Current economic woes

[thecreeper]

i noticed just prices of food in general are awful. i usually go to the grocery store once a month and buy most stuff at once and its been near 150+ bucks, and sure its a decent amount of stuff, but my god, i swear this cost half this price a year or so ago...

[Mr Biglesworth]

I bike or walk everywhere so gas prices don't affect me there. I recently payed into a community supported farm where I get a weekly share of their produce. You pay at the beginning of the summer and I understand it's a good amount of food, so I should be getting the majority of my groceries from there (gonna have to learn how to cook some different veggies). They use draft horses, not tractors, so they're not affected by fuel prices either.

[raditz]

if those tree huggin assholes would let us drill our own oil it wouldn't be so bad, and at least we wouldn't be supporting some shit country while ours is going down the tube

[Mr Biglesworth]

RADITZ '08: ASSHOLES BACK TO SHIT COUNTRY!

[johnny]

Originally Posted by raditz

if those tree huggin assholes would let us drill our own oil it wouldn't be so bad, and at least we wouldn't be supporting some shit country while ours is going down the tube

actually i think your country is the shit country now! sucks for you

[GT2000]

Yeah, but we're going to take everyone else down with us.. so sucks to be you! I've been saying, we need to start drilling in Alaska, fuck the national wildlife refuge, or whatever it is (besides, if we can drill oil from the bottom of the ocean without tooo many bad occurrences, I think we can drill through some ice).

[johnny]

Originally Posted by Donnie

Yeah, but we're going to take everyone else down with us.. so sucks to be you! I've been saying, we need to start drilling in Alaska, fuck the national wildlife refuge, or whatever it is (besides, if we can drill oil from the bottom of the ocean without tooo many bad occurrences, I think we can drill through some ice).

how about fuck drilling for oil in a national wildlife refuge, and find ways to be less dependent on nonrenewable resources? as raub has mentioned, there has been ample opportunity over the past few decades for major advancements and innovations -- better late than never, right? drilling for oil in alaska is nothing more than a band-aid solution. how long will it be good for? how many more years before there's more discussion of economic woes, oil/gasoline shortages, etc? and when that happens, what can you do? not a fucking lot!

(not that canadians are any better off. i'm just sayin'..)

[GT2000]

I'm pretty sure we won't see huge gains in Americans using "greener" technology until there is some sort of government enforcement, as dumb as it sounds, but you know most Americans aren't going to do that shit on their own. As a nation in whole, we hate change. Not to mention at the rate of the technology coming along, it's going to be a while before we see any big changes. The state power company here is in a project with other companies building wind farms in the mid-west to send power this way over the grid, ok, that helps a little. Not everyone wants to get hybrids, because they aren't saving that much on gas, and since they cost a couple/few grand, sometimes 5 grand plus more, that's something to stop a lot of people. Electric hybrids? I don't know too much about them since we don't have many around, not a fan of plugging in a car though, and I'm sure they still use a good bit of energy anyways, I don't know though on this one.

Here's a real hybrid for all you fuckers.

http://gas2.org/2008/05/14/a-truck-t...-with-garbage/

[Mike]

Originally Posted by Mr Biglesworth

They use draft horses, not tractors, so they're not affected by fuel prices either.

Somewhat. Not to get overly economic and political, but we.. well.. congress.. has created an enhanced artificial relationship between the cost of fuel and the cost of food, by subsidizing crops used to generate bio-fuel... A political goldmine, but at an economic, humanitarian, and environmental cost. The spike in food prices in mid 2007 was the result of this, and as fuel prices increase -- which they have since levelled off in the last 45 days -- the price of agricultural and food increased, which drives up the cost of feed. It was a bipartisan political manuever so that this congress could see a menial bump in approval ratings... it did not, and the unfortunate consequence is a semi-permanent link between energy and food where there wasn't as much of one before.

--

As for the economic woes... my 403(b) has tanked. I used to look forward to getting my free-money report in the mail from TIAA-CREF and now it's just the bearer of bad news. I conserve gas pretty well as it is and ride my bike almost anywhere that I *can.* I work a mile from home so I really only fill up once a month, if that. My old house was closer to more stuff... food, supermarket, etc, but my new place is closer to work... so it's a give and take.

Other than that, not much has changed in terms of my spending because of the economy. Dating costs too much money, but other than that... things are how they are.