Our new economy

Remember when gas was 99 cents a gallon?  It wasn't that long ago.  It was, maybe, 12 years ago.

It cost me $10 to fill up my gas tank every week.  Gas cost me $40 a month.  This was not an expense that I worried about or even noticed in my budget.

Now, it costs $50 a week for me to fill my tank and it is $50 a week for my husband, too.

Remember when food cost less?  Like, just a few years ago food cost a lot less.  In fact, food prices have tripled in the past 5 years (of course due to the rise in gas prices).  So, groceries that would have cost me $75 a few years ago cost about $200 now.

It used to cost me about $300 a month for groceries, now it is about $800.

Have you seen a change like this in your budget?  Has the cost of gas and food, which used to be negligible, completely taken over your budget?  Something that was $300 ish a month is now over $1,200 a month.

I assume this is the same for many of us.  Instead of working hard and buying nicer houses or cars, we are struggling to keep up with the prices of food and gas.

You know what I would call that?  A fundamental change in America.

Of course interest rates are down, that is good right?  Not really.  The government has been printing money like crazy.  So, the value of our dollar and our homes has dropped.  Home values have dropped 40% since Obama took office.

That's a fundamental change in America.

Remember Victorian England?  There were Lords.  There were good lords, let's call them Republicans and bad lords, let's call them democrats.

The good lords took care of their money, worked hard and provided a decent life for everyone in the village and hundreds of servants at his mansion.

Bad lords squandered their money.  They didn't think of the long term.  They only thought of their own instant gratification.  Sometimes, they lost all of their money.

What would happen to the village owned by the bad lord?  The main job creator just went out of business, right?  Most people in the village would lose their incomes.  And, what about all of the servants?  They would be out on the street with nothing.

That is kinda what's happening right now isn't it?  We have bad guys who are not taking care of the village working in Washington.  They are taking our money and don't really care about our future.  But, even though the people who make the money have:

1. Higher gas costs
2. Higher food costs
3. Higher taxes
4. Higher medical costs

They still want to get paid and keep raising taxes.  Don't they understand that when the money is gone, it's gone?  Don't they understand that the people who are working are the ones who are paying for everything?

Here is a good example -teachers, police officers and fire fighters - I know that these people work hard and they deserve to get paid.  But, we have teachers in our school system who make 6 figure salaries to teach kindergarten.  I think that is wrong.  We have secretaries who work just as hard but make $30,000 a year.  And, guess what?  If she doesn't do her job well or if her company doesn't make enough money, she will lose her job.  We have more police officers than we need in my city, but we can't fire them.  We just have to keep paying them, for life.

Just like that lord who lost all his money, the math just doesn't work when the $30k secretary has to pay $90k for police officers and $100k for teachers.  Oh, yeah and she has to pay her congressman $176,000 a year for life.