Those of us attempting to live on what was a shoestring budget even before the Great Unending Recession/Depression have probably been watching the large insanity of vacationing Congresscritters attempting to hold Town Hall meetings with their constituents back home with some bemusement. It’s no secret that the WingNut Network [a.k.a. Fox] and Hate Radio pundits have been inciting their faithful dummies to riot, since this has been ongoing ever since they lost the election last November in a big way. Between the clueless idiots who can’t believe a black man is a real American citizen (or that exotic Hawaii is actually a state) and the Bermuda shorts and gray hair crowd shouting “Keep the government OUT of my Medicare!” one really does have to wonder if maybe there’s something in the water making people lose what few IQ points they might have had back in kindergarten.

Some of us also know that going to a doctor regularly if you aren’t actually sick is not wise, thus are probably better off if we don’t suffer some chronic condition with our very limited access to the health care system than we might be if we had annual check-ups and the ability to demand whatever drug is advertised on television nightly. While it’s a sad truth that ~50 million Americans have no access to the health care system – and that’s an insurance issue – I haven’t seen anybody talking much lately about the health care system itself, which just happens to be the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Thus they’re fighting about “Health Insurance Reform” while the dismal failure of doctors and hospitals to confront the outrageous error rate, hospital-acquired infection rate, etc. that KILLS at least 195,000 Americans every year. Americans who DO have access to the system! The U.S. pays more per capita of our GDP on health care than any other industrialized nation – most of which have universal, single-payer health care systems – and are at the very bottom of the list on all measures of health care outcome. Life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality (tied to our ridiculous C-section rate and lack of prenatal care), general health, number of chronic diseases, etc., etc.

We’d all like to see universal access to health care. We’d like for insurance companies to be barred from canceling policies if the person gets sick, from refusing to cover those with pre-existing conditions, and from raising the rates at five times the rate of inflation every year just because they can. We’d like for the poor and working poor to be able to get health care even if they don’t work for a company that offers it, or don’t earn enough to participate. We’d really like to get our bones set and our cuts stitched when we need to without going bankrupt, and we’d like to get treatment for our cancers and our other serious ailments instead of simply dying of them because health care is beyond our reach.

But because something must be done about the current situation in this country no matter how loudly the idiots yell about not offering their government health care to others who need health care, we can expect that something minimal will indeed be done. Best advice to those who have managed to get this far in life without being regular users of the health care system or the drug companies’ medicine chest is to approach new access with caution. Nothing is being done to cure the rate of iatrogenic disease and death (iagrogenic means “doctor-caused”) in any of this political maneuvering, so increased access only means that the delivery system will be able to harm or kill even more Americans every year.

Make use of your intelligence and your access to the internet, go looking for reliable information if you or someone you love gets sick. Merck has their entire medical manual on-line, the Physician’s Desk Reference is available as well with good information about drugs and which ones may conflict with others – something too many doctors don’t keep track of, and a large contributor to deaths from prescription errors. There are lots of physician websites offering information about various conditions, as well as patient associations that often have collected information from people who have or have dealt with particular conditions with even better information. Always be careful of information, make sure it’s good and not just another quack selling the magical ‘cure’ for AIDS or cancer or whatever, because those are out there too.

And if you’ve got questions, write them down, collect the good information you’ve gathered, THEN take it to your primary care provider and ask. Don’t tolerate a physician or practitioner who gets his or her nose bent out of shape because you’ve done your homework, and never put up with a doctor who balks if you ask for a second opinion. If you’re in line for surgery or some other serious treatment, go to the website of your state government’s medical regulatory agency and search until you find a list of the physicians and other practitioners who have been disciplined by the agency for gross or repeated malpractice or errors. If your doctor’s on the list, get a new one.

And most of all, keep always in your mind the fact that your personal choices affect your health for the better more acutely than anything an insurance company or doctor or hospital can. No one else can “heal” you – people’s own bodies do the healing, health care providers can only help it along. Best not to get sick in the first place, and we’ve no excuse not to know that our diets greatly affect our health. Eating well, getting exercise, maintaining our environment, etc. will stave off many a nasty illness or condition – avoiding the plagues that come with obesity is much better than treating this plague or that plague after they’ve developed.

Now, sit back and enjoy the street theater spectacle of the ‘haves’ trying most desperately to prevent the ‘have-nots’ from getting anything! It’s black comedy at its most absurd, something we’ll probably never see again in our lifetimes. Laugh, because that’s the best medicine in the world!

