This is a diary about toilet paper shortages in the United States. That's right, bare shelves, devoid of any material for wiping. Sounds horrible? It sure would be. As we've all read, major news outlets are reporting that Costco and Sam's Club are rationing rice. Is there a major toilet paper shortage on the way as well?
I don't want to start a panic. I just want you to read my diary! So, I'll answer the question right now. We in the United States have plenty of toilet paper, and we're in no danger of running out anytime soon. But this was not always the case.
America's First Toilet Paper shortage
Back in the 1970's, the US ran out of toilet paper. Shelves were stripped bare of that necessary commodity. Presumably people were greatly inconvenienced. It turned out that the shortage was completely preventable. It didn't have to happen at all. So what's the story?
Blame it all on Johnny Carson.
It actually all started as a joke. Johnny Carson was doing his typical NBC Tonight Show monologue on December 19, 1973.
Heeeere's Johnnnnnny....
Of course, Johnny, like most talk show hosts, had a staff that helped write his monologue. His writers had heard earlier in the day about a Wisconsin congressman named Harold Froehlich. Froelich claimed that the federal government was falling behind in getting bids to supply toilet paper and that "The United States may face a serious shortage of toilet tissue within a few months".
His writers decided to include a joke based on this quote in Carson's monologue. He said "You know what's disappearing from the supermarket shelves? Toilet paper. There's an acute shortage of toilet paper in the United States."
Too bad they couldn't see the consequence of this statement. You may not be aware if you are young, but the early 1970's was a time of shortages - oil in particular. The next morning, many of the 20 million television viewers ran to the supermarket and bought all the toilet paper they could find. By noon, most of the stores were out of stock! Stores tried to ration the stuff, but they couldn't keep up with demand.
The great toilet paper shortage was caused by a joke! That was back in the days when nearly everybody in America went to sleep while watching Johnny Carson "through their feet" as he used to say. I can't guess at the percentage of the public that heard Carson declare the toilet paper shortage, but the immmediate short term demand created set off a panic. Enough of the country started hoarding so much toilet paper that the shortage quickly became reality.
Johnny Carson went on the air several nights later and explained that there was no shortage and apologized for scaring the public. Unfortunately, people saw all the empty shelves in the stores, so the stampede continued.
When these things get going, they are hard to stop. By the time Carson let people in on the joke, the shortage was real, and hoarding toilet paper was a rational thing to do. Actually, an equally rational thing to do would be to use a substitute tissue paper in the short term, or to perhaps subscribe to the newspaper. But I digress...
They finally got the shelves restocked three weeks later and the shortage was over. It is the only time in American history that the consumer actually created a major shortage
At this point, if you've stuck with it this long, you're probably realizing that our current "rice shortage" is a lot like this toilet paper shortage. And it is similar. It's true that rice has increased in price by a huge amount. That's a terrible thing and it must be addressed, because inflation of food prices relative to incomes is a terrible injustice and concerns all of us.
But, there is no actual shortage of rice. There is enough rice for everyone in the USA, and there will be as long as consumers don't start hoarding rice thereby creating an actual shortage of rice.