Surviving the Recession

A number of people, in the U.S., are going to get royally screwed when it comes tax time next year.

With the incentive cuts in payroll taxes this year and the announced overpayment of incentives which people are going to have to pay back*, people are going to end up owing higher taxes with less to pay them.

*People didn't ask for the incentives, the government made that decision. Now the government is saying 'whoops' and is going to end up screwing people for something they didn't ask for.

I had worked for various employers who all dealt with the economy by unilaterally screwing their own employees. They all cut out pay raises.

In our state, we got one damn fool governor out of office (he maxed out his two terms), unfortunately we ended up with another damn fool in his place. What is this governor's solution? Tax everything he can.

Here's how the plot plays out:

Special interests are bleeding the economy and business dry. Business and government, becoming one and the same in this country, don't want to trim the fat which creates the deficits so they'll cut benefits, pay, jobs, and increase taxes to effectively make the people who are suffering from their incompetence end up footing the bill.

I don't feel the recession where most are feeling it as I don't have any investments and that's where people have been hit the hardest. I had one 401k account that was only a few hundred dollars, and that took a beating, but that was nothing compared to friends who set aside retirements and lost amounts in the tens of thousands.

What affects me most, and a good number of people in this way, is goods and services going up against a stagnant or declining pay scale. Compare what people are making now to ten years ago, and compare that against what they were paying for food, gas, insurance and other goods and services tens years ago to what they are paying now.

Getting more work would help offset expenses, provided I can keep the injuries from interfering with it, but I am and will continue to budget more on expenses. My diet has become more standardized, ala boring, by sticking to bulk foods rather than pre-packaged items. I am, hopefully, keeping down on energy consumption, and cost, as I have replaced almost all standard light bulbs in this place with more energy efficient fluorescent bulbs and can keep the place reasonably warm with just a space heater (though it has not dropped below freezing yet, so we'll see how that plays out when it gets here).

Of course, another way to economize is to prepare for emergencies before they happen; prices increase dramatically when things are in demand. I have enough backups now to keep lights, a laptop, and a portable DVD player running, probably for days, in the event of a power outage. I still have to get the kerosene heater cleaned up and prepared though. If I don't need it, great, but it is a lot less expensive having it now than having to scramble for emergency supplies when it is needed.

Just a few of my usual rants.

If in any of that actually made sense to anyone, it was a figment of your imagination. Tongue