Recently overheard in the CVS checkout line:
Old Hag (picking up one of the crossword puzzle books sold next to the tabloids): These cost THREE dollars now? They used to cost a buck! I have an old one in my purse, I used to love these, but I’m not paying three dollars for this!
Teenage Chick Cashier: Yeah, everything is getting more expensive these days.
Old Hag (walking out of the store): They’re ripping people off. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this. The government should do something!
Who was it that said that people who don’t understand basic economics (like the concept of inflation) should be barred from voting? He was right.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Man, this website used to cost, like, a tenth of a penny per post. Now it’s a whole third of a penny per post. Screw that, I’m heading where I can get more reading for my buck! (Throws on his hat and heads angrily toward Geocities)
Too funny! In a way.
But MBA’s trained morons on monetary issues. They will tell you how wonderful inflation is, and how we desperately need a corrupt central bank emitting phony money, and how a market choosing gold and silver and other precious metals as currency will cause all of us to eat out of a garbage can in no time flat.
I’m seeing 10% or more price increases over the last year to 2 years on items used for work.
Truly scary! Maybe Obama could do something. :LOL:
I just wrote about this and the “unexpected” scam the 1st time homebuyer’s tax credit turned out to be
This incident is obviously fabricated.
No teenager would be that cordial with an elderly woman in today’s economy.
[You'd be surprised how compliant the young'uns get when there's money on the line. - ed.]
Besides, I thought the replacement of English-speaking teenage cashiers with robots and refugees was complete.
[Not in Albany!]
financial concepts simply turn people off.
at the same time, the old lady has a great convo starter.
The woman is perfectly right, though her phrasing (a generic “do something”) makes her sound ignorant or government-dependent.
The government *should* do something: one of their jobs should be to maintain the value of the currency they issue. They broke this promise decades ago and have spent that interval inuring the public to a slow, steady inflation that is anything but in the public interest.
Should Barack Obama knock on the door of that publisher and demand that they lower the price of their puzzle books back to $1.00? Probably not. But should the government proactively take steps to ensure that $1.00 continues to buy what $1.00 has always bought, leaving supply and demand as the only source of price fluctuations? They most certainly should.
When the Goverment does something and they utter the phrase “fair prices”, know that you are knee-deep on Marxist shit.
steady inflation that is anything but in the public interest
Really? I’d kill for some raging inflation right now along with increasing wage spiral to shrink the size of my fixed rate mortgage and inflate the value of my house. I’d rather have recoup fake inflated dollars than lose real dollars by selling.
The old woman was obviously a democrat
Kyo is exactly correct. The U.S. Federal Reserve was established, in part, to maintain the value of the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar of 2010 is worth approximately 3¢ in 1913 U.S. dollars.
When capitalism is allowed to work, prices steadily decline as automation and improved techniques reduce the cost of production. But when the currency is steadily debased, prices rise regardless of efficiencies. Bastards.
inflation doesn’t matter. price inflation relative to wage inflation does. and there we’re getting royally fucked in the ass.
There is an up side to this: These same little old ladies who are pissed at the higher prices are may also be ignorant at current apartment rental fees: this comes in handy when they have a nice apartment on the second floor of their house: the rent starts low and may very well stay low if you don’t make trouble.
Half of all Americans have below average intelligence. /witticism
“Old Hag (walking out of the store): They’re ripping people off. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this. The government should do something!”
I agree the government should do something. Abolishing the Federal Reserve and its fiat currency and instituting a currency backed by precious metals would be a start.
Quote:
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I agree the government should do something. Abolishing the Federal Reserve and its fiat currency and instituting a currency backed by precious metals would be a start.
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You’re oversimplifying. It’s not a black/white issue of gold=good, fiat=bad. For a large part, it’s the management of the currency that’s the issue, not the medium. Fiat currency could be the best bet if the propagation of the currency were not based on an exponential growth model of x^(1+interest). Currency does need to fluctuate in conjunction with changes in the overall economy. Yet the way the current system is set up, it can only grow or default. Removing the debt-based creation method of fiat currency would be a better and more realistic solution than reverting to precious metals.
More:
http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/chapter-37-goldbugs-and-greenbackers-debate/
When will you people just grow up and realise that we need the government to save us?