For a great many regular hard-working, tax-paying American citizens the way money works in the modern world is very much a mystery. This is not surprising, considering that money has always been a mystery shrouded in mythical associations, psychological phobias and religious overtones. And designed to be thus by those who do know how money works. When the US Federal Reserve was established in 1913, it was not actually made a National Bank under the control of the government, it was established by and for the wealthiest bankers and Wall Street barons as an independent entity with only ceremonial ties to the federal government.

In a critique of the ancient psychological “money complex” in his book Life Against Death, Norman O. Brown explored the debt-guilt association in the essay Filthy Lucre. Brown wrote, “Whatever the ultimate explanation of guilt may be, we put forward the hypothesis that the whole money complex is rooted in the psychology of guilt.”

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that a development in late June of 2008 that rocked the American financial world went largely unreported in this country. It appeared in an article of Spiegel Online on June 26, 2008, entitled The Shrinking Influence of the US Federal Reserve.

It seems that the International Monetary Fund [IMF] became concerned about the rate of inflation Fed Chair Ben Bernanke was allowing in 2008, and how that was affecting the price of goods – primarily crude oil – all over the world and translating into flashing neon signs of coming recession. Because the world’s financial dealings are tied to the US dollar’s value, the IMF exercised an option under its bylaws that it had never before exercised in regards to the United States: it scheduled an audit of the entire US financial system.

As part of that audit the Fed, the SEC, the major investment banks, mortgage banks and hedge funds were to hand over confidential documents to the IMF auditors. About two thirds of IMF member states have undergone this process since the Fund was started, so the US really didn’t have the power to opt out. President Bush refused for seven long years of his administration to allow the IMF audit, even as he ran up the debt grotesquely with his oil wars, no-bid contracts, free-for-all bubble-blowing on Wall Street, etc. Your basic Republican cash-out before turning the country over to Democrats who spend 4 or 8 years thereafter trying hard to repair the damage the greedheads have done.

Bush finally agreed to the IMF audit, so long as it didn’t begin until his last weeks in office and isn’t scheduled to end until after he was gone. 2010, to be exact. The auditors took up residence last July, just two months before the CDS bubble burst and took both Wall Street and the Fed down with it. Bernanke had already lowered the interest rates so drastically that he practically had to pay banks to borrow money, and this left him no leverage as the shit hit the fan. When our economy tipped, so did everyone else’s. As the IMF was no doubt concerned about.

It’s hard to know who is most responsible for the fix we’re in. George Bush’s wars, his friends’ greed, the Fed’s inaction, the funds’ CDS pyramid scheme, the insurers’ ridiculous gambling bets, or the oil companies who drove the prices up so far in the months before the election that half of America stopped driving (thereby cutting demand way down even as the oil barons racked up obscene profits). We may suppose the IMF is going to find out.

The best indicator that there was collusion and much back room dirty dealing going on is the fact that the audit began in ernest (the paperwork was due) on September 30, 2008, the end of the fiscal year, though the warnings had been issued in June. September 30, 2008 also just happens to be the exact date that George W. Bush claimed that half a trillion dollars’ in immediate bailout money just HAD to be in the hands of those institutions the IMF was planning to audit, or the economy will collapse!

Could it all have been not just unethical, but illegal even by whatever rudimentary banking and investment rules remained after W. wiped most actual regulations off the books early in his term? Does this explain the mass exodus to off-shoring havens of the bonus babies We the People have been forced to pay off with our hard-earned dollars? Will there come a time of reckoning when the world’s crookedest greedheads and game-players will be prosecuted for their crimes against humanity?

Stay tuned, dear readers. This one is bound to keep rearing its dragon head as the audit proceeds. Should be interesting!

Links:

The Shrinking Influence of the US Federal Reserve
Corrente: IMF to audit US Financial System
Did IMF Audit Lead to (expose) US Economic Collapse?
Banks Holding Up in Tests, but May Still Need Aid

Even way back last August, before the economy was officially in terminal free fall, the issues surrounding a college education were in the news. CNN Money asked, Is college still worth the price?

Most of us have come to understand how necessary a college degree – in anything – is to being able to ‘successfully’ compete in today’s complicated modern world. Yet the costs of a degree – any degree – is soaring up to four times the rate of inflation even as both jobs and salaries for college graduates are shrinking. How much sense does it really make for families (or students, via loans) to pay $200,000 for a degree so s/he can get a job that pays $30,000 a year or less?

In a rational economy the rapid inflation of college tuition would slow, stop or even reverse as consumers – the pool of applying students – shrank in response to the spiraling costs. But for this particular commodity, there can be no shortage of applicants due to the recognized importance of said degree to the entire future of the prospective student. It is much easier to replace light bulbs and take public transportation to work in order to save on electric bills and gasoline than it is to forego a college education because it costs more than a graduating student can expect to earn.

