But why are rationing them? Have our supply lines been cut so we can’t import anything? Is the demand for materials to equip the military so great that we can’t supply the civilian population? Are there distribution constraints that limit, e.g., the supply of fresh produce?
And what’s with the stipulation that we can have “as big a black market as you like”? Are the materials in short supply or aren’t they? Where’s the black market getting them that the regular channels can’t?
Stateside, certainly. I understand E85 to get fewer MPG, and when transporting fuel, that would be undesirable. It seems likely to want try to make the civilians use the ethanol, if they can.
I am not an expert but isn’t ethanol use in the production of some military goods? Also, would we be using the corn to fatten up more pigs and cows for our boys and girls overseas? I’m thinking corn and corn-based products may be heavily rationed and their substitutes less so.
Gasoline wasn’t actually in all that of short supply in the US during World War II. High octane gasoline was critical, used in fighter airplanes, that’s a bit different. Refining techniques weren’t as sophisticated. What was in critical short supply was rubber, for tires. Rationing gasoline was part of the way they could manage that. They also enacted a 35 mph speed limit.
What’s amazing is how quickly all of this stuff was enacted. Dec. '41 Pearl Harbor is attacked. Within a few months all ordinary “civilian” production is halted for conversion to wartime production. That means no more consumer goods, whether bicycles or blenders or cars. Even purchasing a tube of toothpaste - required turning in the empty tube, for recycling, as they were made of soft metal.
Congress members had no restrictions on the amount of gasoline they could purchase. This did cause a lot of resentment.
During the spring of 2020, the grocery store I work at had to institute a lot of quantity limits on a lot of products - 1 carton of eggs, one case of ramen, one case of bottled water, etc. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, had some argument as to why they thought the limit shouldn’t apply to them. They’d argue that each of the five kids they had with them was a separate customer entitled to buy their own carton of eggs. Or that they were buying food for their neighbor. Or that they had no idea who this person was that they’d been standing in line with and talking to the whole time they were in line and had put their groceries in the same cart as them, so clearly they were two separate parties. Or that the cashier should just split their order up into five transactions and everything would be OK. Or that they had [MEDICAL_CONDITION_HERE] and by God they were going to sue us if we didn’t let them buy more Spam.
We’re still waiting on that lawsuit to drop, along with the ones we were going to get for asking people to wear masks when they had [MEDICAL_CONDITION_HERE] that rendered them physically incapable of breathing through a piece of paper for 30 minutes.
Quite, and there were still some people willing to argue that point up to the end in the early 50s. Another factor was the need to control expenditure on imports in order to protect the exchange rate in the Bretton Woods system (sterling being still a major reserve currency for other countries).
I have seen (can’t remember where) opinion polls indicating some willingness to consider something like direct rationing of particular foods to reduce obesity. Which is not the same as accepting it in reality.
I’ve occasionally wondered about the possibility of some such scheme for CO2-intensive purchases (transportation, heating), probably on an indirect basis like the WW2 “points” scheme, since points values could be adjusted quickly in response to changing circumstances. But politically, I could only see it working on an advisory basis (from the consumer’s p.o v.), with suppliers needing to be forced to declare values at the point of sale (“This journey uses up n of your annual carbon points”), in the hope that people would start to ration themselves as between running a car or flying - like Weightwatchers points, perhaps. And probably no more effective on the grand scale. Even on that basis, I can imagine the reaction of the right-wing tabloids.
In the UK, they’d all have been shouting “Where did you get that grapefruit?!”
As others have mention, it was probably grown in California.
I read a mystery novel where the guy was raking up avocadoes in California, and was (avocado) green with envy.
I think a better comparison would be the WIC plan, which has much finer gradations of what and how much, and is also now on a plastic card these days. Which means computers/machinery in the form of cash registers can indicate what is and isn’t allowed.
Not so sure about that. Plenty of people still garden. And I know a half dozen people whose response to soaring egg prices was to buy chickens.
A bigger problem would be people living in very dense urban housing where they simply don’t have access to a plot to grow food in.
We’re northerners and my mom put sugar on grapefruit by default. Then she discovered by accident one day that I liked it just fine without sugar and I haven’t used it since.
It wouldn’t surprise me if in the past grapefruit weren’t as sweet/more sour, leading to people sugaring it. Rather like in the past couple decades brussel sprouts have become less bitter. Yay selective breeding, right?
That’s how I eat them these days, too - like an oversized orange.
Yes, breeding. And all for the worse IMO.
Grapefruit in the 1960s were a) always yellow and b) extremely tart. To me a Ruby Red is no more a grapefruit than a red grape is a type of cherry tomato. The flavor profile is that different.
