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posted ago by Narg ago by Narg +28 / -0

Between WWII rationing (of nearly everything) and the nightmare COVID lockdowns, restrictions, and coerced jabs, masks, etc., the precedents have been set (including a Supreme Court "OK" for national food rationing) to back a devastating enforced austerity-and-hunger plan for Americans.

An excerpt:


https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/grocery-rationing-within-four-years

. . . You can sell how this all unfolds, and none of it is implausible. Only a few years ago, governments around the country canceled gatherings for religious holidays, limited the numbers of people who could gather in homes, and banned public weddings and funerals. If they can do that, they can do anything, including the rationing of all food.

The program that Harris has proposed is not like other matters that she has flip-flopped on. She is serious and repeats it. She spoke about it even during the debate with Trump but there was no followup or critique of the scheme offered. Nor does such a crazy plan require some legislation and a vote by Congress. It could come in the form of an executive order. Yes, it would be tested by the Supreme Court but, if recent history holds, the program would be long in effect before the Court weighed in. Nor is it clear how it would rule.

The Supreme Court in 1942 heard the case of Albert Yakus, a Boston-based meat seller who was criminally prosecuted for violating the wholesale beef price ceiling. In Yakus vs. United States, the Supreme Court ruled for the government and against the meat-selling criminal. That’s the existing precedent.

Nor does all this have to unfold immediately following the inauguration. It can happen as matters become ever worse following anti-gouging edicts and when inflation worsens. After all, a presidency that believes in central planning and forced economic austerity would last a full four years, and the coercion could grow month after month until we have comprehensively enforced deprivation by the end, and no one remembers what it was like to buy groceries at market prices with their own money.

I wish I could say that this is an outlandish and fear-mongering warning. It is not. It is a very realistic scenario based on repeated statements and promises plus the recent history of government management of the population. There is likely another wave of inflation coming. This time it will meet with a promise to use every coercive power of government to prevent increases in prices on groceries and rents.

What if voters actually understood this? What then?

Keep in mind the main legacy of the Covid years: governments learned the fullness of what they could do under the right circumstances. That’s the worst possible lesson but that is what has stuck. The implications for the future are grim.