We Predict Inflation Better than Experts

A very interesting piece of economic research appeared this week in ScienceDaily news service from the department of economics at Kansas State University, entitled Consumers Can Predict Inflation as Well as Professional Economists. This of course will come as no surprise to regular people, for whom economist’s double-talk is often seen as deliberately vague and couched in jargon that has no application to those in the lower echelons of economic stratification in this society.

Turns out that the actual price of milk and bread and gasoline can alert the average citizen of increasing inflation rates quickly and surely, and their predictions will then translate into how the family budgets their spending. Apparently one doesn’t need an Ivy League degree and a 5-figure Wall Street income to figure out that things cost more today than they did yesterday. Who would have thought such a thing?

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Filed under Debt, Economic Prognostication, Inflation | Comment (0)

Oh, For Heaven’s Sake!

Does this guy really need OUR house?

Mere days after causing a regular knee-slapping laugh riot with his claim that the average middle class American probably brings home something around $2.5 million a year (by way of being “rich” if you make $5 million a year), Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain told Politico that he’s not sure how many houses he owns. “I’ll have my staff get to you,” he said, since some of those houses are condos, and all condos look alike apparently. The correct answer, by the way, is at least seven, maybe ten.

By the way, if you’re feeling a little low because of that foreclosure notice you just got in the mail, here’s a slide show of McCain’s home (the one pictured above) from Architectural Digest, 2005. They may have sold it by now, but I don’t think it’s because they couldn’t afford the payments plus jet fuel for ‘getting around Arizona’ at the same time.

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Filed under Bulk Buying, Elitism, Housing, Humor, Politics, Transportation | Comment (1)

Uninsured? More Ways to Survive

More than 40 million Americans - including children - have no health insurance. As the economy continues to weaken and good jobs are outsourced to countries where universal care exempts businesses from having to carry the health care burden, millions more are being thrown into the ranks of the uninsured. Then there are those who have changed jobs, and encountered insurers who simply will not cover them due to pre-existing conditions. These days if you’ve ever had treatment for things like acne, high cholesterol or carpel tunnel you can find yourself on the growing list of the “Uninsurable.”

Now, if you don’t mind jumping serious hoops and get an early start in the fiscal year, states do have sliding scale plans and Medicaid allotments. If you are covered by one of these, you do NOT count among the officially uninsured. In my officially “economically depressed” region, approximately two thirds of the citizens qualify for food stamps and medical care, but there’s only enough money to cover less than half of them. The rest simply do without, at least until they simply can’t do without anymore. The cost of indigent care at our few public hospitals is yet another perpetually unpaid bill.

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Filed under Alternatives, Health Care, Health Maintenance, Nutrition, Prescription Drugs, Surviving | Comment (0)

Saving Money on College Textbooks

My eldest grandson graduated from high school in the top 10% of his class a couple of months ago, for which we are inordinately proud - he was taking courses like advanced biology, pre-calc, physics and advanced literature/writing, which most kids around here avoid like the plague. Now we’re facing the costs of getting him through college, since we raised him and of course we will.

We have had to seriously crimp some of our expectations about how this could happen, as things have changed both personally and societally since our children were in college. First, they don’t give out full scholarships to incoming freshmen around here, no matter how well they do in high school. You have to start with your basic Pell Grant and complete at least two semesters before you’re eligible for scholarship or extra grant money. The Pell Grant won’t come in until the second semester because the process doesn’t even start until the student’s already enrolled, so tuition must be paid up front out of pocket, along with all fees and the cost of textbooks.

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Filed under Alternatives, Back to School, Brand New Used, Discount Outlets, Education, Recycling, Resale | Comment (0)

Good News? Globalization Slows Down

Transportation Costs Hit the ‘New World Order’

The Sunday New York Times offered an in-depth analysis on August 3 by Larry Rohter entitled, Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization.

A decade ago oil was going for $10 a barrel and “outsourcing” manufacturing facilities and jobs to low-wage regions of the Third World began to hit American labor hard. We were all told we must simply adjust to a whole new, world-wide way of doing things, and damn the torpedoes that were decimating labor unions and sending millions of skilled Americans into the minimum wage ranks of burger-flippers and WalMart greeters just to (not quite) get by.

Oil is trading today [Aug. 4] for just over $121 a barrel, down quite a bit from just a month ago when speculators bid it up to $138. The drop is attributed to falling demand as conservation kicks in on the user front. $4 a gallon gasoline and $5 a gallon diesel has cut into fuel consumption big time this summer as regular people choose not to drive if they don’t have to, and transportation fleets pool schedules to ensure their trucks, trains and ships aren’t wasting a drop. According to Rohter the big ocean-going container fleets have slowed down 20% to save on fuel costs, which translates into substantially slower turnaround on the goods.

We all recognize that greatly increased shipping costs as reflected in the upside-down cost of diesel fuel (remember when diesel was always a dollar LESS than gasoline?) must translate into an increase in the price of everything that moves by means of diesel fuel. This means inflation in every sector, at a time of stagnant wages, joblessness and increasing costs of basic transportation, heating and cooling for the average citizen.

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Filed under Bank Failures, Economic Prognostication, Economic Recession, Fuel, Inflation, Transportation | Comment (0)