I know you have filled up your gas tank and thought OMG, I hope the price of gas doesn't go up anymore.
How about tomatoes or bread? Jeans, Shirts, a new microwave or an electical switch or a piece of copper for the dish washer? The price of everything has jumped incredibly except the consumer price index (CPI). So far this year the CPI has risen a modest 2.5%. Last year it was 3.8%.
Do government statisticians buy orange juice or milk? I swear to God those items jumped 25% in the last 6 months.
Forget bond yields, debt ratios and market triggers.
A flat of petunias was $20 this spring!
Trickle down economics is sputtering dust at the middle class.
Last week the AP reported:
At the White House, Bush was quick to hail the rebound in national economic activity. "I want the American people to take a good look at this economy of ours," boasted Bush, whose economic stewardship has received weak marks. "It's an economy that is large, flexible and resilient
."
Where was I ? At the gas station dropping a hundred dollars?
[A senior adviser to President Bush (Rove?)] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
- Ron Suskind, "Without a Doubt," New York Times
Reality? I am pretty reality based when it comes to the grocery store and the gas pump. I am reality based when it comes to my checkbook and the gross sales of my business and how wuch money is left over at the end of the month.
I am reality based when I talk to the businesses and owners across the city telling me about their sales and bottom lines. It aint real pretty for the working class right now.
I am not into macro-economics either. That's a rich boys game of penis envy. I've never had a trust fund to play with...I was born in a trailer in New Mexico.
This neo-conservative administration has created new realities that have nothing to do with the realities on the ground here in Colorado, except for the propaganda of rosy scenarios of robust economic growth,hedge funds, business activity and trust Funds are "booming".
It is a "reality" that doesn't take the average Joes who shop at Safeway into account.
It is the "reality" of Kings and Empires far removed from the Democratic values of "We the People" driving to our factory jobs everyday.
And we live and work and struggle in a virtual reality far removed from the visions of the Neocons.
Anti-reality...the consumer schizophrenia of the masses...I think I'll shop for a new digital camera for garden blogging.
Maybe I'll feel better and help the economy.