When's the breaking point?

[Blue_Runner]

Amen. I drive a piece of crap back and forth to work. The oldest daughter is driving and heading off to college in 1 year. My youngest daughter will be driving next year. I don't know how in the world we are gonna make it through the next couple years. Things have gotten ridiculous.

[smokeonthewater]

They say that if you drop a frog in boiling water it will jump out but if you put it in cool water and gradually heat it up it will sit there and cook to death...... They are heating our water folks!

[spareparts]

Seattle just passed raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, you just can't fix stupid and stoned. I still cant believe what some of you guys in the North East pay in property taxes, ya'll ever though about using tar and feathers on some of your elected officials? Its happening down here now as the influx of transplants that think its OK to have high property taxes are outnumbering those who realize it total BS. Its going to hell in a hand basket, quick. I was going to keep rambling on, but I'll put it in the political thread instead

[charlie_the_tuna]

the two counties in the country with highest taxes are Nassau and Suffolk counties. I live in Nassau county. at the end of the week I don't have a spare dime to put aside. I cant wait to get the hell out of here. sell my house, buy a little condo and do the whole snowbird thing.

[THEFERMANATOR]

Originally Posted by smokeonthewater

They say that if you drop a frog in boiling water it will jump out but if you put it in cool water and gradually heat it up it will sit there and cook to death...... They are heating our water folks!

It seems like every month the prices go up 10%. People who buy the stuff all the time don't notice it so much, but when you go a few months without buying something it's quite the shock. And it's everything it seems like. When I was outfitting my jon boat I couldn't believe how much some of this stuff has gone up. Moeller 6.6 gallon fuel tanks are a bargain at $75, yet I used to buy them 8-10 years ago for $25 for the same exact tank(has plastic gone up that much?). 5/16" EVINRUDE fuel line assemblies are now $60 for the cheapest one I could find, last one I bought 10 years ago was $25 full retail at a dealer. And so on and so on.

Or go to the grocery store, why does a bag of chips need to cost over $4? 10 years ago they would have been $1.29. Or milk is over $4 a gallon when just a few years ago it was $2.

They used to tell us prices were going up because the economy was going down. Now they say prices are going up because the economy is good. So which is it?

With my wife being a teacher and me being gimped up, our income isn't that great. But we don't have many bills, and everything we have is paid for. Yet we live paycheck to paycheck most of the time. Why should you have to make $75K+ just to live a decent life. 20 years ago you could live a nice life(better than many) on $25K, but with the out of control taxes, fees, and living expenses you have to make triple just to try and live something of a life instead of being to "LIVE" life. It scares me to think of what it will be like for my son by the time he is grown up.

[phatdaddy]

no more middle class, we've become a nation of have's and have not's.

[RidgeRunner]

Yep, and the way of old where one neighbor helps another is a thing of the past. Too many looking to the gubermint to solve their woes. I need more property so I can have a garden like Sir Stink.. I don't see it ever being a collapse.
BTW- at $15.00/hour I volunteer for the "stupid and stoned" gig.
It used to only pay $5.00/hr to be stupid and stoned.
Let's face it if you living in NYC in a 480 sq foot flat, your paying about $3k a month in rent. If your knocking down $15/hr your gonna come up a little short.. On the other hand.. if your living in Tampa, FL Your starting pay at $15/ hr. you are middle of the road in pay.

[RidgeRunner]

I been honking about double digit inflation forever. Printing the money we owe to China isn't sound fiscal policy, evidently.

[THEFERMANATOR]

When I was in high school $5 an hour was decent money.I worked for a lawn service for $6Hr, and were not talking a cushy one where you got to ride a zero turn, I got to walk my A$$ off behind a friggen walk behind and was expected to mow a lot in a trailer park in under 4 minutes. I was happy to do it then and thought it was good money. Now they want $10Hr to flip burgers(which was $3.45 an hour when I was in high school). My first job out of high school was in a dealership as a mechanic, and I started at $12HR, and had to supply all of my own tools, pay for my uniforms, and pay for my own training and certification tests(we got reimbursed if we passed our certs). Now they are talking about burger flippers who don't even have to have a high school education getting paid more than that.

I just don't see how we can keep going like this and our economy not collapse. It's scary to think about, but at our current rate it just seems ineviteable.

[Destroyer]

Originally Posted by THEFERMANATOR

It seems like every month the prices go up 10%. People who buy the stuff all the time don't notice it so much, but when you go a few months without buying something it's quite the shock. And it's everything it seems like. When I was outfitting my jon boat I couldn't believe how much some of this stuff has gone up. Moeller 6.6 gallon fuel tanks are a bargain at $75, yet I used to buy them 8-10 years ago for $25 for the same exact tank(has plastic gone up that much?). 5/16" EVINRUDE fuel line assemblies are now $60 for the cheapest one I could find, last one I bought 10 years ago was $25 full retail at a dealer.

Well, you can thank the EPA and greedy people for those prices. The plastic in the fuel tanks needs to be Ethanol fuel resistant, plus the EPA made it a law that all new fuel tanks have to have the positive vent valve installed for emissions reasons. As to the fuel hose, again, it's because of the Ethanol fuel. Plain old rubber hoses gum up, so the new hoses actually are 2 hoses, one within the other, to resist the Ethanol. The greedy people are the Politicians, Farmers (yes, FARMERS too), manufacturers, retailers, truckers, and anyone else that's in the supply side that sees a way to make a few extra bucks on something "new". (And don't get on my back about farmers having to grow the corn because of regulations. Every single farmer group, co-op, etc lobbied for the Ethanol cause they saw it as a way to sell more corn. The results have been catastrophic on our economy.

Oh, and if you guys think that the present prices are high, hang onto your jock straps, because you ain't seen nothing yet. The EPA, in conjunction with the a$$hole in charge of the White House (who makes tons of money and has already taken more vacations (that YOU paid for) than ANY other president in our history, just passed a law that mandates that all PRESENT (not new plants..present ones) fossil fuel (coal, gas and oil) fired electric generation facilities MUST reduce their emissions by 1/3.

I was listening to the liar in chiefs stooge Jay Carney last night on the daily white house press briefings and he stood there and bold faced lied to the American public and said that their studies showed that the reduction would actually lower costs. If you think that making the electric companies spend BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars will reduce costs, then I have this bridge in Brooklyn, NY that I'm trying to sell,... perhaps you'd be interested in it?

What will happen as a result is quite predictable: Greatly increased rates for electric power, decreased availability of the electric power so vital to our way of life, decreased reliability of the electric grid, a lower standard of living, decreased competitiveness of US products in world markets since most countries do not have such regulations, and Communist-style central control of the electric generating industry by a Washington-based bureaucracy with no understanding of the industry.

You are going to see costs SKYROCKET shortly guys. There were a bunch of ignorant people in this country that voted for this guy for a second term, (even though he had a dismal record at best during his first term), because they thought that he "meant well and was trying"... Pardon me, I think I'm going to go vomit......