This article from the Daily Mail:
The article covered price increases in various goods and services, all of which I have covered before.
Only sentence in the article that needs to be highlighted.
Overall inflation hit 5.4% on the year last month, matching a 13-year high, if that rate persists, the value of a dollar would be cut in half in 13.3 years
That’s the critical point right there.
Remember a few days ago Miguel published the post “Men who wanted to be left Alone.”
I’m going to repost the whole thing because of just how salient it is:
The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of “Men who wanted to be left Alone”. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love.
They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over.
The moment the “Men who wanted to be left Alone” are forced to fight back, it is a form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be. Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these “Men who wanted to be left Alone” will fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives.
They fight with raw hate and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror. TRUE TERROR will arrive at these peoples’ doors, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy… but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the “Men who wanted to be left Alone”.
Allow me to get completely real with you.
I have three degrees and a technical certificate across three different fields of engineering. I have a job that I really like. I make $130,000 per year.
My wife has a bachelor’s and master’s degree. Her salary is commensurate with her level of education, about $70,000 per year.
Our household income is just north of $200,000, not including bonuses.
I enjoy a decent, upper middle-class professional quality of life. Of course I have to watch my budget and not do anything stupid, but I’m not hurting. I have a nice house in the suburbs, a pickup truck, a used sports car, and a minivan for the wife to haul the kids around. With a little bit of self control, I can occasionally buy a new gun or other toy when I want one. I can take the family out to a restaurant every once in a while.
That is what keeps me in line.
I enjoy my middle-class life in the suburbs with my kids and I’m not going to risk losing that.
But what happens is that is taken away from me.
When I got my first job, my salary was $85,000 and my wife was doing $35,000. Combined income of $120,000. We didn’t have kids and lived in a 1,500 sq-ft condo. I was driving a 10-year old truck that had seen several salt covered winters past better days.
Take my current household income and cut in in half with inflation.
The purchasing power of my money will be worth less than my income when I first got out of school a decade ago.
Everything I worked for and built up, everything my wife worked for and built up, over the course of our adult lives wiped out and we’re sent back to square-one fresh out of school again. Not because of something we did but because the powers that be did it to us.
Make a family like mine have to turn down the heat to 60 degrees in the winter so I don’t have a utility bill that’s half as much as my mortgage payment.
Make me have to choose between new shoes for my kids or red meat in my spaghetti sauce because I can’t budget both in the same pay period.
Make taking my family to a sit-down chain restaurant for burgers and chicken strips a birthdays and anniversary type special occasion.
Take away the upper middle-class quality of life that I worked so hard for, the thing that keeps me in line, and see what happens.
I cannot be the only guy who feels this way.
That is exactly the direction this nation is going and right now the clock is set at 13.3 years.
Unfortunately, I don’t see the rate of inflation slowing down, or even leveling off. In fact, I see it speeding up as our government responds to every problem by making them worse. That 13.3 years may come sooner.
Utterly destroy the middle-class lives of Middle American professionals by cutting the value of their middle-class salaries in half.
Take away a lifetime of hard work and a achievement in their careers and see how many of them remain peaceful.
You are not the only one who thinks this way
I started to feel this way with the Clinton gun ban. It got worse under Obama. I have now concluded that a shooting civil war is inevitable. I vacillate between wanting it to happen during my lifetime and hoping it is after I am gone. The thing is, I am a much better shot than my kids, and a lot meaner.
The feeling is mutual. Thing is 5 days a week I step into a building stocked with gallon sized bottles of nitric acid and all the precursor chemicals to make a variety of organophosphorus compounds. If I could, I wish I grab one of these fed assholes and yell, “Stop stealing from me. Leave me alone. You do not want me as an enemy.”
I presume everyone here is familiar with the rule of 72? Divide 72 by the rate of inflation in percent, and that’s the time to double prices in years. 72 / 5.4 = 13.3 years.
But … the core inflation excludes energy and food. You know, the stuff we actually use a lot of, and buy frequently, in everyday life. Gas prices just went up again. Let’s call the inflation rate for auto fuel 50%, based on the past couple of years. 72 / 50 = 1.4 years.
High-quality protein (steak, chicken) is running around 20%, let’s say. So 3.6 years.
Ever wonder why the official inflation numbers (“core” inflation) exclude food and energy? Volatility is the excuse, but there’s this thing called “averaging.” No, it’s so the headline numbers don’t look as bad.
And ever wonder why the Fed’s target inflation rate is 2% instead of, oh, I don’t know, zero? Well, 72 / 2 = 36, half a lifetime … a long enough span over which one might guess most people wouldn’t notice inflation’s corrosion.
