Our economy is taking a major hit due to the home mortgage crisis, rising credit card interest rates, rising fuel prices, rising food prices, and the shrinking value of our dollar. All of this combined is forcing lifestyle changes.
Daily commuters are moving closer to their jobs or giving up higher paying jobs to find one closer to home as a result of higher gasoline prices.
People are finally getting rid of their hulking, low-mileage SUV’s and trucks for more fuel efficient smaller cars, because of higher fuel prices. (Who is buying these gas-guzzlers from them and why?). Obviously, not everyone is doing their part to bring fuel prices back down or to slow down the usage of our dwindling oil supply.
Independent business people who rely on driving as part of their business are scaling back and therefore are struggling to keep employees, because of fuel prices.
Every business that depends on trucking is beginning to suffer from increasing fuel costs. Independent truckers are loosing their livelihood as well as their homes because of severe increases in the cost of diesel fuel. They are forced to park or sell their rigs, leaving fewer trucks to get products to market, allowing public trucking companies free to raise their shipping rates in order to help defray fuel prices, which in turn increases the retail price of the products they haul. Repossession of these big-rigs have doubled over last year.
Food prices are increasing because of transportation costs and the added burden of biofuel manufacture from the same corn crop that was previously used exclusively for food manufacturing.
Vacations have been put off or scaled way back. Discretionary spending has been cut. Necessities such as health insurance, weekly trips to see family and friends, eating out more than once a week, are now being referred to as luxuries and are all being cut back.
Families whose incomes were once considered comfortable are now just barely getting by. The effect is devastating for egos as well as wallets, creating strained relations within the family. What do you do when a $50,000 annual salary can no longer buy a prom dress for your daughter, or your kids don’t get everything they want for Christmas and birthdays?
All of these changes in our lifestyles are a direct result of increasing fuel prices which in turn is a result to our refusal to change our driving habits and our federal governments refusal to take a leadership role in forcing big oil to stop bleeding us dry.
Are We Green Yet posted about how by working together we can counteract these increasing fuel prices simply by changing our driving habits. Americans, with their affinity for bigger, more powerful vehicles, carry the biggest share of the guilt. Our driving habits are atrocious compared to foreign countries.
We all have to do our part.
A common misconception is that biofuel production will save us from having to drive more conservatively or to embrace mass transit. But the increased demand for corn as a biofuel is driving food prices up. The increased production of biofuels has not slowed down the price of oil and OPEC is continuing to squeeze us all.
Cocooning has become the latest buzz word in suburbs everywhere. People are staying at home more because they can’t afford to go out for entertainment. They have to save fuel to get to and from work and the grocery store.
Soon, only the wealthy will inhabit movie theaters, restaurants, concert halls, and amusement parks.
I come from a family of six children. We were born from 1951 to 1961 and were raised under very modest financial conditions. We were forced to share everything. Not because of an idealistic unselfishness, we had to do it to make ends meet. Today, I see kids with everything I only dreamed about having when I was their age. I see super-sized homes with enough space inside that every child gets their own bedroom. They get their own iPods, their own cell phones, their own computers. These Americans have become truly spoiled, others not so much. I don’t begrudge anyone who has the financial ability to give their kids everything they want, but when those spending habits begin consuming more than their ‘fair share’ of gasoline and food, and all of this gluttony leads to shortages for the rest of us, that’s when I have a real problem with hearing them complain about how their $50,000+ income no longer meets their demands. No, I find it very difficult to empathize with them.
Changing our lifestyles is the best answer to the financial situation in which we find ourselves. It is a sad commentary that we are forced to do this as a result of our own habits. No one wants to give up an opulent lifestyle. No one wants to scale down our luxuries. Everyone wants to be able to take the family to a restaurant and/or movie. We all enjoy our day at the amusement park. But we cannot continue to over spend, to waste fuel, to live beyond our means.
There is a law of nature at play here. Nature will tend to slough off wastefulness when it becomes too great a burden to carry and becomes detrimental to the safety and continued operation of the system. We have over-spent and over-extended our use of what nature has made available to us and we expect to not have to change our ways when nature is showing signs of crashing. This trend cannot continue.
We must change our attitude toward what we can expect from nature. We cannot continue to take and not give.
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