A WSJ slideshow for the developmentally impaired ADD generation pokes holes in the BLS “core inflation” CPI that comes nowhere near real people’s experiences (because it excludes real people’s real essential expenditures for essential things like fuel and food). After all, “feddle gummint bureaucraps” apparently believe we should all just eat cake and fly around in our private jets like the “real” people they know. Or whatever.
Bullet points:
- “[Last month the] price of a gallon of gas was… $3.55. It’s now $3.84.” More importantly to me and my family, in America’s Third World County the day The Zero assumed office, gas was $1.40 per gallon. Now, it’s $3.66. That’s about 266% inflation on one item that is essential. What about
- Bread: White bread, “1st Quarter 2010: $1.71; 1st Quarter 2011: $1.88 (Source: American Farm Bureau–in fact, unless otherwise noted these are sourced from the American Farm Bureau). In one year, that’s nearly a 5% increase in cost. Nah, “Let them eat cake.”
- Milk (gallon) 1st Quarter 2010: $3.15; 1st Quarter 2011: $3.46. You do the math (Hint: it’s not the 1.4% the BLS claims for the CPI but more than double that.)
- Starbucks Ground Coffee (12 oz.) 1st Quarter 2010: $8.99; 1st Quarter 2011: $9.99 (Source: Wall Street Journal) OK, anyone stupid enough to buy Starbucks crap deserves what they get, but this is pretty typical of good coffees, too. And anyone who says coffee’s not an essential good is just itchin’ for a fight. Still, something on the order of an 11% inflation in price? Yep.
- Orange Juice (half gallon) 1st Quarter 2010: $2.98; 1st Quarter 2011: $3.14. 5% inflation.
- Ground beef (pound) 1st Quarter 2010: $2.63; 1st Quarter 2011: $3.10–and that’s not accounting for 2011 and 2012. 17%-18%?!? Shiite, Batman! We’re gonna need to start eating at The Peking Room!
- Potatoes (5 pounds) 1st Quarter 2010: $2.26; 1st Quarter 2011: $2.64. Another 18%-er.
And on and on it goes. Americans having to pay more for essential goods, more to be able to get to their lower-paying part time jobs, while “feddle gummint” cronies are soaking taxpayers to build “golden Solyndrachutes” and administration liars and their cronies, lickspittles and a$$boiz in the media, fellow travelers and co-conspirators are hard at work to build chains to keep more and more former citizens in slavery on the “gummint plantation”.
BTW, this is why–for now–Amazon and other online retailers are getting more and more of my business. One example: I can buy an essential (in my situation) health product I need regularly from Amazon for HALF the price it would cost me in the nearest location, 35 miles away, that I can reliably obtain it. Half. And for now, no tax. No shipping charge. Pay double and drive 70 miles to get some (and add nearly 8% to the doubled price in taxes) or… not?
Not.
Too bad Amazon doesn’t sell gasoline, delivered. *heh*
Do note that a commenter with too few letters in his name has submitted a serious, substantive argument (of some kind or other, making some *whatever* argument) that notes I used one too many letters when I wrote “National Parks Service”. My bad. I’m just tickled pink that someone could read the post and make such a substantive comment.
The meat thing is killing us. I used to buy beef from a local guy and his prices have had to go up so much to afford the feed that I can’t do it anymore. I have to wait for really good sales at the grocery store and stock up. Good thing we have a deep freeze.
I have read (though not from an especially credible source) that the price of meat is just going to keep going up, especially through and after the first quarter of next year. Farmers having to slaughter herds due to not being able to afford to feed them. Pigs should bounce back quickly when and if things get better but beef will likely be expensive for a looong time to come this is true.
How much damage can one man do in 4 years? Apparently a whole heap of it when he has willing cohorts on both sides of the aisle.
But just think…
IF
at least nominal “conservatives” hold the House and
The Senate can be moved similarly and
The Zero is defeated as well,
THEN
Drill, baby, drill.
Pipeline!
EPA muzzled, to at least some degree.
Nuclear plants built.
Coal unshackled… or at least the choke hold the EPA has recently placed around its throat at The Zero’s behest loosened.
More refineries ALLOWED to be built.
The Fed put on a short leash and QE3 KILLED DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!!!
If these, then the last four years’ destruction of the American economy can be mostly wiped out and a new prosperity ushered in.
If the tax code is seriously overhauled, at LEAST making corporate/business taxes as little as the flaming socialist countries we compete with, then the benefits can be enhanced even further. If by some miracle enough congresscritters are persuaded to enact The FairTax and, in a moment of surpassing sanity, Romney signed the thing, then the resulting economic (and individually libertarian) boom would shock the rest of the world.
The American economic engine is standing down, at present, not even idling but almost mothballed (a 1.3% “growth” in the economy is really a major decline given our debt bomb and both monetary and real goods’ inflation).
I’ve been slowly stockpiling for the past few years. Slowly. I wish I could have had more stockpiled sooner, but our own finances have seen a 13.5% decline in the last four years in the face of the real goods inflation I note in this post. We’re personally OK, especially since we have almost no debt, but unplanned-for expenses are the bane of our existence, right now. stockpiles of food and household goods are just commonsense hedges against such things, and if TSHTF for real, may be lifesaving.
There are way too many IFs in that scenario. 🙂 I have no faith that there is political will to do these things. Especially overhauling the tax code.
Yeh, well, I did say “IF” in all caps to indicate in some small way how big the “IFs” were/ 😉