PLEASE GO PANIC BUY
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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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Anything that hurts americans is a good thing.
This rhetoric is just trying to butter us up for the impending next round of price gouging.
If something seems too expensive, don’t buy it and opt for goods with less headway for markup. Start cooking scratch meals and cut out the prefab stuff; you’ll take more time for food prep, but it will save you thousands in medical bills later on.
Yup. Your new best friends are rice, beans, white sugar, molasses, (did you know that brown sugar is just white sugar plus molasses?), salt, all purpose flour, oatmeal, and lentils. Bought in bulk. And use your local ethnic markets for spices and bouillons; They’re often 3-5 times cheaper than your local grocery store.
You can just buy one or two things per paycheck, if you can’t afford all of them at the same time. Or hell, get some friends together and split a bulk bag. I have a 10 pound bucket of rice (split from a larger 25 pound bag) that I have been working on for literal months. A 20 pound bag of rice can keep you full for so fucking long, as long as you store it properly.
Then you just add extra things when you can. Maybe you have potatoes, an onion, a clove of garlic, and some pork this week. So you make a loaded baked potato soup. Also, learn to dress up instant ramen. A scoop out of a giant bag of diced frozen veggies will do a lot. If you can afford it, add a soft boiled egg too.
“Nobody has time for flour, cuz you need to wait for it to rise!” Use baking powder recipes, or flatbreads instead. Learn to make biscuits and scones, if you want to bake. Tortillas are stupid easy to make; They’re literally just flour and water, pressed flat (fucking use an empty wine or beer bottle if you don’t have a rolling pin) and cooked on a flat hot surface like a skillet. I could literally fit the entire tortilla cooking process, from raw flour to finished tortillas, into an uncut 5 minute TikTok tutorial if I wanted to. Congrats, now you have tortillas for 2¢ each, instead of a 10 pack for $5. And they’ll fucking taste better than the store-bought ones, because they’re fresh and hot.
“I don’t have a rice cooker so I can’t make rice!” Do you think people have been using electric rice cookers for thousands of years? My brother in Christ, people have been cooking rice using the “just put a fucking vessel over fire” method for over nine millennia now. Will you likely fuck it up the first time, and accidentally make porridge? Yeah. But that’s a learning opportunity, and you only spent like 5¢ making that mistake because the rice is so fucking cheap.
“I can’t afford fancy cookware!” Go hit your local thrift store. I guarantee they have an entire shelf full of cast iron cookware and baking sheets for like $1 each, that you’ll be able to hand down to your grandchildren.
I havnt finished reading Ive just gotten excited when you mentioned the sugar and molasses information.
For years I've only bought pure cane sugar. It is interchangeabe with white sugar, it also still has its molasses. If a recipe calls for a half cup of white sugar and a half cup of brown sugar, I just use a full cup of cane sugar. This works beautifully. Even a recipe that calls for caster sugar. I have placed it in the food processor and ran it for a bit to make it more fine, no issue there. It worked in the recipe beautifully. I do have molasses in my cabinet for its purposes, because they are some, but I don't understand why today we need white sugar and brown sugar differentiated when we have regular cane sugar. To bake a white cake (The only instance I can think where you would need white sugar at the moment) is pure vanity, not practicality.
I'm so glad you've mentioned it here
Some things should suddenly get much cheaper as well, like Pork.
McRib comimg back!
There any sense on what would be good to stock up on now? When I've searched this, the advice is usually pretty worthless. Just advice indistinguishable from general prepper stuff. I've seen recommendations to stock up on things like flour, things that the US produces domestically in abundance. But some necessities are going to be more vulnerable to disruptions in shipments from China than others.
Anyone find a good guide or have a sense of what basic household necessities are going to be most vulnerable to disruption of trade with China? I'm not concerned with things like consumer electronics right now, those are luxuries. I'm talking basic food and household staples. I don't need the standard prepper list that's meant to prepare you for grave natural disasters. What's really needed is an analysis of precisely what necessities are most likely to be interrupted by this.
Has anyone seen such a list, or have a sense for what necessities are most vulnerable here?
