Why The True Cost Of Living Is Much Higher Than We're Told (Or Sold)

Zerohedge ^ | 20 Mar 16 | Adam Taggart and Tyler Durden

[timestax]

ping

[Smokin' Joe]

I buy used, off lease vehicles. I have also been known to haunt estate auctions where you can pick up an older, relatively low mileage, often high-end car for pretty cheap.

While I generally have to choose from what is available, half of the fleet are standard transmission vehicles with crank windows. The advantages are that I generally pick up lower mileage vehicles which have been well maintained and still have a lot of life in them yet, for less than dealer prices. Often the estate auction vehicles have been garaged and not parked in the open.

[wally_bert]

I ought to go to those.

There was a guy who ran the last film camera place here up until a few years ago. Almost everything he had was mint and from estate sales.

Some people still bought his high end 35 film stuff.

He had studio rental which is how I found out about him,

I’m just a guy in the burbs with nowhere practical do much.

[SkyPilot]

Inflation rises because dollars keep getting pumped into the system. If the Gub'ment raised the COLA even more dollars would need pumped into the system to pay for it.

Very true.

The Obama dictatorship lies about inflation for two reasons:

1. To make himself look good

2. To avoid paying the high COLA to Social Security recipients, veterans on a pension, etc.

[SkyPilot]

I didn't know they even made newer type cars with roll down windows anymore.

[SkyPilot]

My grocery store sells “1 Pound” bags of coffee that say (12 oz) on the package.

[Smokin' Joe]

I stay behind the herd, on that. My newest barely made it into the 21st century. The rest of the fleet stretches from there back to 1941.

New has lots of fancy gadgets that have a tendency to malfunction with detrimental results in an area where cell coverage can be sketchy and temperatures get down well below zero.

I don't want to die over some computer malfunction.

[SkyPilot]

We’re farmers and borrow large amounts of money, interest rates were 19% under Carter. Just one of the times we almost went broke.

I remember those day. Sad.

Most Americans had absolutely no idea why farmers were struggling though. They really didn't.

They also did not grasp that Carter's prohibition to sell wheat to the Soviet Union in 1980 caused massive surpluses that went to waste.

They did enjoy watching Willie Nelson and Neil Young singing at "Farm Aid" in the 1980s, though.

[SkyPilot]

The CPI doesn't include prices for anything anybody buys. They started excluding food and energy prices years ago when they figured out that including those figures caused uncomfortable results. Now the CPI reflects little more than the price of fondue forks, little paper drink umbrellas and cheap plastic coasters.

Yup. And don't even THINK of asking the CPI to honestly take into account your increased cost for health insurance. They claim they do, but use an "indirect method." Which means, they lie..............again.

[trebb]

I know for a fact - for years I have kept a running account of our net income and subtracted necessary and discretionary costs (built a spreadsheet with formulas to do the calculations) and it show monthly/annual incomes and monthly/annual costs wit a monthly/annual line for what’s left over. Slow but steady decline in the “What’s Left Over” columns over last 9 years or so.

[Theodore R.]

“Fast food” is eating up household income: people are too tired and hungry to cook. They want immediate food.

[Theodore R.]

It is only surprising that the officials never thought of rigging the CPI until fairly recently. Excluding food and fuel is ludicrous but probably supported by American voters, who believe in a 5 percent unemployment rate with 90 million out of work too.

[Theodore R.]

The American voters are comfortable with all lies, it seems, or are they too uninformed to know?

[Theodore R.]

I didn’t know anybody had TVs on antennae any more: didn’t even know if it still worked.

[Theodore R.]

And it’s more like $5.50 instead of $4 too in TX anyway.

[Smokin' Joe]

Estate sales can provide some neat stuff. Sometimes the people involved don’t know what it is, and will put it in a box of stuff you can pick up cheap. If you see a treasure in such a box, either make a pre-sale offer on the box full or wait it out and take a chance on missing the hammer drop.

Actually, if you are looking for odds and ends stuff, check out rummage sales. Often the type of stuff, where they live, etc. will give you hints to the age and type of the items.

Amazing things come out of these, and flea markets are a trip, if you are near them.

Sure, there is a lot of junk, some of it overpriced, but if you have a specific thing in mind and keep a sidelong glance for serendipitous scores, you can do very well, especially if you know what you are looking at.

[Theodore R.]

The American people are perfectly comfortable with liars, especially if they helped to put them in office.

[Theodore R.]

The American people in 1980 really hated to retire GA Jimmuh because it was an indictment of themselves.

[SkyPilot]

Many, if not most, are uniformed. Have you seen the "man on the street" interviews from talk shows or the ones that appear on YouTube? These people cannot tell you who George Washington was, name one US Senator, don't know in what century the Civil War was fought, and can't tell you what the Supreme Court does.

Also, as long as there is some level of comfort, many Americans won't care. The heat still works, the EBT cards still function, and sports are still on their 60" TV.

Watch, however, how quickly mayhem will spread if things go south, especially among the Taker class.

[SkyPilot]

“Fast food” is eating up household income: people are too tired and hungry to cook. They want immediate food.

True, but when EBT was allowed at Fast Food establishments, it increased their sales dramatically. Companies like Yum! brands ( that own KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc) spent millions on lobbyists to take their case to Congress.

These companies are simply suckers of the Teats. They deny it, but they are. WalMart did the same thing when Congress was thinking of trying to tighten the rules for EBT. WalMart rakes in BILLIONS from EBT (read: taxpayers).