Why is Everything so Damn Expensive?

[VDL_Piper]

Corn is $4.44 a bushel.

The stores are just bursting with food.

The roads are full of shiny cars.

Trains run down the track every few minutes.

Semi tractor trailers are thick.

My question is —-

Isn’t this a good time to actually raise taxes a little and hold down spending a little and balance the national budget?

Should we wait for the next recession?

Or just bitch about the deficit?

You quote corn being sold at $4.44 a bushel, problem is like everything else quoted at that price the farmer is making a loss! See the red circles on cost of production vs yield

 

[olkofri]

 

[georged]

Remember standing in the checkout line at a grocery store in the pre-Internet era and seeing the tabloids (not so much the celebrity gossip ones, but those that were full of UFO abduction stories, sasquatch attacks, miracle diets, and so forth), and thinking "Imagine if the people who live for this stuff were in charge of the world..."

The joke was too frightening to be funny, but since it was literally impossible---a means to accomplish it wasn't even imaginable---it always brought a smile.

Well, thirty years later, here we are. The Tabloid Believers were provided with something called Social Media, and now virtually all societal and cultural direction is controlled by them. Product makers, service suppliers, industry leaders, policy makers, and the educational system dare not ignore, insult, or challenge their beliefs. Doing so can cost you everything. Your business, your job, your social life, your office. It's called "canceling". The 21st century name for the "She's a witch!" dynamic of the Dark and Middle Ages

In short, the ignorant and irrational are now in control of the bright, creative, and industrious people who once led society.

The danger of that upside-down dynamic was addressed in America's early years by only allowing landowners to vote. (Back then, owning land was the strongest indicator that someone was both clever and industrious).

The slide toward allowing irrational people to drive the bus began when the land-owning requirement was removed with a constitutional amendment, and culminated with the invention of total coverage Internet and always-on smartphones.

It was 100% predictable once the technology had been developed, but the danger was disregarded and/or ignored at every level where it might have been stopped by those who profited from it in the short term.

Which is also 100% predictable, because that's how humans are wired.

Short of another Carrington Event, it won't end, either.

Regarding the "Yes, but the pendulum will swing back to sanity eventually" argument, consider that it takes many tens of millions of dollars and thousands of man-years to build a skyscraper, but only a few seconds to destroy it.

And there's no rewind button.

The same is true of virtually all evolved, complex things.

The society we grew up in was the product of many decades of trial-and-error, and incalculable investment of both money and labor. It wasn't perfect, but worked well enough to put a man on the Moon, help defeat the Third Reich, prevail over Stalin and the Soviet Union, and become the preeminent power on Earth while retaining personal freedom for its citizens.

Destroying such a construct---such a machine---is as conceptually simple as dropping a ball bearing into the spark plug hole of a running car's engine. The energy of the destruction doesn't come from outside, but is supplied by the engine itself.

In short, "the pendulum swinging back" doesn't apply to the situation. A realization that you went too far certainly does, and wishing you could fix it as easily as you destroyed it certainly does, but the Second Law of Thermodynamics will only laugh.

 

[Hillcrest]

There is also a certain amount of “piss taking” when a smoking forum has a thread about cost of living. We literally take $$$, put it in a chunk of wood and burn it!
View attachment 280662

Its still cheaper than therapy and has better results !

 

[Hillcrest]

 

[Sobrbiker]

Get them into farming if you can. Even our little goat farm turns a decent profit. Now breaking in is tough since it requires decent capital to get started.


That is the reason I'm a Marxist (not a Stalinist). No sharing personal property, freedom of the press, one Political Party with an elected leader. Regulated wages. It's a federalist democracy unlike the bastardized form of Communism most people know.

Up front I’ll say this, “nothing personal and no offense intended”, but there’s no way I can agree.

Marx was a degenerate that lived off of others while ruminating on how the world would be better if it ran the way he thought it should.
Give one example of Marxism being applied without devolving into a pyramid scheme that destroyed everything that benefited the individuals not at the top.
I’ll wait…
Oh yeah, the threadbare “no one’s done it right yet” theory.

History repeatedly shows human nature (greed, whether for money, control, power, etc) will wreck the most wel intended plans.
You can always vote your way ito communism, but you’ll have to shoot your way out.

 

[Servant King]

Locks are pretty cheap, though. Methinks we are quite close to being treated to a demonstration of this fact...

 

[Sobrbiker]

I

Locks are pretty cheap, though. Methinks we are quite close to being treated to a demonstration of this fact...

I was surprised it was pushing the envelope to the extent it had when I perused along….

 

[brian64]

Fiat currency is the single answer.

I may not agree that it's the single answer, but it's a big one.

 

[brian64]

Are you telling me I don’t deserve to have a 3 million dollar home?
I put ten grand down….

It's musical chairs. You just have to make sure you sell it to a bigger sucker before the music stops.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Well, enough politics and economic theory and views.

It chaps my hide when I see bread in a supermarket priced at eight bucks. OK, $7.99. Over and out.