Things just keep getting more expensive. The price of gasoline is incredible, averaging well over $4.00/gallon at my local station where it was under $3.00 just a few months ago. All projections are that its price is not going down soon – and may increase a lot more. Coupled with growing costs for food and increasingly expensive health insurance, making ends meet is simply getting more and more difficult. And our national debt is increasing at an astonishing rate. I wonder if anyone is even thinking about what all the new federal government budgetary requests and massive new funds add to this debt. Regardless of your personal politics – what do you think about your obligation to eventually pay back this money through your taxes? Local and state governments can do a little bit to help with the situation, but it barely makes a dent compared to the power of the federal government.
A couple of things recently signed into law that will help Virginians a bit include a monthly cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35, and a requirement for Marketplace insurers to offer plans that cap monthly out-of-pocket drug costs. Our governor just signed legislation providing paid worker sick leave for at least five days per year, so at least that is some protection if you can’t get to work (while protecting people from getting sick if coworkers have to drag themselves into work while infectious.) While these new laws will not be helping everyone, they will help many people – particularly those who don’t earn a lot of money and have health problems. They serve as a good example of the approach that the state legislature is taking – trying to reduce costs where it can. Clearly though it can’t counterbalance what is happening to our budgets nationally.
Anyone seeing the price for diesel fuel (approaching $6 per gallon) should realize that the rapidly increasing cost of shipping is going to add considerably to our food prices. Of course, that is in addition to the increasing costs of running farm machinery and paying farm workers who are in increasingly short supply. Agricultural fertilizers are not being shipped from the Mideast – further reducing supply and adding to costs. It’s all a bit scary.
Perhaps one thing that many (or at least some) of us can do locally is to help our neighbors through our own gardens. This season provides a nice chance to do something helpful rather than focus on all the bad things happening. Although weather projections are iffy, the El Niño forecast for this summer calls for unusually hot, wet weather. Perhaps our personal gardens can produce a bit more than we can use? And it is easy to distribute anything extra – food pantries usually welcome fresh produce. We can’t do much about the price of food, but those who have their own gardens may be able to help their neighbors meaningfully. I have my own garden planted to capacity this year and certainly hope to be able to give some away to folks who would enjoy fresh produce and who don’t have a lot of money to buy healthy food. It simply would be a meaningful way to contribute to my community – and something that I would feel good about doing.
