While I think this is a very silly article, I like it because it's so silly and people often believe these kinds of things. I think it's better to save and invest over time, rather then gamble.
There’s a smallish but growing chorus of economists and policymakers sounding the alarm about inflation. They warn that a combination of government stimulus and the impending economic snapback will cause prices to overheat. A lot of regular people might be confused by this. After all, the country is still in the middle of the Covid-19 outbreak, the economy is far from back to normal, and we’re still millions of jobs short from where we were pre-pandemic. Many economists and lawmakers have spent months arguing that the risk is doing too little, not too much, to save the economy. Some say a little bit of inflation may be a good thing, especially given how low it’s been in the recent past.
At one level I'm a bit worried about inflation, as external economic disruptions can cause inflation but also America is in a much different place than in the late 1960s. There is no new Interstate system being built now, no major urban renewal projects or college campuses being built. No Vietnam War today.
On the other hand, oil and natural gas production fell dramatically during the pandemic, and suddenly the highways are once again packed bumper to bumper with fuel hungry cars and businesses are once again firing up their lights and cranking up the air conditioning. A significant spike in oil prices into the $200 plus range could certainly spark inflation in some parts of the economy, as could a spike in natural gas prices as the power plants has become very addicted to gas.
Before the grounding of the massive Ever Given container ship in the Suez Canal, some 50 vessels a day, or about 10% of global trade, sailed through the waterway each day — everything from consumer electronics to food, chemicals, ore and petroleum.
Now, with the ship lodged sideways in the canal, closing off the main oceangoing highway between Europe and Asia, much of that cargo is sitting idle. It's either waiting to transit the canal or stuck in port while owners and shippers decide what to do.
I saw they cut my auto-refill discount for my phone plan by $4, raising my phone by from $60 to $64 with the 20-gb hotspot plan. Just another cost on the budget — but with remote work and the library closed it’s kind of important to have Internet at home. That kind of sucks, but I guess everything is going up in price. May 1st my rent is going up too, and I just adjusted my bank to reflect the additional $25 a month. Car insurance is due on Monday. At least I should be getting a good tax-refund and the stimulus check this month, and I think I will be able to otherwise stay the course on my budget and savings. Once office life resumes, I can go back to the more basic data package, that will save money, to offset the cost of bus fares for commuting.
It seems they can’t find enough ways to try to push solar panels, electric cars, and ground-source heat pumps on folks. The advertising is non-stop. While I am interested in some of the technology, I am skeptical and I am certainly not in the market to buy solar panels or an electric car today. When I own my own land, I think I would like to have a simple — in other words not complex — solar system for minimal energy uses but none of these massive-grid tied arrays for the energy hungry suburbanite lifestyle.
For much of history, breakfast existed in the shadows. While beautifully preserved cookbooks and food histories tell us about lavish meal productions in ancient times, this simple morning meal has often been overlooked in the annals of history. But we’ve clearly been eating something for a morning meal. From an etymological perspective, the English word “breakfast” is derived from the French disd?jeuner, which in turn comes from the Latin disieiunare meaning “un-fast.” Disd?jeuner was contracted in the 11th-century to disner and became the English “dinner.” The usage of “dinner” coincided with a shift of the main meal of the day from midday to evening. The French d?jeuner became the midday meal (lunch), and other languages followed suit, relegating the early morning meal to a petit d?jeuner--literally a small lunch. It is almost as if from a linguistic perspective we were looking to intentionally de-emphasize the significance of a morning meal by making it a variation of an existing one.