Until the recent financial meltdown families felt fairly secure in their savings for their children’s educations, and college loans were readily available at low interest to finance most of the rest. Now the credit has dried up and the savings have been “liquidated” by failing Banks and Wall Street brokerages.

Some applicants are considering the traditional “Work Your Way Through College” option, but the kind of jobs a student can get part time in a college environment often pay minimum wage or even less. This won’t even buy a single textbook, much less pay a semester’s tuition. At this point the cost in time and energy simply isn’t worth it.

Some families are taking advantage of local Community College offerings, most of which have straight transfer programs to state universities following the first two years’ worth of standard requisites and humanities, which the community systems can offer much cheaper than universities do. In some states as worker re-training has become a serious mandate, the costs of tuition can be less than the amount available to students from the Pell Grant system. That of course doesn’t pay for textbooks (still outrageous) or transportation, but those same community colleges are offering more and more courses on-line so that students can do the work from home without having the transportation and meals expense.

Once in the system and receiving the Pell money, students are then eligible for other grants and scholarships the schools – including community colleges – administer. It takes a semester to get into the system, but this may be the least expensive way to do so. The system tends to follow the student – or even run ahead if she or he is obtaining scholarships for grade point maintenance – to the state universities, which have access to even more resources to help students cover the costs of their education.

The trick these days seems to be to avoid loans if at all possible, to NOT spend the savings the family may have accumulated and might still be worth something, but get the degree anyway. Very few careers actually require incoming hires to boast $200,000 degrees, so anyone not expecting to go into those particular careers should avoid the trap.

There are some good online sources for scholarships and grants as well that parents of high schoolers should be signing up with now, to give their kids the best competitive edge in applying as well as the early advantage of winning. Some of these, including FastWeb will target email alerts to what individual colleges and benefactors are offering in your child’s particular fields of interest as well as preferred schools according to your child’s profile. Peterson’s is a similar service, and either or both are highly recommended, FREE services.

So what’s the bottom line? Do what you have to do to get that degree, it’s still worth its weight in gold (and there aren’t a lot of good jobs around right now anyway). Just avoid debt if you can, take advantage of everything you are capable of using, plot your course carefully, and stick to the plan even if it takes longer to get that degree than you’d originally figured. Good luck and happy scholarship hunting!

Links:

The Cost of College In A Bad Economy
15 Ways to Set Yourself Apart in a Recession
Is college still worth the price?
Should your kid work in college?
Beat the college loan crunch
FastWeb: Scholarships, Financial Aid and Colleges
69 Free or Open Source Tools For Students

World markets continue to take dramatic hits and the Dow has fallen below 10,000 for the first time in four years. Seems a lot of banks and other players are unhappy with the trillion dollar bailout package passed last Friday because it limits their personal golden parachutes and stock option scams. Awwww. Should we call the waaaaambulance for these whiners? Nope. If they didn’t need our money they shouldn’t have begged for a handout in the first place. In the meantime, regular people are having a much harder time putting food on the table as prices rise dramatically and more and more find themselves out of work. This post is a beginner’s primer on how to get food if you can’t afford it.

Before I get to the list of good links readers may find helpful depending on their particular situations, readers should know that many states, such as the one where I live (NC) have budgetary caps on how much relief in the form of food stamps they are able to provide. This can mean that even as increasing numbers of people find themselves going hungry, fewer people will have access to the standard governmental relief. Thus more people must turn to other providers. A good overview of those providers supported by the USDA commodity program is provided at Amber Waves. If your family is in danger of ‘food insecurity’ be sure to familiarize yourself with emergency providers in your area. Cities generally have soup kitchens, places where you can go for a hot meal. Most smaller cities and many towns or counties also have food banks, check into what you will need to provide to qualify.

For those with few to no reasonable alternatives, or who may find themselves in a chronic situation (or are just stubbornly self-sufficient), here are some fine hints about foraging. Foraging the nearly lost art of getting your food from places other than the neighborhood supermarket or soup kitchen. Food prices are projected to continue rising and stay high for at least the next three years. Part of this is our newfound dependence on imported foods with huge ‘carbon footprints’ due to transportation and energy-intensive mechanistic agriculture. If you’re trying to keep your family alive and healthy, you honestly don’t need mangos in January or expensive processed foodstuffs at any time.

Of course, as with all matters of saving real money on food, you’ll have to learn (or remember) how to cook for yourself. Eating out and buying pre-prepared meals is the most expensive way to eat, not to mention the most unhealthy. Since health care is a growing desperate concern for everyone, staying healthy should be paramount in all our planning.

