When I was a young child my Mom would often see a penny or some other coin on the ground and encourage me to "see a penny, pick it up...all the rest o' the day good luck" (it went something like that LOL) or "a penny saved is a penny earned." And a penny was worth something back then - a candy bar probably twice the size of our current .89 bars was only a nickel (I say probably twice the size because I can twice remember candy makers cutting their sizes). The premium candy bars - Mounds, Snickers, Milky Way, etc. were a dime. An individual sized bag of chips or Fritos was a dime, as was Twinkies or Fruit Pies. I remember my Mom and Dad buying gasoline at the corner gas station where the station attendant checked your oil, washed your windows, and filled the car while you paid .19 a gallon. A first class stamp was .04. Milk was about .20 a half gallon, as I recall. And my folks paid $10,000 for their home. When we moved to Germany in 1966 my Dad earned $600 a month - and we thought that was wonderful.
When Rich and I first married we bought a new car - his was a stick shift and I didn't know how to drive it - a 1973 Ford Maverick. It was a great car. We called it "Morty" - don't ask me why - we just did LOL. But we paid about $3000 for him. The hotel we stayed in, in Oklahoma City on our way to South Carolina, (it was a nice hotel) cost us $12 - that is compared to the DIVE we stayed in the first night we got married that cost us $7 - it was a dollar extra because we chose a TV! (We actually had to go down to the manager's office and roll the tv back to our room - and - oddly enough I don't think we even turned it on! LOL) Our first home in 1975 cost us $26,000. Having a baby cost $600 - that was the cost of the hospital, anesthesiologist, physician, everything for an average 3 day stay. If it was a complicated birth requiring a C-section, the price went up to $1000. You paid those costs over the course of your prenatal care so that when the baby was due everything was taken care of. Most people didn't have insurance - that was just the way things were done.
Obviously prices have risen over the course of my life - a penny or two at a time. However, I was around when the super-inflation of the 1970's - 80's hit. It wasn't pretty then. We bought our first home at 8% interest. We bought our next one 3 1/2 years later at 11% - it had climbed from 9% to that 11% in the time it took us to build it - we sold it without ever moving in - the interest rate made the payments prohibitive. We found a home in Salt Lake that qualified for an FHA 235 loan at the 11% rate but the government program subsidized the interest which allowed us to once again purchase a home. A few months later people in our neighborhood moved in and ended up having loans at 17 and 18%. Then people started to lose their jobs and the market faltered. Many of the homes in our neighborhood were foreclosed on and families struggled to make it during that time.
While those times were no where near as bad as that of the depression - they were difficult. I am afraid for what very well may be ahead of us now. President Obama came out with the budget for 2011 - a whopping $3.83 TRILLION budget! That is at least $1.27 TRILLION more than the government will take in, with taxes on everything conceivable item and activity and assumptions that will be nearly impossible to meet. Nearly 4 TRILLION dollars - how many pennies is that????? I am very anxious that the debt that is being incurred and the spending that is spiraling out of control is going to bring us to an economic disaster that will make the depression look like a mild downturn.
When Elder Oaks came to our Stake in Westminster to change the Stake Presidency he talked to us very candidly about the economy. He urged us all to get our food storage, get out of debt, learn how to garden and put in fruit trees, berries, and nuts, learn how to sew and repair homes and cars. He talked about inflation and how much of our (the U.S.) debt is held by foreign countries (especially China). As he spoke I remembered being in Germany and my brothers and I found a 1,000,000 DM note and being so excited - we thought we had just won the lottery LOL - but my Dad told us that the money was worthless. We couldn't really understand how that could be. He then gave us a small economics lesson and told us that during the height of that inflationary period a wheelbarrow full of 1,000,000 DM notes couldn't buy a loaf of bread. We just couldn't wrap our minds around that. He then cautioned us that that time would come again and to make matters worse there might actually be nothing to buy with our money either. As I write this my mind floats back over our trip to East Germany with the kids and giving them the $10 to spend however they wanted - and there was NOTHING to buy!
What are we doing to ourselves?????? And to make matters worse we are hamstringing ourselves with bureaucratic red tape, regulations, and law suits that strangle the spirit out of us - it boxes us in, crippling us so that we can move quickly enough to the quickly ever changing market forces that are now global in scope instead of just national or local. Why take the risks to start a business or expand one if you have a hassle on every side or will be sued or pay everything back in taxes? This is crazy!
I just can't understand why we need a Department of Education, and EPA, the EEOC... The layers and layer of bureaucracy, waste, and money - who are we joking? We are bankrupt! We have been borrowing from the Chinese and they don't even want to underwrite our debt now! You don't keep spending when you don't have it! You can make a case for any of the programs or expenses that the government is doing - but that isn't the test. There are precious few things that our constitution calls for...the rest are nice...but not essential! And if it isn't essential - WE DON'T NEED IT!!! WE CAN'T AFFORD IT!!!!I have been reading Sarah Pallin's book, "Going Rogue." I like one of the attitudes that is so on display in it - she talks about the sacred trust of "the people's money" and how she wanted everyone in her administration in Alaska to remember that this wasn't just money that grew on trees or that just came out of an ATM - it was the hard earned dollars and CENTS of the people. It reminded me of when I was Stake Relief Society President - I had gone with my Stake President to a training meeting in San Diego where we learned about church welfare. I was impressed with a statistic that the General Authority gave us about how well managed the Lord's funds were - at that time they believed that our Bishops throughout the Church were benevolently caring for the poor but were mindful that these were the sacred funds of the Lord and that there was only about a 3% waste. How sad that Washington, D.C. and our state and local governments don't seem to even recognize the sacred trust that they hold! It is like they think there is some kind of account that just magically fills for whatever pet project or whim they have!
Perhaps even more scary is what as happened to us - one little thing at a time - one little attitude at a time. Quickly we have come to believe that it is the government's role to provide cars, houses, daycare, healthcare, education, jobs for our citizens.... More and more we have come to believe that we can't do these things for ourselves. And, we have become more and more complacent and willing to just turn over our money as our contribution. More and more we have turned over our sovereignty, our free will, to act for ourselves, to choose what we will do. We are becoming enslaved and we will rue the day that we bought the lie that government could do these things for us better or easier than we can do for ourselves.
Every year in Seminary you have the opportunity to teach about the Lord's plan, the United Order, the law of consecration. Every year you have an opportunity to expose Satan's counterfeit plans of socialism, communism, and fascism that have been introduced (usually just about the same time as the Lord's plan is being introduced) and to show the differences between them and teach about the outcomes. I just didn't ever think that I would see such a naked attempt to bring about these counterfeit plans in our own country so quickly and be so promoted and adored by so many of our citizens. I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone!
Our government, that was inspired by the Lord for this promised land, has been corrupted and is now promoting the coveting of our neighbor's property and if our neighbor has the good sense to want to hang on to his money and property (believing that he earned it and it is his to do as he chooses) our government is trying to smear him with lies and falsehoods - and if that doesn't work they are advocating the outright theft of his goods! And what is so appalling is that so many are taken in by the lies - they are actually believing that it isn't "fair" for someone to have more than another! How is it possible that we have sunk this low this fast? It wasn't that long ago that everyone I knew believed in an honest days work for an honest days pay, helping someone in need, that you got ahead in life by working hard and doing your best - being prepared for the opportunities when they came your way, being honest, the little things - that if you saved the pennies then the dollars would follow.
Perhaps that is one of the problems in our current situation - the numbers are just so huge that you get to the point that you just can't believe that one penny is all that important. But it is.
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