Being a somewhat nervous individual, I am noticing a lot of changes in our society.
The first being the most obvious. Gas prices are climbing at a ridiculous rate. It is doubtlessly due to a number of reasons. Instability in the Middle East, China’s new higher demand, everyone’s wasteful attitude, and good old fashion greed.
Higher gas prices are affecting us in three ways. The first is it cost more to move around; to school, to work, to travel, airfare, just about any means of transportation. The second is heating and electricity. My house uses good old heating oil to heat the house. Based on previous years we should have filled the tank twice. In years past that would have cost around $300 for the winter, this winter was one of the coldest on record, and would have cost at least $500. Many places around the country rely on electricity produced on coal burning, which needs massive amounts of fuel to mine and transport to power plants. The third is the cost of everything goes up. I work in the restaurant business and am involved with the ordering process. Not only has the price of food increased due to larger production costs, but the distribution companies are now charging us fuel surcharges, which are about $20 a week. Higher prices for the production of menu items equal higher prices on the menus.
I used to work on a wheat farm in Canada, and learned a lot about the wheat industry. In the 80’s wheat was sold for about $10 a bushel. (A bushel is roughly a 5 gal. bucket.) In the early 2000’s when I worked in the industry the price had dropped to around $5 a bushel. For the first time since the 80’s wheat is actually increasing in price. I think that the reason for this is the newest “green trend” of bio-fuel. More and more food producing fields are being converted to fuel producing fields, making the suply of food lower. In my opinion, this is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen. When the price of luxury goods are going up it is a bad idea to make staple prices rise as well.
I watched a news clip on Foxnews about how some large retailers are limiting the amount of staples that people are allowed to buy. Not only per day, but baised on your past purchases. It seems odd to me that not only are prices increasing, but limits are starting to be set on staple goods.
I am not good at predicting the future and I am not a conspiracy theorist, but it all seems a little odd.
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5 comments:
Get ready to see it go even higher if we continue to head toward Kyoto being signed or any kind of "cap-and-trade" system. Not only that, but we will lose an awful lot of freedoms that Americans have been used to since we declared our independence.
I saw that Sam's, Costco, and others are limiting the amount of rice you can buy. Are we going to have to get that from China?
Don't laugh. I have started a minor stockpile in my basement... whiskey, toilet paper, razors and soap.
I'm just sayin'...
I've been thinking for a while that our country has been teetering on the verge of collapse. Our economy has been artificially inflated too many times to be sustainable, our government is basically bankrupt. The only sustainable answer to this problem is to suck it up and take it - it's gonna suck and be tight for a while. But if we keep trying to keep all the plates spinning at once then sooner or later they will crash.
Here's the thing about the Great Depression - it was really bad, but mostly for the people who made stupid loans and borrowed stupid amounts of money. If you're not living from debt to debt, then there's not as much to worry about. A cash budget is much easier to trim than a credit budget.
Check it: Dave Ramsey
I have considered storing some staples. You know, rice, beans, toilet paper, bottled water, etc. just for emergency purposes. You never know when a natural disaster might hit, power shortage, government collapse, even a loss of job.
This is why we're actually using this time of prosperity (yes, we're still in prosperity) to pay off as much debt as we can afford so that any financial crunch that might hit we won't be so bad off, but also eliminating wasted money and saving that for a rainy day. All it takes is a loss of job, health problems, car accident and you'll be needing extra money.
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