Murray Rothbard says it best in What Has Government Done To Our Money.
But yes. Living among retards is hard work. Unfortunately they are no less retarded within the investment management community, where I used to work.
The old hag has it right. You people in America need to chill out, and learn to appreciate the virtues of a nanny state. Here in Australia, seatbelt laws impose minimum penalties of hundreds of dollars, and together with our strict speed limits tailored to every road condition, traffic on our roads is kept safe and slow. Unlike the uncertainties of your democracy, compulsory voting in Australia imposes a compulsory democracy that is easily regulated. We have laws for everything, and our gubmints are all-seeing, all-hearing and control everything. Our people are civilized, well-behaved and obedient, and yet we are a fun people who know how to have a good time. Australia is showing the world that YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL – You CAN have a dictatorship that is nice to its people, a dictatorship that cares about civilian safety by targeting nasty groups, like bikers, before they’d even committed a crime! We have efficient law enforcement, because our gubmint encourages us to dobb in law-breakers for everything from illegal lawn-sprinkler usage to illegal parking. Eyes are everywhere. Every citizen accepts their duty to report wrong-doing. Ok, it’s true that we still have lots of crime, but our leaders have promised to fix that. You Americans secretly want to be like us, because you’ve been copying our laws for decades… like our seatbelt and helmet laws. We have gun laws, and now that we have hate crimes legislation, you guys want to copy that, too. So it’s coming. Stop fighting it. It’s all for your own good. You’ll see. You can become just like us – fun-loving and relexed, and with your individualism regulated out of you, you will become easier to regulate and control. And you know what the best thing is? You will LIKE it! You will become fun-loving and relaxed. You will still still be allowed to have your spontaneous punch-ups in pubs and your street brawls – law enforcement knows not to interfere in cultural events, and indeed, they sometimes even participate – would you really want to deny our hard-working law enforcement a bit of recreation? You will wonder how you got along without it for all these years. So shutup and quit yer bitchin’. The nanny state is all for your own good. It’s coming. You WILL like it. You’ll see. Take a chill-pill. Relax.
Have a nice day.
Australia recently had an election. The day after I was talking to a friend in a cafe (artsy type guy) who told me he voted he for the Greens (left wing socialist morons). He then told me he didn’t even understand how the electoral system works. He also doesn’t understand economics.
Which brings me to a general law I’ve noticed:
The less a person understands economics the further left they vote.
A society ends 100 years after women get the right to vote.
100 years.
For the first 50 years, letting women vote increases prosperity, as most women are married with a large number of children. They vote for what makes families stable.
But after prosperity rises for 50 years, some women take their prosperity for granted and get the bright idea of tweaking the laws to become more female friendly, and strip men of rights.
Still the past momentum of success masks these changes for a while. Yet another generation of women passes on.
But by the 90th year, the newest generation of women have devolved considerably, and have lost the extensive cultural conditioning of women that made civilization possible (this removal of conditioning is known as feminism). Vote-seeking politicians ensure that more and more of the government is specifically devoted to transfer money and power from men to women. The absurd is considered normal.
And by the 100th year, there is catastrophic breakage in the system (where women are the biggest losers).
Women got the right to vote in the US in 1919.
The 50th year was 1969
The 90th year was 2009
The 100th year will be 2019…..
Sound familiar??
“Half of all Americans have below average intelligence. /witticism”
That was true twenty years ago, but it’s closer to two-thirds nowadays.
The U.S. dollar of 2010 is worth approximately 3¢ in 1913 U.S. dollars.
That is absurd. you can’t buy anything in 1913 with a dollar from 2010 so it is a meaningless comparison. Inflation is measured year to year. Anything longer than that gets too complicated to be useful.
Nor is the price of a book of crossword puzzles strictly ruled by inflation. More accurately, it is rules by supply and demand. The book maker sells the product for $3 because he knows he can get $3. It will only be worth $3 to the customer no matter how much it costs to produce or the value of inflation. If the customer will not pay what it cost to produce, the company goes under.
That’s the sort of daily inanity that has driven me to my state of semi-hermitage. The conversation and “thought” process involved are quite typical, actually. That exchange was like Ping Pong for Idiots.