From the great DailyKos “Frugal Fridays” series, Foraging: Living Off the Fat of the Land we get several good ideas. Of course living close to water allows foragers with a little skill the luxury of catching crabs, crayfish, regular fish, baby clams, etc., and seaweed can be a fine addition to the pot to lend nutrients and salt (plus ample amounts of iodine). Living inland can offer lots of fine opportunities to forage for edible fungi, berries, tubers and pot herbs as well. it’s puff ball season in my neck of the woods, which are spendid stuffed with chopped acorns, cabbage, herbs and onions, baked in clarified butter in a covered dish. Hickory nuts are falling, and the wild sunflowers are blazing – these are otherwise known as Jerusalem artichokes, and eat like small potatoes.

Of course there’s Cossack Asparagus in marshlands almost everywhere. These are your basic cattails, and all parts of the plants are edible all times of year. The new green shoots are better than bamboo shoots (which also may be found here and there), but I best like the set-cob’s fuzz which can be ground into a very light, fine flour for baking and thickening broths. As things nutritional become rarer, families will likely have to learn how to like basic stew meals that can be made in large pots and eaten over a period of two or three days (refrigerated in between, of course).

If you don’t mind killing and cleaning, there’s a reason they call possom the “other other white meat.” People have traditionally made fine meals of squirrel, turkey, various ground birds, snakes and the standard larger game. Just be sure you’ve got whatever permit is required, both for hunting and fishing, in your area for the game you’re seeking. I’ve known families who could eat meat twice a week (all anybody needs) for an entire winter from a single deer. Best advice is to stay away from carnivores and scavengers (like ravens and buzzards, bears and racoons).

People in the country or with ample back yards could consider a fresh goat for milk and some few chickens (easily kept but noisy if you’ve a rooster) for eggs and occasional Sunday dinner. Check your local paper’s “livestock” want ads, chickens are very cheap and goats aren’t anywhere near as expensive to buy or feed as a cow. Or make friends with a farmer who has livestock. Around here I can get cheap (or for straight barter) milk, honey, free range eggs, grass-fed meat if I ate it, and all the composted fertilizer my garden can handle.

Of course learning how to garden will help a lot. Tomatoes and peppers and salad stuff can easily be grown in pots and flats on the patio or deck, herbs in the kitchen window, and many other things if you’ve the room, a shovel to turn ground and a metal rake to break it up. Know what grows in what seasons in your area – some crops like cabbage, collards, kale, lettuce, spinach, radishes, broccoli, brussles sprouts and cauliflower need cold weather to develop. Kale will keep on growing right through the snow! Others need lots of heat and sun. If you plant extras you can preserve for the future, or barter for trades with those who have foods you didn’t grow. Specializing can be better than trying to grow it all. Barter will become increasingly important as the food shortages and high prices continue.

Many wild flowers and weeds are edible, and some of those are more nutritious than anything you can buy in the store. Violets, dandelions (greens and flowers), day lilies, wood sorrel, purslane, etc. Don’t forget kudzu – its greens are very high in protein and its flowers make lovely jelly or colorful additions to salads.

Out in the woods there are acorns, elderberries, fox grapes, sloe plums, wild cherries, blueberries, hickory nuts, walnuts, ground nuts and other goodies in addition to the edible ferns and fungi. Be sure you know what you’re doing with those fungi – many local extension agencies offer print material and courses to let you know what’s edible and what’s not.

And don’t be shy – if you live in a farming/gardening region, keep track of who’s been harvesting, go ahead and ask permission to glean from those fields. Modern mechanical machinery leaves quite a lot of edible food behind, and farmers usually just plow it under. Many or most farmers in your area may be entirely willing to have you gather what you can of their already harvested crops.

Foraging is a lot like work, but more fun. Since millions will be out of work (and many of those one out of a two-income household), there should be time if you’ve got the energy and desire. Do check out some of the links in this article and below, get yourself psyched about the possibilities right now. In really hard times all we really have to do is survive, and learning to do for ourselves instead of waiting for a handout that may never come is very empowering. Kids love this stuff, so be sure to include them on your weekend foraging trips!

Links:

Emergency Providers Help Put Food On the Table
Foraging: Living Off the Fat of the Land
BHM: You can become a hardcore forager
Wild Food Foragers of America
Edible Wild Things: “Cossack Asparagus”
Wild Herbs/Foods Archive
Staples Archive
Harvesting Wild: The Mast Crop
Modern Forager

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: Roadblocks and Interference
Part 2: Food: Eating What You Can Get

As Congress meets today and tomorrow to grill the principals before Friday’s vote on the $700 billion “emergency” Wall Street bailout plan (which has been in the works for months but strategically dumped on us all as an “emergency”), oil companies have instituted “rolling shortages” all over the Southeast. Some areas have been out of gas for more than a week and a half, and the situation is not expected to ease until Monday at the latest. Some gas – a single tanker at a time – is being delivered to stations along the Interstates and is being strictly rationed unless it’s diesel, one station per county.

