Coprolite Newsletter, November 2004

Two numbers seem to be skyrocketing these days. Our society can’t seem to figure out how to get them under control. I think I’ve got the answer for both. We just have to bring back an idea from the 1940s.

The two numbers I’m referring to are the price of oil and the rate of obesity.

If you drive a car or heat with oil, you know all about the first one. If you look around when you’re in a crowd, you’ll see many examples of the second. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that the average weight for American men ballooned by 25 pounds in the last 40 years. In the early 1960's, men weighed an average of 166 pounds, versus 191 today. Women grew by 24 pounds, from an average of 140 to 164. The average 10-year-old is up 11 pounds.

There seem to be complex international reasons for both of these problems. Oil prices are high because we Americans use a lot more gasoline than we produce ourselves. We therefore have to pay OPEC’s prices, competing with countries such as China that have just recently discovered the pleasures of the traffic jam. I blame the rise in obesity on the fact that so many jobs have gone overseas. Most of us now are able to find employment only in the fast-food business, with the resulting effect on everybody’s waistline.

If the baby boomers running our country can’t figure out what to do about all this, then it’s time for us older people to step forward with the obvious answer. It worked before. Let’s bring back rationing.

During World War II, things like food and gas and shoes were rationed. (That last one wasn’t bad, because it meant that I got to run around barefoot all summer.) Each member of the family received a ration book, with different colored stamps for different items. When my mother sent me to the neighborhood store, the coin purse had to contain not only some cash, but the right number and kind of stamps. Sometimes you got red or blue tokens as "change" for your stamps.

Drivers with "A" stickers on their windshields could buy only four gallons of gas a week. A "B" sticker meant you were an essential war worker, which got you eight gallons. People like doctors, ministers, and (of course) Congressmen could buy even more.

For a while during that time, my dad drove a truck delivering gas to service stations and farms. I remember him sitting at the dining room table at night, pasting hundreds of ration stamps into a big book. Everything had to be accounted for.

Rationing was a bother, but I can tell you that prices were low and waistlines slim in those days. We can do it again.

If gas were rationed today, we’d be more inclined to walk to where we’re going–or at least walk to the nearest bus line. This would save scarce resources and, by reducing demand, lower their price. On top of that, the exercise would do us a world of good.

Distant mega-stores would be supplanted by neighborhood mom and pop groceries like we had in the old days. An extra bonus would be the emotional lift that comes from hearing the owners greet you by name.

If we brought back food rationing, we wouldn’t have to apply it to every kind of food—just anything that comes fried or grilled. Your ration stamps would let you buy, say, one or two or three hamburgers and bags of fries per month (depending on whether they were regular, supersized, or colossal). Soda pop would only be sold in normal-size cups or cans, not in 64-ounce buckets.

These simple steps would solve two of our biggest problems today—our ballooning waistlines and our ballooning dependence on foreign oil. Just imagine what could be accomplished by rationing a few other things as well. For example, I’d like to see a limit on how many "unknown number" telemarketing calls my phone could receive per day.

Yes, those whippersnappers who run things now could do a lot better job if they’d just listen to the tried-and-true ideas their elders are willing to share from our past experience.

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com
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