Thursday, November 01, 2007

Working you over without pay

When I hear the dollar is sinking and that the Dow Jones Industrial & Nasdaq in their first hour today have dropped over 100 points.. I think about how that vacation to Canada is slowly moving towards un-affordability. Every one outside the US's money is either remaining the same or going up as our dollar is going down and now we're slowly feeling the effects of a weak dollar.

Today I filled up my car, a new car that I promise to post on soon, with 9.5 gallons. The price of gas, in Washington, was $3.15/gal making my 9.5 gal or so over $30 bucks... Before I could scoff at the outrageousness of what was being charged, a man pulled up in a construction like truck, a diesel truck and filled up with about 16 gallons of $3.69/gal diesel fuel.

Did gas go up because the nations hoarding the oil decided to jack up rates? or is it that our money doesn't buy as much oil as it used to? I'm leaning towards the latter, but why? Why let the dollar sink? Why another recession? Why let it happen now?

Don't put it on a bad administration, the faults of a couple of bad investments (like the sub-prime mortgage fiasco) were on our backs.

America isn't doing good, we're clinging on to supremacy, but if the dollar sinks lower we won't be able to rebuild anything in NO, or San Diego... And the answer to immigration isn't to drop the worth of the dollar so low that Mexicans will go home for better jobs neither.

Be concerned because it could all fall apart. A man working a job in Britain, getting paid 15 pounds a hour, means that he's getting paid $30+ an hour in the United States. Reverse that and you get a person in the United States working for $9-$15 an hour and in the UK (if they visit the UK) they're making 4.5-7.5 pounds/hr. 4-7 an hour is roughly what a corrupt hotel owner is paying his Mexican hotel maids. He's breaking the law by not paying them minimum wages, but what about us? We're getting paid less for the same amount of work hours, so we work an average of 9 weeks more than European countries to make up for it.. Double productivity yes, but not double compensation. A problem I might say...

When Saddam fell, so did the dinar money... The dinar dropped to such a worthless rate that you couldn't give it away as confetti. Slowly it is going up, but the impacts of that is likely to be the cause of why Iraq just isn't 'bouncing back.' If that were happen here, even on the micro scale, it could cause some serious problems for everyone looking for jobs, working jobs, or retiring after 20-30 years working a job.

Sidenote:

~One country to watch (as we slowly sink into doom) is Japan. While the dollar tanks, the yen remains the same in trade value. Yesterday the yen topped out at 115 yen to the dollar. When I was there a year ago it wavered from 100-116 yen to the dollar. Today it's hovering at 114 yen to the dollar.. This means that our economies are linked in some way. A recession effects everything and everyone across all borders, we can't go into a recession.

Christmas time, in all is whore and greed, is what always rescues America out of the pits. We buy cheap stuff to keep the economy rolling, but if filling up on Gas costs $10 more this year then last year, then that is $10 less on gifts and egg nog. The same goes with Natural Gas costs.

I detect a chain reaction and (like the Matrix) I feel that any uncertainty might trigger "the bomb." Unfortunately there's nothing you nor I can do, but hope. Hope that Europeans who *do* have money come over here and spend *their* wad of money.

We live in freak'n weird times guys.. watch out or else we'll be working our jobs, but be living in the poor house owned by some rich Swiss cow farmer. =P

~J out

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