Posted by
Sue on Friday, August 22, 2008 6:50:00 AM
I caught a bit of the intermercial with Cavuto of Fox Business on the regular Fox Cable Channel. Cavuto was saying that inflation was actually slower than this time last year...I KID YOU NOT!
One thing I know for certain: milk was under $3 bucks a gallon and decent meat, not Prime or Choice was not over $3 bucks a pound. That was just at l8-24 months ago! I shop weekly for a family of five which includes two teens. You know how teens eat don't you? Today prices are 20-40% higher. 6%?? I kid you not.
Anyway, it occurred to me that "well off" or better folk don't shop like the rest of us. It reminded me of the President of the company I worked for downtown Los Angeles over thirty years ago. That man had his "help" shop at Gelsen's. Here in California Gelsen's is the Tiffany of food. He and his wife NEVER shopped for food. He never went into a store for his clothes, his tailor followed his instructions and delivered what he needed all altered and pretty. His wife, well, that was another matter. She shopped and spent lots of money on her and the kids clothes. Once a year he would give an employee a blank check and send him off to the largest California State Fair where his instructions were to "bid and buy" the blue ribbon beef winner that year. The animal was then sent off to become steaks and such without the "buyer" actually having done anything other than hand over $$$$!
The thought that our "government" representatives, senators, governors, mayors and assorted bureaucrats have a clue about regular folks is a joke. Here in California they are trying to increase the sales tax 1 cent. that increases local city taxes to 8.75 to 9.75 cents on the dollar depending on the city in which you live. It will be almost 10 cents per dollar in Los Angeles. The officials have forgotten that there are pennies in the sales tax that were supposed to be temporary but are now permanent.
In fact, if you take a bus, metro train or shuttle you have noticed the increase in fares. If, like me you pay some attention, you will also notice the taxes you pay monthly for your food, clothing, phones, utilities and, of course, gasoline. So, it goes something like this: I use my dollar to buy and pay sales tax. The business owner buys supplies and pays taxes. The supplier buys, sells and pays taxes. And then, we all pay taxes again, again, and again plus yearly we undergo the excruciating pain of the federal and state income taxes. Taxes and taxes and taxes. Not to mention Payroll taxes, Medicare taxes and so on and so on and so on. I don't think anyone will ever add all of these taxes together. The discovery of just how money goes to the government in one form or another might give someone a stroke!
Now tell me that Obama and his wife, in particular, understand regular folk. No, McCain probably doesn't either, but, at least his experiences in the Hanoi Hilton kept him real. The use of his arms is very limited and possibly painful on a daily basis. They are all still politicians and, if they could but understand that things need to be fixed in this country, BUT NOT IN AN IDEOLOGUE SORT OF WAY!!!! They need to let the regular folk of which America has a very large majority tell them how to do it. If you don't earn a buck and have to spend the buck to live, you cannot know what it is to earn and spend to protect your family. They have so much money coming out of their pockets or is it going into their pockets, I forget, they lost sight of what balancing your budget weekly means. They just try , most of them, to spend their way our of messes like the housing crisis, the banking crisis, the Russian crisis, the Iranian crisis, the climate crisis, the race crisis, the older folk crisis, the medical crisis and finally the one tried and true annual crisis throughout the land, the education crisis.
Oh, I forgot to add to the list of those that are clueless, the media and academia, not to mention the celebrities. Look there is a very easy way to know the regular folk from the clueless....they don't "work" like us regular folk, shop or live like us. They simply have no clue.