A Ruby Red “grapefruit” is far sweeter than an ordinary yellow 1960s grapefruit with a full teaspoon of sugar scattered over the cut half as we used to sometimes do. Straight up they are great once you’ve gotten used to them. Kind of like eating whole limes or lemons out of hand, it can be a bit of an acquired taste that the current generation of sweet-besotted consumers have no interest in acquiring.
You can still sometimes get actual yellow grapefruit here in Florida, but often you have to go to a farm outlet in one of the few counties where they’re still grown. Finding Real yellow grapefruit in a store are darn near finding like those weird misshapen “heirloom” tomatoes these days. Heck, a standard Whole Foods usually has a couple kinds of those things. Real grapefruit? Fuggedaboudit. Evidently they’re a minority interest for a dying minority.
Having grown up in the core of California citrus country 60 years ago, eating the local best nearly year round, this change really torques me off. I would not so much mind the advent of Ruby Red, etc., if they had not all but completely crowded out the real thing. Pardon me while I shake my cane at the youngun’s on my lawn.
OTOH, I admit that I never developed the taste for the ancient very-bitter Brussels Sprouts. The milder new ones are vastly more palatable to me at least.
De gustibus non est disputandem.
Infernum non est.
I wonder if a discussion of rationing, in the U.S., during the first week of December 1941, would have had some similarities to what I am reading in this thread.
Those of us who remember 9/11 know the emotional wallop of a Pearl Harbor. And by time the rationing started, in June 1942, there were other 9/11’s, including sinking of at least one aircraft carrier. If we lose an aircraft carrier to enemy action, the United States will, next day, be a different country.
Or maybe not. Perhaps rationing would have been more accepted in October 2001 than if we had a comparable shock today.
The Bush Administrative decided to push through a big tax cut and actively encouraged Americans to buy more after 9/11. Unless you wore a uniform, no American was asked to sacrifice anything.
Rationing started much, much earlier, depending on the class of item. Tires, in particular. Many people had probably seen the writing on the wall and stocked up in December. This was of no help, by January, 1942 no individual could hold more than 5 tires per vehicle, Civilian production of consumer goods was halted by February.
Coffee was one item that was apparently only rationed sporadically. For a time it was limited to one pound every 35 days.
Cigarettes were never rationed, although I’ve heard it said they were impossible to get. GIs would mail them back home, if anything. Anyway it’s more accurate to say that the entire rationing system was probably complete and in place by June of '42.
It is remarkable how quickly and effectively government can move when it wants to accomplish something (which should give anyone pause in this age of “clown show on bad acid”)
Listening to period newscasts in the post-WWII era, monetary inflation was a big problem, not surprisingly. Lots of public service announcements exhorting Americans to enroll in the “Bond a Month” program for US Savings bonds.
I think they still offer Savings bonds, but they haven’t had Treasury officials out there running War Bond drives for a while now.
The food coupons started about when I said.
None in my family would have had need for tires, but it is good to point out how big the impact was to both more affluent people, and rural areas.
As for the thought experiment, something extremely shocking and depressing would have happened before rationing began that made it necessary. Then we would be so different from today. Social change can be fast.
The problem I was alluding to is that some ~100 million Americans would scoff at the idae of growing their own food for the greater good. At least that’s the impression I got from watching a huge chunk of the country refuse to accept even the most minor inconveniences to save lives during a deadly pandemic. Denied that anything could even be done about it, insisted they’d never conform, devil take the hindmost.
You’d see those same people scoffing “Victory garden? Sounds more like a Virtue Signaling garden to me. Real Americans buy their food at supermarkets, just like George Washington did.” And this would probably be the beginning and end of rationing as well.
The thing is - a lot of people garden and have always gardened. During the pandemic a lot of people started gardening. YouTube is full of right-wing survivalist/prepper types advocating gardening for self-sufficiency during the coming fall of civilization they’re always predicting.
Americans will resist being told what they can or can’t buy. They don’t seem quite as opposed to gardening.
And if 100 million Americans scoff at the notion of grubbing in the dirt for dinner that still leaves 2/3 of the country being somewhere between willing to try and enthusiastic.
Everyone especially when young should probably try gardening at least once, it is quite a lot of effort, no guarantee of success, and the critters are constantly making designs on your bountiful harvest and cruelly usually wait till the peak of freshness before making their move. In theory this is a learning experience and should lead to a greater appreciation of how wonderful our modern food production and distribution systems are. Container gardening tomatoes is popular, that kind of thing. Baking bread at least once or twice for similar reasons.
If we tell Americans that they can’t buy certain things because the sacrifice serves a higher social goal (such as a justified war), and that they should consider gardening to make up the shortfall, I promise you with 100% certainty that 100 million of them will not only oppose starting their own garden, but will make a conscious effort to trample the gardens of others.
If you don’t understand that, you don’t really understand the current political climate.