Okay, rant off … sorry. Been looking at what my bank account’s interest rate is. Negative 5% in real terms. Thanks Big Joe!
I was wondering when someone was going to bring up the “official” rate…
I don’t want to piss on your parade and call it rain, but the number that they cite for inflation is horribly under the real number. They base a lot of COLA adjustments to Fed.gov programs on the official numbers, so they lie. They’re the government, after all. Lying is what they do.
Most people say that to get a reasonably accurate number, multiply the official estimate by 3.5. That says we’re running about 18.9%, dropping the time to double to 18.9 years. Shadowstats has charts that use the original algorithm (1980s) or the revised one from 1990. Those numbers look to be 13% and 9% respectively and the time to double to 5.5 and 8 years resp..
Ah … Think you slipped a decimal or digit re the first number … 20% inflation doubles a price in 3.6 years, not 19.
But yes, they lie, and it’s probably even uglier if we look at the second derivative.
It appears “our Betters” have, in addition, not contemplated folks like you and me (40 + years in health care, a dozen as a mid-level) simply cheering, paraphrased, “Let’s go, Brandon!”, and dropping out: “going Galt”.
Southwest airline can tell you how that worked out. Oregon hospitals can tell you how that worked out (think “nurse shortage”, writ LARGE!)
Popcorn futures appear to be rising.
13.3 years? I give it four years, max.
Umm, how about “you killed my wife and crippled my daughter with a “vaccine” you said was safe and effective.” That happens and the smoke will darken the sky.
n
(and I don’t need to hear from anyone about taking the shot. or how stupid my loved ones are. 70 something percent of the population is at risk from the ‘jabs’ and they aren’t all stupid mouthbreathers who can be discounted because of their choices.)
My first job was in 1969. Big Mac cost 49 cents. Pack of cigarettes was 30 cents. My salary was 1.60 an hour.
There is no earthly reason why that had to change, except inflation is Government policy.
Well.
It just got worser and worser.
I am actually glad I’m nearly 70 years old.
I pity my offspring who will have to deal with our bleak future.
☹
Inflation isn’t always just government policy. Sometimes it’s a side-effect of citizenship malpractice.
My first job was in 1998. Minimum wage was $6/hour in my state (something like $4.35 federal, IIRC). A gallon of gas at the station down the street costed $0.79.
The first year I voted, there was a ballot measure to raise the minimum wage, which passed handily.
I voted no. My peers thought I was crazy.
I explained to all of them, before and after the election, when minimum wage increases, costs increase equally or greater, and then prices increase to match the costs. Our minimum-wage buying power won’t go up one bit, and we may even lose some. Those of us who earned modest raises and were just above minimum would be hurt the most as the minimum overtakes any gains we worked for.
They didn’t believe me … until that’s exactly what happened. But they must have forgotten my prediction because when another minimum wage increase hit the initiative petition process a few years later, they all voted in favor again.
Some people just can’t — or won’t — see past the promise of more dollars in their pocket, and an uninformed, misinformed, or willfully ignorant electorate can be just as dangerous as any authoritarian or tyrant in government.
And now they’re saying the J&J is only 3% effective.
Three.
Originally they said 88%
Whoops!
Whoopsie!
I’m66 and too crippled up from the ravages of exposure to pesticides, heavy metals,industrial chemicals, an allergic reaction to the contrast agent in an MRI,four good bike wrecks and poor life choices to go engage. BUT, I’m definitely in the Guys who just wanted to be left alone group. I’m pretty sure I won’t last long enough to reload,but I’ve watched them destroy the education system and harvest the fruits of OUR labor through the fedrull reserve. I’ve been wondering how much longer things could go along with the people accepting things, knowing how the signers of our founding documents would have been stacking bodies already..
But, as has been pointed out, and understood in the core of That guy’s understanding, once That step is taken, the normal of the past is gone, so we,the Normies, have gritted our teeth and kept straining into the harness ,plodding along.
Having the younger generations spit on the Boomers chaps myazz. They don’t know how we tried. They don’t know that while we opposed NAFTA our electeds actually acknowledged they Knew it was unpopular. I watched some asshole on TV straight up admit they knew it was unpopular, but they were passing it Anyway and the smarmy piece of crap had the audacity to say
And you’ll thank us for it later. I wish I could remember his name and find moment.
NAFTA forced our products into their economy and bankrupted farmers in Mexico. Gee, wonder where they and the people who worked on their farms went?
None of what is and has been happening is accidental. Every trade agreement has screwed America. If it’s all just clumsy fools stumbling through, wouldn’t they do something once in a while that doesn’t Screw US?
Every important decision gets made in the worst way.
At some point, stupidity stops being cover for sabotage.
