It is all relative.

  It is all relative. 

It all started on a trip to the supermarket in 1967. There was no intent, I most certainly can’t explain how my brain works. We were newly wed, and shopping together was as new as sharing the same bathroom, cooking for two, and formulating which side of the bed was mine and when and where it was appropriate to cross the invisible barrier. 

Shopping together was new…as was the cost of goods. I had for the most part been taken care of by parents until joining the Marine Corps at 17 and leaving home. The cost of staples, you know like food, rested with my parents. With Mom and Dad and four brothers it would be sometime before I realized how well they managed. Then as a Marine the Corps furnished me with just about everything I needed and there was always a PX close by to get essentials, geedunk, cigs, you know necessities, using the funds from my exorbitant salary of $115.00 that came like clockwork every two weeks. 

Back to the supermarket…As we took items from the cart and put them on the counter for the clerk to ring up while vocally reporting each items price, I tracked the number of items and the total as the sale concluded.  Regardless of the item or pricing, the sales total in 1967 tabulated that for each item we spent was $.50 per item. It would become how we budgeted for our trips to the supermarket. For the last 25 years that responsibility has rested on my shoulders and for the last 57 years that is how I have calculated the budget for the trips to the supermarket. Back then if we had $50 for groceries, we could shop for 100 items, whether steak and eggs or M&M’s or a $.05 candy bar or a pack of chewing gum. I did freak out when we bought a pair of la Cross toenail clippers…they were pushing $4.00 They are still in use today and rest in the Master Bath’s Medicine Cabinet. Some items are necessary and need to be considered an investment. 

That was then…since then…that per item total as inflated like my waist and weight. Not that either of those two things relate to anything other than gravity. I weigh in at three pounds more than our first shopping trip together in 1967…but, according to a near sited nurse I’m 2” shorter with a waist 4” larger…gravity. Today the budget allows for 50 items and needs not to exceed $200.00. So yesterday was a good day. Forty items at $175.00. Or $4.375 per item. 

Like I said, it is all relative. Federally the minimum wage then was $1.40. Now it is $7.25. Other words a 417% increase in minimum wage. Using our 1967 estimate of fifty cents per item and comparing it to yesterday's $4.37 per item, the percentage difference is a 774% increase in the cost of those goods. See the problem. 

Now, not everyone is stuck at $7.25 per hour, most states have minimum wage requirements that exceed the feds. But just to keep up at the grocery store one needs a tad more than $12.00 per hour. Throw in electricity, rent or a house payment, insurance, fuel, vehicle payments, other necessary utilities and medical costs…well Okay if you flip burgers in California. Considering that the $20 per hour positions are being eliminated faster than a qualifying lap at a NASCAR event, you might, slim might, be able to keep up. 

Why have I brought this up. Our regulated income has increased about 10% over the last three and a half years. In December of 2020 our cost of goods at check out was $3.10 per item. The same $200.00 budget allowed for 64 items. The difference is a shade over 40% increase to the cost of supermarket goods. In total when you experience this kind of crunch, and I can’t image a family of four or more, there is just the two of us, I have no concept of some politician, any politician spewing the bullshit that our economy is stronger, improving daily, better than it has ever been and Bidenomics is working. Their lips are moving, and they are not disseminating misinformation, disinformation or any form of substantiated facts. They are lying, out and out lying, Nothing more, nothing less. 

I’m sorry, if you vote, by mail or in person, if you vote for more of the same because you don’t like someone…you aren’t part of the problem. You are the problem. If we are in fact presented with the apparent two choices, both of which have track records and you choose 2021-2025 over 2017-2021 you’ve lost touch, complete touch with reality…you see, it is all relative.