It's impossible to know, the economy is complex. Even your example of flour may be affected. Many things aren't done by hand, and if a machine used in producing flour needs parts that's sourced from China, there could be a problem that disrupts production. Many things from China comes by ship there's already been a significant drop in shipping from there. Remember it takes more than a month for a ship to cross the Pacific, and from there it may need to go by rail to where you are. If you live towards the east coast, it will take longer, and if there's disruptions at the Panama Canal, there could be even more of a delay.
Shipping was busy before the tarrifs, companies were frontloading and warehouses are full. But if people start panic buying, that'll empt the warehouses really quick and it could be months before anything new gets shipped in and who knows what the prices will be?
Some stuff that's made in China might be fine if no one panic buys is. Some things made in USA there may be shortages or massive price increases because they need materials from other countries to manufacture them.
So the generic prepper stuff is pretty much the best anyone can offer you. Make sure you have a month's supply of everything you need, more if possible. You'd need to know the specifics of every industry's material needs and also know what people might panic buy to be able to be more specific than that.
This is why Trump's broad tariffs are insane, it's just pure economic chaos that's going to hurt Americans more than it will hurt anyone else in the world.
If you're just worried about the possibility of shortages and not being able to get food easily then stock up on things that will last a long time in the freezer, is something that you will regularly use regardless, and won't break you to buy in bulk.
Even with some of the prices already going up a little bit chicken is a good example, you can go by huge packs of it at Costco for a reasonable price still at the moment and other similar stores, vegetables like broccoli florets tend to hold up decently in the freezer for a little while (4-6months) and there multiple types of bread that deal well with being frozen and then later thawed out if you use bread a lot.
Basically instead of trying to hyper optimize like some type of prepper just look at what you generally go through, evaluate what out of that is something that will last in a freezer for a good amount of time, and then bulk up on it and just continue using your food like you normally would. Worst case scenario you saved tiny bit of money by buying in bulk which usually comes with a slight savings. Best case scenario shortly after your bulk buying price is Skyrocket and you can try and ride it out off of your supplies.
Avoid the toilet paper problem by getting a bidet, I spent money on the nice $300 one it has heated water which I like and now a single pack of toilet paper from Costco is like almost a Year's worth of toilet paper because I only use it to help dry a little faster than the weird but hair dryer does so i use almost nothing
Keep in mind that flour might be in abundance now, but if everyone in the country buys it, the supply might drop quickly.
Apart from that, dried beans and lentils are probably a good source of nutrients, easy to store and last for a while.
I think the tp during COVID was kind of a fluke. It could have been anything. Laundry detergent, some food product etc. TP was just what the news hung their hat on so it's what everyone thought about when they went to the store.
I'm personally buying rice, beans, and lots of spices to make some delicious meals and wait out the price shocks of food.
Besides that, I mean what do you really need need when it comes to this stuff? I can think of a few things but it's a very short list. Really we're just going to have to ride it out and hope it doesn't get bad bad
Supposedly the TP issue was that the supply chain was segmented out by office TP and home TP, can't easily switch over easily but everyone was crapping at home.
If it's really like Covid, toilet paper will be the first thing to go.
I installed a bidet like two weeks before that entire shortage started. I have never felt more smug about a decision.
Any fellow bidet user should feel smug about it, I say in half jest. Not using a bidet is barbaric, I say in full seriousness.
Can never go back after getting one
I agree.
90% of toilet paper is apparently domestically produced in the USA.
Doesn't matter. The shortage wasn't rational then and it won't be rational this time. It will just be the first thing people hoard.
If you deposed your dictator this wouldn't be happening.
Nah, just roll over and yell "FREEDOM".
I have the worst timing …. I’ve been trying to eat my way down to an empty freezer. I bought a chest freezer in covid and kept it full ever since, but it really needs to be defrosted. I still have more stuff in there than can fit in all my coolers and in the fridge.
But maybe I should restock while I can and try again to defrost in four years
WTF, this bullshit again.
Well... look who's president again. Just saying
I feel like these articles might not be true and then we all act like the sky is falling and then it doesn't. Like yesterday I saw posts about Trump wearing blue. But lots of people wore blue. I think there's bait going around
I agree, the news is just trying to distract and put us against each other. The real problem is the about classes
Let's see how long they can survive on thoughts and prayers.
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