Being an old Dude, I'm 66, I get sticker shock a lot over the prices of things. My theory is that I got this concept of the value of a dollar early in life and that it never quite goes away. So to help myself out I sometimes do an exercise where I take the price of something, and convert it back to an earlier time. I've found that by using the BLS inflation index that one dollar in 1959 is roughly equivalent to eight dollars today. http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm It's not perfect of course. Some things have gone up more than others but it helps. For example, I just recently did some painting around the house. I always buy cheap rollers and brushes because I hate to clean them. I just use them once and throw them away. But even the cheap ones are four bucks, and back in the day, when I was 12 years old, four bucks was some serious cash. But when I divide that by 8 it comes to 50 cents in 1959 money. Then it doesn't seem so bad. The same goes for when I send the grandkids something for their birthday. When I was a kid I can remember that when a relative sent you a check for five bucks for your birthday, you were in fat city. But if I were to send my grad daughter 5 bucks for her birthday today she'd probably think I was a cheap old SOB. Well, she probably does anyway, because I am.
Politically seen inflation or deflation (the 'sky high' prices) does the psychological effect. When people see the high prices (gas, products, morgage, rent,etc) and also higher taxes, they'll get shocked or get angry, and this is the whole trick that is increasingly done over and over again over the last decade. This is how resistance/fight in the people is caused and increased, and rising. Inflation/deflation is revolutionary, because when masses of people get shocked (emotionally hit) they start to fight, and this fighting (of millions) always finds way out via politics. People can more easely be organized. People can't see their own organization going on, this is a major problem, because this revolutionary process can even lead to a revolt, and people are going to vote with higher emotion, so will vote 'harder' (with more anger, more combative), because think they can punish the president or current congress or the Democratic politicians or the Republican politicians. And because Dems and Reps started to look more and more the same politically, even more people tend to vote on the TP)
My dad has one of those inflation calculators in his head. It doesn't matter what year it was, he'll tell you how much that would be today. He's not miserly at all but for some reason when his favorite coffee shops raise prices beyond inflation, or a percentage he is offended by, he goes elsewhere. "I am not going to be gouged!"
I don't like to use plastic cards so I usually carry 200-300 bucks in my wallet. That's really only about 30-35 bucks in 1962 money. Back then it was easy to carry that 30-35 bucks in your wallet. But today you have to carry a big wad of bills to get the equivalent amount. That's because $20 are about the biggest bills out there that are easily used. $50 and $100, forget about it. You put one of them down for a $5 purchase they look at you like you're a criminal. They hold the thing up to the light, check it over real close, sometimes even call over a "manager" to look. Then if they do take it, and a lot of places won't, they'll take out a magic marker a paint a stripe on it and then stow it away under the cash drawer instead of in it. All that for a $100 bill that is only worth $13 in 1962 money. I think the whole idea is to try to move everybody to using that ******ned plastic.
I'm not what you'd call a bible believer these days, but if there's anything today that resembles the Mark of the Beast and the promised situation that you'd have to receive it in order to buy or sell anything, it's this modern bankster currency. Actually, I expect the biblical stuff was a reference back to Roman coinage (they were none too fond of the Roman emperor, especially after he threatened to have his name carved on their holy temple), but this situation today where employment and sales are all more or less forced into being compensated in this inflating fiat crap, which now also permits centralised tracking and control over how it's used, is a tad scary. By participating - and it's not like we have much of a choice! - we help enable the self-proclaimed authorities to control our lives, and we end up serving the banksters to boot.
