dollar signI just filled up my gas tank and I didn’t want to cry -- I actually did cry. At $4 per gallon, it cost me nearly a c-note to fill up my mid-size SUV. That’s not for the fancy high-octane stuff either; we’re talking regular unleaded.

We don’t have room in our budget to increase the amount of money we spend on gas, so this means we’ll be doing a lot less driving. Fewer trips to visit friends in neighboring cities, no running back to the store for that one thing we forgot, and definitely no drives through the countryside.

I’ve had to do a lot of economizing in the kitchen too, as the price of food has been going up and up. The First Lady likes to tout the benefits of organic rabbit food (which, by the way, children would rather throw away than eat), but she’s not the one trying to pay for it on a modest salary. 

Organic farming is much more expensive than farming with pesticides. Without pesticides, there’s nothing to kill the hungry bugs in the fields, which means that actual people need to be employed to keep the produce from being chomped to the vine by the creepy-crawlers. Employing people to care for the plants in organic farms is much more expensive than hiring a crop-duster once or twice a season.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the cost of organic food, but all food that has climbed in recent months and years. In fact, food prices rose more last month than they have in 36 years. 

From the AP: 

Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. Most of that increase was due to a sharp rise in vegetable costs, which increased nearly 50 percent. That was the most in almost a year. Meat and dairy products also rose.

Energy prices rose 3.3 percent last month, led by a 3.7 percent increase in gasoline costs.

The rising cost of gas and food should be called Environmental Taxation. We can’t drill for oil, build new coal or nuclear plants, or even develop green energy properly because windmills are ugly. Farms in California, one of the most fertile growing regions in the country, are being denied access to water. Not only do we have less vegetation to cultivate, it’s now more expensive to transport it to the grocery stores. 

Grocery stores (where most people purchase their food) are not only paying more for their product, they’re paying more for their overhead, thanks to Obamacare mandates, extended unemployment, and the aforementioned cost of energy. Those freezer cases aren’t powered by pixie dust.

President Obama may have prevented the largest tax hike in history when he extended the Bush tax rate for the next two years, but his policies have skyrocketed hidden green taxes.

 

Photo via Jim Legans, Jr/Flickr