Imagine it is 2010 - you live in the suburbs of a big city. You teach at York University. Gas prices are about $8.00 a litre (The China factor) and are just going up to $12 as the coup in Saudi Arabia has taken Saudi oil off the market. You wonder how you are going to cope.
Your heating bill (you are on natural gas) is already $2,500 a month in the Jan-March period. You keep the thermostat down to 15c and you wear a lot more clothes. You still have a car. It costs you $400 a month in gas and you keep the mileage way down. You sold the SUV years ago and drive an Echo now. Ford and GM closed their doors in 2007. Daimler Chrysler is in Chapter 11 and is not expected to survive. Your new Echo gets 1,000 k per fill up. You don't see many big cars anymore. People who drive them look stupid. All of the family have bikes and there is a nice new store that has opened up in the neighborhood. It has most of the basics and sells wine and beer. The wine is from Ontario though. It is too expensive to buy imported wine.
You still have to drive to the supermarket once a month. Food has doubled in price and you no longer get those nice California lettuces or fruit from Israel. You are thinking of putting in a vegetable garden in your yard. Your neighbor has chickens. You objected when she did that at first now you are thinking of doing the same. You have just bought this cool book about how the Cubans adjusted to the end of cheap oil and the end of sugar sales in the 1980's. You have the time now - too expensive to travel anymore. You haven't seen your mother in 18 months. She had to take the train. Train travel is way up. Air travel has collapsed. It's not even a cost issue. There just are not many seats for most of the major airlines have gone bankrupt and only a basic intercity service using small planes is available for regular folk like you. Driving long distance is for emergencies only. There is talk of ferries coming back on the Great Lakes and up and down the St Lawrence.
You and some friends have set up a local school. The regular schools have shifted the year to the summer. They can't afford to heat in the Jan- April period. You have to pay a bus diesel supplement or take your own kid to school. You and many have opted to take your kids out and school them in the neighborhood. You have the time to do this now as you spend most of the week at home.
Some of you still have jobs but few go into town to work much anymore - you have to telecommute. Nearly all your courses are now taught online. Students found that their costs of attending class were higher than the fees and they demanded an online alternative. Thank goodness because you had the same cost issue. It was costing you more to go to work than it was worth. The York campus is like a ghost town. Enrollment is dropping like a stone though. Kids are going to trade schools more than University. You are part of a task force looking at how to offer a radically cheaper and better online alternative that students can take part time.
The economic and employment fall out has been widespread. The stock market crash of 2007 has taken the bloom of investment banking. The Saudi coup has only depressed investment even further. Thousands of well paid people in the sector are unemployed and are mainly unemployable. Who needs their skills? Worse, the housing crash has locked everyone into their houses and has made moving very difficult. The one good thing is that the Housing Protection Act brought in by the new NDP government makes it all but impossible for banks to evict defaulted owners provided they pay something every month. The banks agreed because it gave them the fiction that the housing assets need not be written off completely. This act has been pivotal in preventing a complete collapse and has helped bring back life to neighborhoods and has taken the worst of all worries off the minds of most people who feared being made homeless.
In this context property taxes were way out of line. The great strike of 2009 when activists mobilized a 4 month witholding of tax has forced the cities hands. Of course this has lead to major layoffs in city staffs and services. Garbage and road maintenance were the first services to get cut. you are coping with the garbage better than you thought you could. First of all you are not buying a lot and secondly everyone is composting at home now. The roads are a concern. At some point they will start to degrade and then what will happen?
Most middle class people have had to cash in their RRSP's . As many were unemployed the tax hit was not too bad but this also contributed to the sorry state of the markets. Many now wonder how they will make it though their senior years. Pensions have been adversely affected by the crash and most are under water and many have sponsors that are no longer in business.
The good news is that many of the 20 plus year old kids have been forced home and somehow with more hands on deck and more to do at home that keeps life going maybe the family as a valuable social unit is coming back?
You used to shop alot. But now all that you have goes into energy and food. Anyway there is not much to buy. Retail is shrinking rapidly. Most of the independent truckers who were the arteries of the just in time world went to the wall in 2007 now and the Saudi move will be the last straw. Moving goods around is no longer feasible. The economy is flat on its back. The banks are in effect all bust and are kept alive, as they were in Japan in the 1990's, by the government. Most of the assets they hold, houses, trucks factories, planes etc are worth only a fraction of what they were when they became collateral. There are of course only two Canadian banks left - the TD/RBC and the Scotia/BMO. CIBC was bought by HSBC. More than 50,000 lost their jobs in the process.
Of course demand for goods from China has collapsed and you wonder if Wal*Mart will survive. At least demand for oil in China has collapsed too but with Saudi offline prices for oil are moving up again. There is a lot of worry about how China will react to the ending of its own dream. Japan is rearming as the anti Japanese rhetoric builds in Beijing.
Tensions between Canada and the US continue to rise. After being effectively locked out of US markets in 2008 all Canadians know that NAFTA is now a joke. No joke is the growing envy in the US over Canada's water and oil supplies. The US military need the oil sands and they don't care that it costs more to produce that it has in energy value. The water shortages in the South, in the mid west and in California have put water at the top of the agenda. It is easier for US politicians to look for more in Canada than to deal with the shortage at home. Water became a major issue in the election. Will Canada be a target? We certainly cannot defend our selves and somehow we are not the terrorist types.
The Iraqisation plan of course failed as the Vietnamisation plan failed in Vietnam but it was the only face saving way out. Now Iraq is made up of three warring factions. It was bad enough when the fundamentalist took over in Egypt but now they have killed the King in Saudi Arabia the Middle East looks worse than it ever has. Israel is under siege. Extreme Zionists are talking up a Masada last stand and those who can leave, the able and the fit, are slipping away as it is clear that Armageddon is inevitable.
You used to think that your cousin who moved to PEI in the 1990' was mad now you are not so sure anymore ....
To be continued
