I went into Winco yesterday. Winco is a regional chain of large, no-frills, warehouse-type grocery stores with excellent prices. Since my girls have music and gymnastics lessons once a week in the city, we often save up our grocery list and make our purchases there.
Like the rest of America, I've been noticing the price increases over the last year, but this week it was particularly unpleasant. For example, I usually pick up Imperial margarine for $0.77/lb at Winco. At least, that was the price last week. This week? Ninety-two cents each, an increase of 16 percent in one week.
I didn't buy any.
This is nothing new. The prices of such items as bread, milk, meat, cheese and other staples have been creeping upward, ever upward. My girls will sometimes purchase a small bag of potato chips, but suddenly they noticed (since they pay for it) that small bags of chips which used to be $.99 are now $1.49. They seldom buy them anymore.
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So you can imagine my alarm when I heard Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke say that because the economic recovery (what recovery?) "is close to faltering," then the central bank is prepared to take further steps to support it.
The central bank. Is taking steps. To support the economy. I'm not the only one who found those words eerie. How can the central bank improve the economy when it's largely the cause of our economic woes? I wonder, where does Ben buy his groceries?
This is the elephant in the room most of the mainstream press has been avoiding: Inflation is eroding our dollar, and our government insists that it can save us if only it can spend more money.
There is no question that the standard of living we've enjoyed since World War II has been unprecedented in history. In fact, it's an anomaly. Nowhere before has the common man enjoyed the luxuries that hitherto had been available only to kings and emperors, if at all.
History may prove this standard of living to be a mere blip on the radar of time. And because we are at such risk of losing the way of life we've built up on such a fragile and ephemeral foundation, we must personally take what steps we can to avoid a calamitous impact.
By "steps," I do not mean we invite the government in to "help" us. The government is unquestionably to blame for much of the economic mayhem we face. For decades, the government has been meddling in things in which it has no constitutional authority, and its secretive back-door alliances with bankers and corporations have all but ruined us. In this, it is supported by all the useful unproductive idiots who are in turn supported by the government. Sheesh, what a mess.
But, of course, the government does not operate in a vacuum. For such a government to exist, it must have the tacit approval, or at least the indifference, of a lot of citizens.
That indifference is fading. Many formerly indifferent people are waking up to the unpleasant realization that the government wants to control what you eat, what kind of medical care you receive and how you light your home, among other things.
As if that weren't bad enough, we're reading such dire headlines as:
Meanwhile a bunch of spoiled brats are occupying Wall Street just because, I dunno, they're bored or something. After a period of being unable to explain exactly why they're there, someone finally issued a list of side-splitting demands without any notion of who will pay for those demands. (Examples: Guaranteed living wage income, regardless of employment. Free college education. One trillion dollars in infrastructure spending, and another trillion – what the heck – on ecological restoration projects and decommissioning all nuclear power plants. Immediate across-the-board debt forgiveness for all – home mortgages, credit card debt, student loans, personal loans, etc.)
While these protesters have some legitimate complaints (such as the unholy alliance between corporations, bankers and politicians), their demands are so adolescent as to be comical. Only foolish and childish logic could demand bigger government control and more redistribution of wealth (presumably in their direction) as a "solution" to our economic mess.
Europe is about to melt down and bring much of the rest of the world's economy with it, in part because it has spent years giving living wages to unproductive people and free college educations. Yet our Wall Street protesters want a guaranteed living wage, regardless of employment? Bwahahahaha! Grow up, people.
Vice President Biden says of the economy, "We have it turned around." Horse manure.
Only fools believe what politicians tell them (and we have a lot of fools lately). If someone wants to believe inflating the dollar is the road to recovery and subsequent economic prosperity, I call them a fool. If someone wants to believe that providing free money to unproductive people will increase their incentive to work, I call them a fool. If someone thinks wide-scale replacement of conventional energy sources with "green" energy will save our nation, I call them a fool.
Many of us see the economic storm clouds looming overhead. We are taking what steps we can to weather that storm. And for this, we are regarded by the useful idiots described above as – wait for it – fools.
So let the fools chuckle over those of us who are battening down the hatches. Let them laugh themselves silly. Let them fall over, clutching their sides in mirth, chortling over our idiocy because we believe the economy is on the road to utter ruin.
Denial should be a river in Egypt, not the state of mind of Americans at this time. Those who deny our system could ever fail and that the government will always be there, like cavalry to the rescue, must have been educated at government schools and are in for an unpleasant shock.
But they'll remain too foolish to recognize where the blame lies.