So I flipped through the pages of my morning paper this morning, as I am apt to do, and came across this story…”P&G’s Costs Go Up, Prices To Follow”. The reason this is of interest to me is because P&G is located here in Cincinnati and because my family uses a lot of their products. So to see that the biggest producer of all kinds of stuff that I use during my everyday existence is about to rake me with higher prices makes me a little uneasy.
Then I got to reading the article and come to find out, they’ve already been doing it! Apparently earlier this year P&G raised their prices 6%. Now they’re telling me that they will be raising them again on products such as Pepto Bismol, Tide and shaving cream by as much as 16%?!?! That’s a 22% increase on crap I need in less than a year?!?! WTF?
According to this article that I have sitting in front of me, P&G is the largest consumer-goods maker in the United States. If they decide to raise their prices, it affects consumers and food and drug retailers also. So now, instead of paying $3.25 for a can of shaving gel (which I use everyday), I’m gonna be paying $4.00. Instead of buying a bar of soap for a buck, I have to shell out $1.25. With all of the products that we buy, we’re gonna have to pay more. Because a big corporation can carry the load for only so long until it starts to crumble in these scary economic times. If the cost of shipping and raw materials keeps going up, then it has to come from someone’s pocket. Might as well be mine, right?
A quick look at the rest of the paper finds Comair laying off 520 workers, local casinos are struggling (awww…too bad) and both Obama and McCain’s budget plans are slow in developing. What this tells me is that we’re in some serious doo doo and no one knows how to get us out of it. That stupid war continues, other countries are smarter and more disciplined than us when it comes to technology and their workforces. Our economy is on a downward spiral and there isn’t a thing anyone can do about it. So what is a hard-working father of a family of 4 supposed to do these days? Once everything is out of our price range, where do we go from there?
I’m just rambling at this point, but I am worried. I am worried for country. I am worried for economy. I am scared that when I’m long gone, my kids are going to be left with nothing. It’s a horrible thought that I might work for the rest of my life and my children will have nothing to show for it. It’s not what I thought our country was built on. Save and invest was always a part of the plan. But now my investments are going in the opposite direction and saving has become harder and harder to do.
We’re in a crapload of trouble here folks and if something doesn’t happen soon, we may never be able to get back to being the great country that we once were. But I can tell you this…there is no way I’m paying $3 for a bar of soap. If it gets to that, you may want to avoid me because I’m gonna be smellin’ kinda funky. And I doubt I’ll be the only one. I’ll have to change the name of my site to “Stinky In Cincinnati”. And that would just stink…