State police are managing the gas lines to prevent violence, which did break out last week in the Nashville, Tennessee area when people started cutting in line. Food prices are rising so fast the stock boys at the grocery stores can’t mark up the goods fast enough, and the specter of looming fuel shortages for winter heat – or price increases that will force people to do without – is beginning to look very scary.

Bailout or no bailout – and despite the launch of FBI investigations of Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG – the United States may well be fully in the clutches of major economic depression before winter even hits. Whether or not that translates to global recession isn’t much of an issue to regular people, as we here in our own homes wonder how we will survive. This post and several following posts in a new series will take a look at the steps citizens should take as soon as possible to ensure their families will make it through the next 6 months. If depression goes on longer than that, additional strategies will be necessary, some already compiled as series in this blog and available under the “Our Most Popular” header on the left side of the page.

Here in Part 1 there are two broad categories of concern citizens will have to work around in order to do for themselves, particular to not freezing, not starving, and not getting indefinitely detained or killed. Considerations must start NOW.

Things to Plan Around:

1. Availability of home heating fuel/gasoline.

It is quite likely that there will be rolling gas shortages throughout the next year. We can also fairly assume there will be drastic fuel oil shortages in the northern tier of the country, and that many will unfortunately freeze to death in their homes or die of carbon monoxide poisoning from kerosene heaters, or fires from badly planned fireplace/wood stove installations.

If you live in an area with ample woods with standing or down dead or a brisk firewood market for purchase, or availability of wood stove pellets, get yourself a wood stove. These come in all sizes and thicknesses, some need more protection to floors and walls than others. You will also need stove piping and must plan a way to get the smoke outside your house (can be through a removed windowpane if necessary). Stoves are often available reasonably cheap and in good condition through Craig’s List or other re-sale sources. Do your homework, install it correctly. If the electricity goes out or fuel oil is unavailable, your family will still be warm. AND you can cook on it!

Resource: NASD: Proper Installation, Operation and Maintenance

2. Deployed Troops, Curfews, Travel Restrictions, Rationing.

Beginning on October 1st – next week – the US Army’s Third Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team – all 6500 to 8000 troops – will be re-deployed within the borders of the United States for various police functions. Regular police forces are being deployed for crowd control and peacekeeping functions as well, in managing protests, gas lines and runs on banks, grocery stores, etc. Expect to be challenged every time you go out, be thankful when it doesn’t happen.

Important: In case of travel restrictions, try to gather your immediate family in one place, preferably the place among your extended network best situated according to all considerations. Schools may be shut down due to lack of fuel for transportation and/or heating, if you have college-bound offspring, consider taking a couple of semesters off unless things at the college look stable. Don’t be afraid to call the admin and ask pointed questions, either. You won’t want anyone near and dear to you to be stuck someplace where they have no resources.

What this means is you need to do what stocking up you can immediately, and plan for obtaining the rest of your needs in possibly creative ways. If you have money socked away, withdraw enough to get you through if the bank goes under, all of it if they’ll let you have it. Store ready cash in freezer bags in the freezer. Purchase as much staple supplies as you can possibly afford, NOW before there are serious shortages and before the prices double or triple.

What food supplies you will need to obtain, along with other tools and supplies, will be supplied in Part 2 of this series. Please stay tuned!

Links:
Southeast Gas Update
FBI investigating companies at heart of meltdown
Long Term Capitol
Craig’s List: Great Resource or Scary Place?
20 Ways to Live on Almost Nothing
It’s Better Than Cheap… It’s Free!

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: Roadblocks and Interference
Part 2: Food: Eating What You Can Get

That’s what Angry Bear says about the government bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, announced on Sunday, September 7. It will cost the American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars we don’t have. Why? Because more than 1.3 trillion dollars’ worth of those mortgage bonds are held by foreign countries, primarily China, Japan, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Belgium, and they want to know if their holdings are any good.

Now, you might be struck by some of those listed ‘foreigners’. Cayman Islands? Luxembourg? Belgium? Well known for hosting questionably legal accounts for some questionable characters, I suspect we’d find a lot of Americans on those lists. Americans don’t count as “foreigners.” Unfortunately, we’d also find a lot of Russian front companies and Middle Eastern Sheiks as well.

We’ve once again been robbed blind by wanton corporate and individual greed, and we are expected once again to bail out the wealthy speculators whose greed led to the failures.

Predictions for what happens now aren’t pretty. The dollar will plunge, inflation will zoom, regular Americans will have an even more difficult time keeping up. While the richest 1% will have their taxes cut and get their bad investments paid off so they can go speculate on other nifty things like food and water.

