Tuesday, June 10, 2008 Seares: Mugger, robber, hitman By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
INFLATION is often joked about. You must have heard some of them done by stand-up comedians in late-night talk shows:
— “It’s now costing Americans twice as much to live beyond their means as it did 20 years ago.
— “Americans are getting stronger. Twenty years ago, it took two people to carry 15 dollars worth of groceries. Now a child can carry it.
— “These days of inflation, it’s an insult to tell a girl she looks like a million dollars.
— “Not everybody has been affected by inflation. We still have two-bit politicians.”
Maybe those lines were recycled by writers of standup comedians working under a budget struck by inflation.
Inflation is worldwide, not sparing the Philippines where the rate reported last May was 9.6 per cent, the highest since 1991.
Excessive or persistent increase in fuel and food prices, as well as other goods and services, causes a decline of the buying power.
Basket of goods
Our money can buy less. The classic teacher-told example is the basket of products being filled with less for the same amount usually paid for it.
Hurt most are those who have no money to pay for increase in cost. They tell the poor to consume less. But what if one already has cut to the bone on necessities? The more money is inflated, the less it can be stretched, gripes one housewife.
Ronald Reagan hardly found humor in how inflation afflicts. He said inflation “is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.”
A former actor hamming up in his metaphor? Maybe but it graphically describes the source of inflation’s assault.
