I'm trying not to fall into the stereotype of the person of mature age who declares everything to be too expensive.
So far, I seem to be failing. Trouble is, everything does appear to be too expensive, especially for those whose income hasn't kept up with the rising prices.
It's not just the rent that's too dang high, with apologies to New York political activist Jimmy McMillan:
Car prices are too dang high. Compact cars cost what mid-sizers used to cost. Midsizers cost what big cars once cost. Big cars now go for luxury/sports car prices and luxury cars ... every time I see a red Corvette on the road, I wonder how badly the driver misses that arm, leg or firstborn he had to fork over. Last year, I changed my then-9-year-old compact Talkmobile for a then-year-old, midsize, an ex-rental car. I was able to get it for an even better price than the compact had cost. But its purchase came with repercussions, mainly the fact that ...
Insurance is too dang high. I won't even go into health insurance, which remains a big pile of hot, steaming mess that would take far more space than allowed here. I'll just gripe about car insurance. Mine, combined with renter's insurance, started out $25 more a month than the previous car. Every six-month renewal period, it crept up until it reached red-alert status. I was able to get it to go down some with a higher deductible and by reiterating a promise to drive only a little-old-lady number of miles a year. But I can't be the only one thinking that whereas Dennis Haysbert has been trumpeting a disappearing deductible in an insurance company commercial, we need a Disappearing Premium.
Groceries are too dang high. We now realize why our parents were so grouchy at grocery-checkout time. We didn't help matters by sneaking items into the basket. I've never seen an industry that so vigorously advertises discounts, coupons, loyalty cards and other things to make one's grocery bill go down ... and it doesn't. A couple heads of lettuce, other veggies and salad makings, chips and dip and something to swig -- $50. And snacks are too dang high. At work, the vending machine folk keep instituting price increases, which leaves us kicking ourselves whenever desperation leads us to pay $1.25 for a bag of peanuts we'll inhale faster than Babar would, and swearing we're going to start buying in bulk.
Vacations are too dang high. "Affording a trip is a problem ... for many people ... which helps explain why American workers only use about half their leave," according to "8 Things That Are Becoming Less Affordable for the Middle Class," an article on Moneycrashers.com."And when they take off, the days are often used for staycations, when people take leave but don't travel." The story cited a survey done several years ago that revealed that more than 60 percent of adults hadn't traveled within the previous year -- "and many who do travel are sacrificing things like outings, big-ticket electronics and new clothes to make it happen." Then there are those of us who can't afford any of the above. We try to stay off Facebook lest we become envious of "friends" who always seem to be jetting off to Hawaii, Paris, Dubai or Jamaica.
By the way, the rent around here is too dang high. Downtown these days, a one bedroom, one-bath apartment with roughly the square footage of your grandfather's overgrown outhouse rents for a house note. A three-bed, one-bath rental home, no matter how far from downtown, the madding crowd, or civilization itself is, well, a house note. Any time we read glowing news releases and announcements of how some developer is going to build a big, beautiful apartment complex in the heart of Little Rock, we know the rent is going to mandate either a California-sized salary or several roommates. (I kid you not: the cheapest rent I saw advertised recently was $300-something for a barely standing, somewhere-in-the-near-boonies home that would give Stephen King nightmares. The advertising copy read something like this: "Hurry up and get this deal before somebody else snaps it up!" Well, OK then.)
The old funk band War once sang that "the world is a ghetto"; I say the world is too dang high. And now, here come the holidays. The people charging all these too-dang-high prices need to learn a lesson, and we ought to show 'em one:
Pay with pennies!
Email and some change:
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 11/19/2017