Maybe we won’t have to worry about the corruption and the tyranny of those who would take our freedom to protect us from ourselves.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/china-tests-new-hypersonic-nuclear-capable-missile-circled-entire-globe-low-orbit-us-military-officials-stunned/
The power hungry who have worked for our destruction to put themselves on top might not be the immediate problem.
Amen, brother. Right there with you.
My annual is just north of $80k. The missus stays home with our five kids (after three, her income didn’t cover daycare anymore — childcare is horrendously spendy here). We have a nice middle-class home in a decent neighborhood and one van to haul everyone around.
We did Dave Ramsey to pay off debt a while back, and though we do have to be mindful with our spending, we haven’t been in the red for several years. About 10-15% of the take-home pay is “surplus” that we bank for emergencies and vacations, or to occasionally splurge.
But these rising prices have us deeply worried. Some of our monthly bills are already blowing well past what we budget for them. Food and fuel in particular, but everything that’s not a relatively-fixed cost is going up fast — faster than my pay increases and COLAs (which is just a bit more than the Fed’s target inflation rate). The past couple months, that “surplus” still exists on paper, but in practice has mostly gone to cover the higher bills.
Cut the buying power of my income and set our quality of life back to when we were rolling in month-over-month debt just to survive — debt that, again, we worked our @$$es off to get out from under — and I will be pretty pissed off, to say the least.
Do it to millions more of us, and I’m not sure what will happen.
Found someone in my income range so I’ll stop here. We’re running out of things to lose. And when you have nothing to lose, that changes the equation. I sure wish I had known of Mr. Ramsey’s stuff sooner though. (The other reason I stopped.)
Channel this anger into something you can change, you can control, and you can watch over. Make your local government better. School board, mayor, sheriff, county officials, and state reps.
Will it work? Hopefully. It will also either secure your rear areas, or let you know where the dangers are. Because our own biggest dangers are less than 100 miles from us. It will not be a thousand people in Washington DC. It will be the people around us that mindlessly, obediently carry out their orders.
“T Minus 13 Years”
That sounds like unrestrained and over-exuberant optimism. My money’s on 13 weeks and even that seems pretty optimistic.
I’ve been thinking along those lines too. I’ve worked my entire life. Worked hard, too. Have a technical degree in engineering. Nice salary (finally, after 30 years in the industry). The wife and I have sacrificed out entire lives to get to this point where we can have a nice retirement maybe 5 years or so down the road. Driving old cars, staying home for vacation, shopping second-hand, etc. We are doing good now, finally got ahead of debt. Heck, 5 years back I even splurged and bought her a nice $50,000 luxury car. I did that because I knew we’d get 10+ years of service out of it, but still was a big step up from the base model Toyota Camry she drove for 12 years or so. Nice vacations, a bit of travel, living a good life.
Two days ago I went grocery shopping. And for the 6 figure salary I make, I can’t even afford to eat steak, apparently. Groceries have gone up well over 20%, with some foods (steaks, etc.) going much much higher than that.
And retirement? That is starting to look like a foolish dream. We are quickly going back to being house rich and cash poor. And in this market, selling my house and downsizing won’t even result in a nest egg. Unbelievably.
So, yeah, when we finally decide that our lives that we carefully built up over decades is over, that’s when the black flag flies.
Funny innit? THEY say, we will educate your children so they will be prepared to go into the world and succeed. Yet they don’t teach so much as balancing a checkbook, but there is plenty of time for teaching putting a condom on a banana. As much as the economy and the dollar are important to success, they teach nothing about either. Howbout That?
Henry Ford was alive when the fedrull reserve was birthed ,through some serious snakey moves. Everyone needs to know the way that was done. You can learn about it watching videos by G.Edward Griffin or reading
The Creature from Jekyll Island
A long, inexpensive and, for me, as engrossing as a Sherlock Holmes book.
Quotes › Authors › H › Henry Ford › It is well enough that people…
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
I tried to read Keynes book. It went in the trash about half way through the third chapter. That corrupt government people would embrace it is no shock.
Of course minimum wage is a bad idea. Allowing people to accept low wages and Have a job is better than nothing.
Corporate taxes? They shouldn’t be paying taxes. Actually they aren’t. The consumers are the ones paying the taxes, all of the overhead.
I might be okay with taxes on exports, but I haven’t found anyone to really have a good conversation with about that to explore how that would work.
But yeah, on the surface, minimum wage Looks like something good, but it’s not.
I feel ya. Once there is no longer any point in staying employed to pay my mortgage and provide for my family, well you probably know what. Beyond disaffected barely scratches the surface.
Inflation is why debt is an asset.