Economic Crisis

When i moved here 4 years ago, I was paying less than 10 cents/KWH for electricity. About 5.5-6 cents for electric charge. 2-2.5 cents for fuel adjustment. And about half a cent for hurricane recovery and customer service charge. Or about 9 cents/kWh.

Electric charge is now 8 cents, fuel adjustment 6.5, and misc fees top 2 cents for a total of over 16 cents/kWh.
Most of the increases occurring this year.

4 years ago my minimum water charge was $10/month. Garbage, $14/month. Garbage is now $19, soon to go to 21.
Minimum water charge has gone up 100% to $20/month minimum. Most folks use well over 2000 gallons a month and the overage charge has gone from 25 cents a hundred gallons to 42.5 cents/100.

I went to The Evil Empire(Wal-Mart) this morning . I was astounded at the lack of product on the shelves. I truly felt like I was shopping in Venezuela.

But worse yet was the ever increasing price of the products I buy most every time I go there. My memory is pretty good but I keep my receipts too. Some items that already went up 50 cents have gone up another 50 cents to a dollar in the last 2 weeks! It's insane!

Inflation is much higher than the government figures fed to us.

If you add the cost of hidden inflation(downsizing of product size and weight), you can add another 10 to 16 percent minimum per one ounce reduction in product size depending on the original weight of the product.

And the sad part about it is, when or if the price of fuel goes down , the products will never return to their original price or size.

If I had to be realistic. Inflation is hovering at a crisis level of over 30% annually. Although from what I'm seeing, closer to 40 %