So buckle up, fellow shoestring budget enthusiasts! We’re going to get our chance to put all our alternative survival strategies to work. If we do it right, what will arise from the ashes of the late, once-great American economy might be strong enough to last awhile.

Links:

Bonddad: Our Foreign Masters Have Spoken
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: A Broader View
The Fannie/Freddie Bail-Out: The Plan and Why Now?

While those of us in the less-than 95th percentile of the American income scale celebrated a long Labor Day weekend with family and friends, the 2008 Presidential race heated up, took a bizarre turn, and looks more like a “North Country”-like sit-com every day. The New York Times published some Labor Day editorials that are as remarkably honest as they are politically timely in this era of double-digit inflation for basics like food and fuel, the mortgage crisis tossing millions of families out on the streets, and ever-faster distancing between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ that can positively cause major depression if you think too much about it.

Why? Because things are getting worse, not better. Our shoestring budgets can no longer be thought of a a temporary condition, but something we’ll have to work with all our lives. This is what op-ed contributor Dalton Conley commented on Tuesday in his opinion piece, Rich Man’s Burden.

Conley begins by noticing that less wealthy Americans actually took the weekend off and were happy about it, while wealthier Americans mostly fretted over their BlackBerries and laptops and worked anyway, as if frightened of being left behind if they weren’t working constantly to get ahead. He describes a sort of “red shift” – like that of light reaching us from distant galaxies rushing ever further away from us ever faster – between the middle income group [~$200,000 a year] and the actually rich. The disparity between the middle and the bottom rungs on the economic ladder is not so great and isn’t accelerating much. But once you reach the middle, the rungs get further and further apart.

Princeton economics professor and former vice-chair of the Fed Alan Blinder offered a contrast between the political parties and their economic plans over the weekend that is well worth reading and digesting. He lays things out clearly and simply in what he calls the Great Partisan Growth Divide. The US economy has, on average, grown faster under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.

I call this the Economic Ag Cycle. Where Democrats grow the economy during their ascendency, so that Republicans can move in and reap the money crop (i.e., rob the country blind). Which one might think would balance out over time, but it doesn’t. And that’s why we find ourselves where we are today. From 1948 to 2007, Republicans occupied the White House for a total of 34 years, while Democrats held it only 26 years. There’s simply not been enough wealth grown for the amount of reaping the rich folks have been doing, so we are now worse off than we have been at any time since World War 2.

Income inequality has been on the rise for 30 years. It gets greater and greater the higher up the ladder you go, and Blinder went all the way to the 95% vs. 5% level. Which, btw, is well below the $5 million income level John McCain set as his idea of when people become “rich.” In fact, it’s under $200,000.

Finally, Bob Herbert offers his advice to Head for the High Road and not let ourselves be swayed or fooled by ‘the usual’ political distractions and overblown pandering, but to pay attention to reality on the ground after the last 8 years of Republican reaping. Just as school districts all over the country are suddenly having to deal with huge increases in the number of officially poor and homeless children, those school districts have had to cut funding for programs serving those children due to concurrent huge increases in the costs of food and fuel.

So while I hope you all had a happy Labor Day and enjoyed yourselves immensely, do check out these editorials. They’ll put this political Silly Season into some realistic perspective. Many of us enjoy our lives way too much to be desirous of 24-hour workdays 7 days a week 365 days a year. It’s a rat race that would detract from our quality of life significantly, we only want ‘enough’. Yet if we’re not careful this November, we’re going to get another 4-8 years of less and less, until the American philosophy and the American Dream will become something most citizens can never even hope for. Their children will be less well-educated, they’ll make less money, they’ll have to work harder, they’ll suffer more, and suddenly there won’t be anything left to protect and defend. We must not allow this to happen.

Links:

Rich Man’s Burden
Head for the High Road
Is History Siding with Obama’s Economic Plan?

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?

Predictions about inflation are important because it tends to determine spending, saving and investment decisions for consumers and businesses. In a period of low to negative inflation savings accounts, bonds and long-term CDs are good investments, as return maintains the value of the dollars put away. In periods of rising inflation, extending credit and purchasing is a better bet, because the value of the dollars spent will continue to fall over time. Better to buy now and pay it back in yesterday’s dollars than save and have those dollars drop in worth.

Then, of course, there are those at the low end of the scale who simply do not have enough money coming in to save or invest, but who are merely trying hard to make the ends meet paycheck to paycheck. It is for those on a shoestring budget who suffer most in periods of rapid inflation. That they should be able to tell accurately that the money’s not going as far today as it did yesterday is no brilliant trick of statistical analysis. It’s just the way things are.

