Economic Evidence from Main Street

Gas AND bacon? It's TEOTWAWKI!!!

I just re-read my earlier post about Colorado. Here's an update: Unemployment has caught up with the national average, rising a few tenths each of the last three months. Salvation Army bell ringers have taken in millions less than in past years. With one day to go collecting, they say they'll be cutting programs across the board.

Like VisuTrac, I'm finding it difficult to sell off stuff I'm sick of storing. I've had a nice brand new wood stove advertised at dealer cost for two weeks now, with no taker. (Two trade offers for other stuff I'd have to store...) That would have been gone for cash in a few hours any other year.

Retailers are doing OK on volume, but margins suck. Of course, all the news reports is gross sales, so no one's the wiser. My contact at the farm store tells me that there are some good size price increases coming early next year. A bag of chicken scratch is already up 25% since last summer.

I got to know some Mormons pretty well when I doubled my food storage three years ago. The dry pack cannery has been very slow for months, which means few people are preparing. Any evening when no one shows up right away they now lock up and go home. (Less than 10% of all Mormons have a year's supply, so they should be swamped...) However, the Bishop's Storehouse in the same building is flat out slammed - that's the charitable part of the operation that gives needy people food, whether they're church members or not. They've never given out so much.

Along the route I take into Denver, we were stunned to see a foundation being poured just a couple of weeks ago. My girlfriend joked that we should take a picture so people would believe us.

The State has over a billion of budget shortfall looming in the next fiscal year, and the only thing on the table at this time is the people's wallets. You see, they did spending cuts last year, so they feel no need to sacrifice anything but us this time around. So, no talk whatsoever of spending cuts at this time.

I know a state rep who started out fairly conservative but has been swallowed up by the system over time. I called him up and told him that it's later than he thinks - that they don't have until the next election to fix things. I pointed out that with our population they'll be taking an extra $800 from every family of four if they don't cut spending, and that we'd be shooting them long before the next election if they thought they could take another billion from us in this contracting economic climate. He was incredulous that I would talk to him that way - I told him no, I just want him to worry about what people AREN'T telling him, and that there's no need to be filling sandbags as long as I was still calling!

 

Maybe not TEOTWAWKI but that's 15 to 20 percent increase and my wages aren't going up. I'm going to guess that a lot of us won't be able afford that type of increase in cost and will be going without.

I too heard about the red kettles being way down this year. I usually drop 250 in cash donations to the local food pantry per year, as they can buy more with the money than i can. But this year i gave nothing as i can not afford to.

I hope your rep hasn't put you on a watch list as that would really suck!

 

I have the same insurance situation you have but costs a little more. Where I live we do a lot of activities that can cause serious injuries and don't have the money to pay the deductable if it happens. We cut our own firewood as our main source of heat and last year I twisted my knee bad enough that I dropped to the ground in pain and had to have the wife help me get back to the truck to get home. I used up all of my stored heavy duty pain killers to try and get over it before going to a medical clinic (cheap) to see what happened. They wanted me to go in for surgery that would have cost me thousands to fix. Needless to say I didn't go in and after a few months my knee felt alright, although I know that anytime I twist it the same way I would be screwed again and it might not get better. It really pisses me off that since I have enough income to get by and own property that I can have everything taken from me to pay for medical bills and someone that does not have S gets their medical for free and is not even required to pay it back if or when they get their S together.
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