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2015-03-10 - 8:33 a.m. This is just a venting post. Don't read it unless you want a wallow in the negativity. Inflation has really gotten scary. I have a theory that all of the services around here are conspiring to capture all of the supposedly disposable income freed up by the price of gas dropping a bit. However, since property tax has gone up ten-fold (yes, it's 10 times what it was before Katrina), homeowner's insurance is close to quadruple, and groceries have tripled -- while wages have remained the same or even dropped slightly since the days in the immediate aftermath of the storm -- I'm not sure where this imaginary extra money is supposed to come from. It's even the once little things, like the water and trash pick-up bill being privatized and split up so that it could triple! Getting your driver's license has been privatized and the price has doubled. Since Katrina was in 2005, yeah, this has been going on for almost 10 years now, so why rant now? Eh, the inspiration for this particular rant is price-fixing by the internet service companies in our parish. Long story, but they yanked up our rates without any warning -- to double what we were originally quoted. And all the others yanked up their rates too in the same month? They could have at least informed us in advance so that we could set the auto-payment to the right amount? I realize that one day, decades in the future perhaps, the public officials involved in selling off the state could eventually be arrested. Hell, it only took them 27 years to toss Eddie Price in jail. And, what, probably almost as long to toss Aaron Broussard in jail. The trouble is, the harm's done, and you don't get your money back, do you? My guess is that within a decade or two, there will be essentially no more middle class in Louisiana. Anyone who makes an honest living will see every penny stripped away, so that they will have a minimal lifestyle and no longer be able to own property. You already see it being pushed in the media that young people don't want to own their own home. Or even to own their own car. Yeah, right. Sure, they don't. They know they'll never be able to possess those things, so they're too proud to be angry about it. Ugh.
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford
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