Stan Geiger

Insidious Inflation

I caught a rerun of an old Andy Griffith episode the other day. What an amazing program. The reruns have been around for nearly 50 years now. Yet every time you see an episode it's just as fresh and funny as it was the first time you saw it.

I guess that goes to show a TV program doesn't have to be chock full of dirty jokes, cuss words and side-boob shots to be entertaining. Nor do all the characters have to be jumping from bed to bed.

Anyway, Andy and Barney were talking on the street, and behind them was a sign in a grocery store window advertising a pound of coffee for 65 cents. What a hoot!

I was in a grocery store the other day, so I took a walk down the coffee aisle. A standard tin of coffee, depending on the brand, was selling in the $3 to $4 range. In inflation-adjusted terms, I figure, the price of coffee is about where it should be.

So what's the problem?

Well, the problem is, what was once a one-pound tin of coffee now holds 11.5 ounces. And a further problem is, downsizing of products isn't limited to coffee.

Chips offer a good example. The size of the bag may stay the same, but it is loaded with more and more air and fewer and fewer chips.

At what point do we call a halt to this insidious form of inflation? When a "pound" of coffee is enough to make a few cups? When a giant plastic bag holds 14 chips?

Driving corporate profits by consistently downsizing what is being sold is unsustainable.

So, by the way, is driving corporate profits by shafting employees. At the end of the day, the employees are the consumers. If consumers have no money, there is no commerce and the economy collapses.

Continuing the line of thought, annually running government on borrowed money is unsustainable. The ultimate outcome of such a policy is a bankrupt nation.

We can't keep shipping our economy overseas. Sure, creating jobs in foreign lands, theoretically, makes for new markets for American goods. But there has to be a limit. I mean, what good does it do to create a foreign market for American goods if we aren't producing anything and all the goods are being made over there?

We can't keep ignoring our infrastructure needs. Roads will become unnavigable; bridges and dams will fail.

We can't pour all of our resources into education. A society that is half teacher living on tax dollars and half student seeking to become teacher cannot endure.

"Change" is a big word in this election year. Most certainly change is needed. Unfortunately, I have no faith at all in the word when it comes out of the mouth of a politician.

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