Duh.

Link:

Consumers Can Predict Inflation as Well as Professional Economists

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.

A study in May by Canada’s CIBC World Markets investment bank showed that the recent increases in shipping costs amounts to a 9% tariff on all trade. All without governments having to do a thing. Their report concluded that…

The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today. [This situation] has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.

Many things contributed to the decline in demand, including Americans choosing to stay close to home this summer, and/or trading in their gas-guzzling SUVs for more fuel efficient vehicles. GM is in trouble for betting on the wrong market, and other American automakers who could have beat the Japanese at the MPG game but didn’t bother to do so are also taking a hit. Union busting plays a role as well, as corporate job losses rose 33% over last year.

Some corporate jobs, however, are doing just fine. Seems that corporate number-crunchers have figured out a way to convert the pension plans of their workers into retirement benefits and ‘golden parachutes’ for executives. The Wall Street Journal offers Companies Tap Pension Plans to Fund Executive Benefits. If you’re still counting on that pension, you’d better start doing something about this before you find yourself at age 65 having to try and live on $1,000 a month in raw Social Security.

Also in the news, the FDIC took over yet another bank on Friday, as Florida’s First Priority becomes 8th bank failure this year. Once again, the good and the not-so good advice of financial pundits should be taken seriously by all who can put away some cash just in case their bank shuts its doors.

Links:

Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
The End of Globalization?
Globalization begins the great unwind
Companies Tap Pension Plans to Fund Executive Benefits
Florida’s First Priority becomes 8th bank failure this year

As the ever-rising price of fuel puts a serious dent in consumer budgets (and summertime vacations), it’s a good time for remembering good advice from the past as well as new advice for the present on how to keep your shoestring budget from being hopelessly busted.

1. Mass Transiting
If you live in a city or suburb with access to mass transit, USE IT. The cost of bus, train or subway fare is less than the cost of gasoline plus wear-and-tear on your vehicle for those same miles. Plus, if you can test on the means criteria, you can get subsidy for mass transit to and from work every day.

Plus many cities offer “express” transit from suburban hubs to the inner city (bus main depot and transfer station). This means the bus doesn’t stop every 4 blocks along the way, and you can get to work or home often in about the same time it takes to commute in your car during peak traffic hours (the express buses generally use less congested routes).

2. Carpooling
Carpool to and from work if you can. Big employers often have bulletin boards in the break room where people can request for carpooling, and many metropolitan areas provide relatively ‘safe’ long-term parking lots along freeway entrances reserved for carpoolers or express mass transit. This means the people you’re pooling with don’t have to pick everyone up at their homes, but can just pick up and drop off the participants at one location. Regular buses stop at these locations as well, so you can bus to the pick-up and home again.

Carpooling requires out-of-pocket expense just like mass transit does (unless your employer happens to provide the van and gas). It is as cheap or cheaper than driving yourself, as everyone shares the costs. Even if you share a ride with a single co-worker living nearby your costs go down by half.

This requires firm work-scheduling so your participation doesn’t get screwed by your petty tyrant middle-management boss, but many workplaces are beginning to understand that unless they want to give employees a big enough raise to cover transportation inflation, they’d better be accommodating. Some localities offer municipal bulletin boards on the ‘net that allow you to hook up with others who live and work in your area (but not the same place) for carpooling.

3. AC is for Wimps
When you do drive to and from work (even with a pool), turn off the AC. If you don’t live someplace where it’s 80+º at 8 in the morning and 80+º at 5 in the evening, you don’t really need it. Use the interior vents instead to circulate outside air. You’re all sitting down, you can handle less than 80º in comfort with some moving air. Keep the windows up on the highway too. These both reduce drag on the vehicle and its engine.

4. Drive Slower
Drive 55 on the highway rather than 70 (or more). The bad old double-nickel does consume a lot less gas.

5. Limit Acceleration
Unless you’re merging into at-speed traffic, watch your acceleration and braking. Acceleration consumes the most gasoline, and quick-braking (unless necessary) shifts the burden to acceleration later. When you see a need to slow down, take your foot off the gas. Slow braking often helps you avoid having to stop altogether, or accelerate fast (such as at stoplights).

6. Cruise Control
On the highway, use your cruise control. It saves quite a bit of gas and reduces heavy acceleration as well as heavy breaking.

7. Hot Gas
Don’t buy hot gasoline. Purchase your fuel during cooler times of the morning or evening, you’ll get more for the bucks. Always pay attention to the sign price, you can save up to 5¢ per gallon just by buying across the street instead.

