entitled
the quiet one
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2002
- Posts
- 17,813
Price of gas is up, consumers are to blame, especially those dumbasses who drive either huge new beasts or old POS gas guzzlers. General consensus, right?
Bullshit.
This hike in gas prices has been planned for at least the past two years. This from a friend who has quite a bit of stock in a certain petroleum company and can pull enough strings to find things out ahead of time. During a brief phone conversation he admitted that he "could have told you that gas prices would hit three bucks a gallon easy in the next couple of years" and that the uber-goober high lords of the companies had planned it that way.
What's bothersome is that there are plenty of people out there in the real world that work their collective asses off just to be able to get by. Our family happens to be one of those that does this. That big garden i've referred to in other threads? That's just so we can afford to feed all five of us through this winter - if the deer don't get to it all first.
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Well, not a damned thing. But it does mean that i can't afford to go to the store as much as i should. It's a 30+ mile round trip - over a gallon of gas in my car, nearly two in the truck that's officially a yard ornament because we can't scrape enough together to get the transmission fixed.
It means missed opportunities to go sell stuff, which has been the only thing that has kept our heads above water for the past three years. If i can't afford to run into town for groceries once a week there's no way i'll get across the state and be able to pay site fees and such, then expect to be able to make enough to cover travel expenses AND come home with a little extra.
At this point there is no alternative transportation. Period. There's not even the $3 public transportation that other people are bitching about having to deal with. Walking isn't exactly an option. There's no way to get another, more reliable, less expensive vehicle.
If somebody were actually hiring it might be different, but with the minimum wage increase passing recently for this state, nobody can have that added expense. Not until they jack the prices of everything up to make up for the extra expense of the company in having to pay the extra needed to cover that wage increase. Who knows how long that will take? Even with the price of everything else going up, the RA is on a salary that will not be increased at any time soon. He got one starting this year, which is enough to put us in a higher tax bracket. That means the tax returns we rely on to get us through the year will be less. With the prices of everything else going up, i don't know how we're going to make it.
i just don't know.
Bullshit.
This hike in gas prices has been planned for at least the past two years. This from a friend who has quite a bit of stock in a certain petroleum company and can pull enough strings to find things out ahead of time. During a brief phone conversation he admitted that he "could have told you that gas prices would hit three bucks a gallon easy in the next couple of years" and that the uber-goober high lords of the companies had planned it that way.
What's bothersome is that there are plenty of people out there in the real world that work their collective asses off just to be able to get by. Our family happens to be one of those that does this. That big garden i've referred to in other threads? That's just so we can afford to feed all five of us through this winter - if the deer don't get to it all first.
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Well, not a damned thing. But it does mean that i can't afford to go to the store as much as i should. It's a 30+ mile round trip - over a gallon of gas in my car, nearly two in the truck that's officially a yard ornament because we can't scrape enough together to get the transmission fixed.
It means missed opportunities to go sell stuff, which has been the only thing that has kept our heads above water for the past three years. If i can't afford to run into town for groceries once a week there's no way i'll get across the state and be able to pay site fees and such, then expect to be able to make enough to cover travel expenses AND come home with a little extra.
At this point there is no alternative transportation. Period. There's not even the $3 public transportation that other people are bitching about having to deal with. Walking isn't exactly an option. There's no way to get another, more reliable, less expensive vehicle.
If somebody were actually hiring it might be different, but with the minimum wage increase passing recently for this state, nobody can have that added expense. Not until they jack the prices of everything up to make up for the extra expense of the company in having to pay the extra needed to cover that wage increase. Who knows how long that will take? Even with the price of everything else going up, the RA is on a salary that will not be increased at any time soon. He got one starting this year, which is enough to put us in a higher tax bracket. That means the tax returns we rely on to get us through the year will be less. With the prices of everything else going up, i don't know how we're going to make it.
i just don't know.
