EDITORIAL: What can we do about the exploding cost of living?

We doubt we can affect any kind of change to the exploding cost of living but we wonder what suggestions you might have?


The cost of living is impacting on us all, seriously and in some instances, very drastically. We wondering what ideas you have that might need consideration and initiating…

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My dog had to be groomed recently. I always tip the groomer, usually about 15% but this time 15% turned out to be a significant jump. I wasn’t accepting it. I tipped the groomer what I thought was fair recognizing that it was less than she likely expected. I engaged the groomer in discussion as I explained that I could not pay more. The impact on a retiree’s budget was too much. 

We got to talking. Her business was about to hit with a leasing increase. Not 5%, not 10% but DOUBLE. The story goes on elsewhere with festival producers lamenting that insurance costs are rising ridiculously, again DOUBLE. They need to price a hot dog at $18, a soda at $8. Imagine the cost of a family outing at a City food truck event.

Grocery shopping is becoming a gauntlet of ever-surprising jumps in pricing or volume reduction. 

How do fixed-income people cope? What do single-parent families do to deal with it? What do seniors on fixed pensions do? Legitimate questions with no legitimate solutions.

The vicious circle needs breaking
There’s a vicious circle in operation: expenses increase according to the corporations, therefore they need to increase prices; consumers buy less due to the price increases, corporations increase prices to compensate for the decreased purchasing. And on and on it goes. Somewhere somehow this vicious circle of never-ending price increase/cost increase must be broken and the break should not be at the door of the average citizen as they have no way of compensating, unless you count food deprivation as a solution. Corporations must compensate shareholders adequately or that funding will dry up? No corporation is going to bite the hand that feeds it financially, the investors.

Government doing what?
Governments are doing nothing but paying lip service to action. Remember, elected leaders receive campaign expense support from corporations. Are these financial recipients going to bite the hand that feeds them? No politician is going to bite the hand that feeds financially, the lobbying corporations.

The average citizen
So no matter how you cut the vicious circle pie, it is the average citizen that is going to suffer. Not the corporation. Not the governing politician. Karl Marx’s prediction of an inevitable revolution may eventually occur but not in our time. It will not happen soon because every average citizen believes: better times are coming, coping strategies will work, governments will help, and corporations will not exploit us more. Yeah….sure…what do you think? Give us your opinion.[wpdiscuz-feedback id=”5ngoo5fygu” question=”Please leave a feedback on this” opened=”0″][/wpdiscuz-feedback]

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