The Alternative Is … What?
In spite of the cost of living, it’s still popular. — Laurence J. Peter
[Yes, that's the Peter Principle dude.]
This one has been dozing for a while in my drafts bin, but with the recent spiraling cost of gasoline, food, and almost everything else we buy, it seems an appropriate time to drag it out, dust it off, and throw it against the wall. Like most folks I know and associate with, we’re starting to really feel it. And it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
Brace yourselves, friends. We’re in for some very tough times ahead. Some of us won’t survive it, and that is a very sobering thought.
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Being very familar with the Peter Principle, this is not one.
BUT: you are correct that we are in for some very rough times. I don’t think it has really sunk in how the price of fuel can kill an economy.
We are one minor skirmish/issue/power play away from $5 a gallon, then what?
I have been really despondent all week about this very thing. Not that I haven’t been mightily displeased for a long time, just that I really, seriously felt more than a pinch when I filled the tank of my VW on Monday. The bill was $59.35. What I felt was more like a flesh wound.
I have always tried to conserve gas for ecological reasons by not driving too fast, making sure to combine trips, etc. But this summer’s gas prices have me staying closer to home for financial reasons as well. We’re limiting our day trips. Where once we might have taken a ride to Vermont to a craft fair or outdoor concert, we are planning ahead NOT to do those things. We’re instead going to do things that are available closer to home.
And I won’t get into the politics of it all because we’re all aware of how and why we’ve come to this place. But this situation begs the question: how is our nation going to get out of this mess? That four more years of McCain will totally do us in, is something I am not prepared to handle the thought of.
I cannot remember feeling more nervous with anticipation over any election in my lifetime…
More people that I know are in more trouble than they are used to or care to admit freely. As the cost of everyday necessities takes a larger chunk for our budgets, I think we’re going to find out what really is important and what’s become assumed necessities. (Says the woman who will probably be using the library’s wifi a lot more in the future).
This is the first time in my life that I’ve felt scared.
Peter Principle??? “”In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.” Know of a number of so-called “leader’s” to whom this principle could be applied, but the rising price of gas, in and of itself???
Whatever…it’s really going to be messy for people if we go to the prices they’ve been paying in Europe for a lot of years — $8 per gallon — we ain’t seen nothing yet!