I saw the same thing happen in Massachusetts a few months ago. Can’t say about the restaurants, since we don’t eat out that much, but food, milk, gasoline, water (in our house), heating oil, you name it, has risen significantly. Milk is now $3.59 a gallon approximately, and that’s at the cheap store. Meat has gone up by about 30-100%, depending on the type/cut.
The housing market is soaring out of sight, with houses having gone up in value by about 100% or more in the last 5 years in our area, with corresponding increases in real estate taxes to compensate for the state budget deficit. Rents in our area have more than doubled (sometimes tripled) in the last few years, with many seniors being forced out of apartments they have lived in for decades, when the house changes hands. Those fixed-income seniors who own their own homes are being forced out by soaring real-estate taxes. Much of this has happened under the watch of our “fiscally conservative” governor, Mitt Romney. Reduction in the state income tax rate results in tax increases elsewhere which hit the poor harder. Our state has seen this first hand. I see it as a premonition of what will happen if he wins his likely future run for president.
Our emergency rooms are overflowing with patients who have no health insurance and have nowhere to go for care. These are not only the chronically unemployed or people incapable of working, they are otherwise productive people who have lost their benefits and/or jobs in the recession. We used to have to go to the ER regularly when my daughter would have breathing problems at night, and the last time we went there (last year), the place was overflowing with patients. I had never before seen people spilling out onto the sidewalk, in seven years of visits. We had to wait 5 hours for her to be seen, and this was for breathing difficulty. After-hours urgent care centers (non-ER) have essentially closed down in our area, so the ER is your only alternative after 5 pm.
I had to pay $273 this year for my 8-year old daughter to be able to ride the bus to school; the alternative would have been for her to walk over a mile with no sidewalks to her after-school program. Next year I will have two bus passes to pay for, in all likelihood, especially if Mitt Romney continues to press to lower the state income tax rate in spite of the fiscal crisis. Families with more children do not get a reduction in the amount they have to pay per child for the bus. That means a family with 4 elementary school aged children would have to pay $1092 for the bus (in an area with a lot of Catholics, this is not an uncommon scenario). Our school disctrict has had to lay off teachers for two years in a row to compensate for reduced education funding from the state. We have voted to pay for it with increased real estate taxes, after multiple bitter town meeting votes (so much for a tax reduction, the money has to come from somewhere).
Maybe it’s only now hitting California. Our state tends to get hit hard by these things since we don’t make much difference in national elections, so politicians don’t pay attention to what will affect our electoral votes. I paid $1.19 a gallon for heating oil last year, now I’m paying $1.59. Other people who didn’t get into a price-protected plan early are going to be paying a LOT more. This is a state that was hit hard by the recession and has yet to recover. Many people are still out of work, and have been unemployed long enough to no longer be able to collect unemployment benefits. The job market is picking up, but not fast enough to make a difference for a lot of people who are out of work. I see people panhandling in parts of the city where they never were before. Our preschool is underenrolled due to unemployment, so they have raised the rates to compensate for the lack of children.
I guess my point is, when you have things like this going on in one part of the country, even if it is Massachusetts, it is eventually going to happen in the rest of the nation. The factors that protect other states against these things can only buffer it for so long. And the rest of the nation wonders why we tend to vote Democrat. :roll:
Robin
OUCH!
yer owe it to yer self ta use it 
