geekwagun wrote:You really need to ask yourself this "Am I better off than I was 4 years ago?" Because I am not.
Nor am I. I'm a consultant, also, and while I'm an employee and receive a salary, the bulk of my income comes from billable hours to clients. My paychecks consist, if I work an entire month at 40 hours per week, 1/3 salary and 2/3 project "bonus".
Due to the economy, I have been living only on salary this year. My company has had to lay off all consultants other than me and one other. My utilization rate this year is only 27% - that means all this year I've only billed out 27% of my available hours. Basically, I've worked just over 2 months this year. My pay this year is down a little over 60% of what it was same time last year.
Before you say that it must be nice sitting at home and still drawing a salary, imagine how your life would change if your income were suddenly slashed by 60%. Things I could easily afford last year I no longer can. My car payment, affordable when I bought it two years ago, has now become an expensive burden. My fiancee has become an extreme couponer. We now rarely go out to eat, which diminishes the income at the restaurants and the waiters at those restaurants. We've had to cut all sorts of things out of our budget that, just one year ago, were easily affordable. We're about to drop DirecTV and get an antennae for the TV and a Roku box. I'm able to keep my head above water as it stands, but just barely. In short, our quality of life has seriously diminished in the last year.
Add to that the fact that prices for everything are up across the board. Effectively, higher prices of things such as groceries, gas, electricity, etc. also act as a pay cut as it leaves you with less disposable income after paying for them. For example, four years ago I budgeted $200/mo for gasoline. Today my gasoline budget is $450/mo. I'm not buying any more gas today than I did then - if anything, I buy less. But when you go from paying $26 to fill your tank four years ago to $50 today, that's a pretty big hit to the pocketbook.
A gallon of milk cost $2.16/gallon in 2008. Today the same gallon of milk costs $4.59.
Ground beef: $3.68/lb in 2008, $7.98/lb today.
I'm scared to see what prices will be after this years drought wiping out the corn harvest. With 40% of corn going to ethanol due to government mandate, there won't be enough to feed livestock. Because of this, many ranchers are taking their livestock in to slaughter early, which will mean a short term drop in beef prices. But what about next year when the cows that would have gone to slaughter in the spring won't be because they're all going now? Plus, the feed will become far more expensive due to the corn shortage. Watch for an explosion in beef prices next year. Also watch for gas prices to rise due to a rise in ethanol prices. Again, 40% of our corn MUST go to ethanol production. With the scarcity of the corn harvest this year, that will increase the price of everything made with corn and corn product (high fructose corn syrup, anyone?).
All this is because of the current state of the economy. I'm a firm believer in supply side economics, as history and my experiences have shown them to work. This is why it's so important to elect Romney this November; as a supply side guy, he's the only one who will do what is necessary to promote our country's economic engine and get people working again. We need to get government out of the way of We the People.
Paying taxes is a legal requirement, not a moral requirement. Render unto Caesar. Any businessman who pays more taxes than what is legally required does not have the judgment to be president. If he has extra money to give to a good cause, I would suggest that he find a worthy charity as the government is not one.