Wednesday, January 19, 2005

where goes the money round and round



moment

had a really cool talk today with one of my vendors. i handle purchasing at the office i work in, and today i invited this guy, Dennis, who's pretty genuinely a nice guy, to visit. We talked for a while and after a bit of small talk i brought up the increased prices for supplies and stuff in the latest catalogue.

"yeah, it's because of oil," he said. i asked him to explain, but i knew part of the answer already. you see, oil is an ingredient in a myriad of products from televisions to ttys to the plastic wrap on your sandwich. when oil prices go up, the government pays subsidies to keep the cost down on gas pumps. but it hasn't yet done so for other businesses - possibly because it cannot do so.

bush is directly to blame for our latest cost increase... think about that. hidden taxes going into your business... by the back door: it's an increase on the things your office needs to function.

now i believe we should probably reduce our usage of this stuff ANYWAY... but the ends really don't justify the means in this forinstance. The government's basically saying "We can make war and use your money to hide the negative effects of our choice..." i guess. it's weird. but the more important point is they are using our money to buy our good faith, and we're the only ones left out of pocket.

what do you think?

1 comment:

Mr. Sandman said...

It's going to be VERY interesting to see how this plays out in the future, actually. Everyone sees/hears the word "oil" or "gas" and make a direct connection to making a visit to the local filling station. But how many people connect "oil" and "plastics"? Despite the (once) astute advice given to Benjamin in "The Graduate", I'm quite curious to see how manufacturing adjusts as we run out of minerals one by one...