8. Buy Less
Don’t “top off” your tank, it’s a waste of gas. Plus, less weight equals better mileage. If you fill up, stop at the first click and don’t keep pumping. If you’ve a 15-gallon tank and need just 10 for the week, only buy 10 gallons during the week. Park in the shade when you can, as heat will expand the gas in your tank. If you can’t park in the shade and don’t want to use the AC (less gas mileage), open your car doors or windows for awhile to let the heat out before driving off.

9. Don’t Be Idle
Limit your idling. You must idle at stoplights, but not in the drive-through at Taco Bell or bank. If it’s going to take more than a minute to conduct your drive-through business, turn off the ignition and restart when you’re done.

10. Get Some Exercise
If you live within a mile of your work, walk or ride your bike. You’ll get good exercise (and only slightly wet when it’s raining if you’ve a raincoat, galoshes and umbrella) and not use any gas at all. A bicycle can be reasonably ridden 5 miles to work in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you have to ride through town (lots of stoplights) or have a particularly lovely road between here and there.

11. Have Some Fun
If you live 5-20 miles from your work and can’t regularly carpool or ride mass transit, consider purchasing a motor scooter. There are some really nice ones on offer these days, can be had for not too much money if you can justify the costs, and often get 75-120 miles per gallon of gas. Plus, they’re fun!

12. Move On
You could consider moving closer to your work or getting a job closer to home. Of course, this presumes that you are job-secure enough to make it worth your while to sell your house at a loss and buy another, and/or employable enough to get a well-paid job anywhere, even in a recession-to-depression economy. In which case you can probably afford to drive yourself to and from work all by your lonesome and wouldn’t have to consider these options.

Once you’ve figured out a way to save on gas and car expenses getting to and from work every day, consider how you can save on other trips in your vehicle…

13. Keep a List
Get a dry-erase board and put it up somewhere right near the ‘fridge. Whenever someone in your family notes that some regular foodstuff or extra (paper towels, toilet paper, shampoo, facial soap, whatever) is running low or you’re out, they can write it down. Then make your list before you go to the store. This will avoid frequent ‘hops’ to the store at odd times just to pick up an item or two.

14. Shopping Day
Plan your meals weekly. This means sitting down and figuring out what your family will have for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a full 7 days. Will that box of cereal last that long? Have you enough ingredients for eggplant parmesan as well as burritos and Spanish rice? If everyone takes their lunches (saves lots of money!) to work and school, make sure you’ve got all the ingredients for everyone every day for the week. This means keeping the kids from eating the “Lunchables” for snacks at home, so also make sure you’ve after-school snacks in stock as well. If you only go to the grocery store once a week, you’ll not be wasting half a tank of gas during the week ‘hopping’ to the store.

15. Group Shopping Day
If you plan ahead, you can do all your grocery store shopping and general running-around errands on Saturday. If you’re sociable, you can probably find a neighbor or two who will think your plan is brilliant, and who will plan ahead too. That way you can share the Saturday run-around duties, as well as vehicle and gasoline costs. Plus, you’ll only have to do the driving once every two or three weeks!

A psychological issue I’ve found with this planning ahead stuff is that some people fool themselves into believing they’re NOT spending much money if they drive to the store once a day to pick up an item or two or three, instead of going once a week and spending what can amount to $200 at a time. It’s a quirk of numbers that should be examined closely for all factors including gasoline, because in the end, that daily trip for this-n-that can add $100 to that weekly expenditure.

When you make plans with the kids to see a movie or do some other worthy and fun thing on the weekend, you can consider proximity. Share rides to the mall with other families in your neighborhood. Do Dollar Movie & Pizza Night on Friday instead of Saturday. Sign up for a video/DVD rental service, have the kids invite their friends, cook up some popcorn and have sodas on hand, arrange the chairs and hold “movie night” at your house! I’ve found it fun to do all-day (or all-night) spectaculars – all the Rocky movies, all the Star Wars movies, all the Arnold movies… whatever you like. One right after another with intermissions. For the all-nighters I put the eldest in charge of snacks and programming, move the equipment to the garage or basement, throw in lots of pillows and blankets, let them have a fine sleep-over.

The best bet for the cash-strapped or just the thrifty person is either to garage your vehicle or share the costs with others. The money you save might pay for this month’s grocery price-hikes! And remember to buy local whenever you can, particularly produce in-season. You can go to the area farmer’s market BEFORE going to the grocery store that week, and any neighbors you share the ride with will learn what’s cool about farmer’s markets.

The cost of living won’t be going down, even though our incomes may not be going up. If you’ve good ideas for saving money in these areas, please contribute in the comments, there may be some truly great ones out there!

Useful Links:

FTC: Saving Money at the Gas Pump
Edmunds: Gas-Buying Strategies
How to Save Money on Gas
43 Gas-Saving Tips