the basis of where they work or live.
We are also not required to invest in the stock market if we don't think it's the best strategy for us.