Silent Brouhaha

Listening to the latest noise on the economy we still hear that wages are not keeping up with inflation. I'm not surprised at all to hear this news. I mean with the highest oil prices in nearly 30 years things would become expensive.

However another view of the world I have maintained is that we Americans are expensive. We flaunt our money and compete with each other's ego and drive our own prices up. Million dollar houses that may have cost 200,000 to build and the people that finance them for 30 years even at the lowest rates possible they end up paying more than 2.5 million back to the banks. Yes that's on the expensive side but without hefty down payments nearly all houses will pay back more than double the price the owner purchased it for.

Why is it that high? We'll for one the one thing you rarely see in america anywhere is bargaining power. I cant go into a store anywhere and say these levi's cost too much at 30 dollars a pair but I would pay say 25 dollars. You pay for what the price says or wait for discounts and sales and that's the end of the story. Economists will say market forces set prices but the only way I see prices go ever is up and up. Today we are paying 1.80 a gallon for gas that cost us prior to the Gulf War in 1991 maybe 1.05 or less. Once again a lot of it is our fault due to the car ego's of Americans of which even I am guilty of. I spent some time in South Korea and I never needed a car for anything no matter how small the town or city I was in. For most the subway or bus will get you where you're going and if you needed a car sometimes then the taxi would do just fine.

Any european country you will find small cars but they also have good gas mileage to combat the gas prices that are nearly triple what we pay here in the U.S. they're also cheaper and for the most part I hear they have a public transportation system on par with South Korea. Many people can get by on public transportation in many countries. Only a few cities in the U.S. even sport a system that could acheive this level of ability to it's citizens. A lot of projects have started only to fail because many americans believe it's beneath them to ride on a bus with the "common" people and thus the attitude spreads and nobody uses these systems. I'm sure when gas prices are 2.50 a gallon or worse there will be complaints and the ever popular lawsuit flying left and right against the cities that have tried public transportation and failed due to lack of popularity.

We the people need to get off our butts and begin to do something about this country before it's too late. Terrorism will be far off our list of problems if half of americans cannot afford to drive to work becuase of high gas prices and are out of work because they were fired due to not being able to afford the long commute.

posted by Corey @ 11:21 AM