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I hate the say I'm ashamed of my fellow Americans, but I just have to say it this time. We've got it great. We're so spoiled by the cheap gas and zero profit margins of the past few years that we think prices set at half of what the rest of the world pays and wafer thin profit margins for the oil companies is criminal gouging. Our memories are so short we don't realize that except for the past few years, gas still takes up a smaller portion of our income than it ever has. Adjusted for inflation, it is slightly more expensive than it was in the 60s, and in the meantime fuel efficiency has more than doubled. If it happened more than a commercial break ago, we forget it. Americans need to grow a pair. Despite the perfect storm of a credit and housing crisis, a cyclical downturn, and some pretty high inflation, we haven't actually entered a recession yet. If we do, it will likely be unusually mild and short. Yet people are screaming bloody murder. Sure some people can't afford to drive their Sequoias on their single-person commute across the state every day. So we can only afford to buy one new video game this month. We can't afford to take a vacation this year. On and on and on. We're so busy whining about how badly our lives suck and how mean the gas companies are that we scarcely notice that 15,000 people died in Myanmar in the past few days and people are rioting across the world due to food shortages. Yes it is belt tightening time in America, but the fact you have a belt to tighten and pants to tighten it around (speaking figuratively) already puts you better off than the majority of the rest of the world. Breath. Relax. Everything will be OK for us. And if you get a stimulus check, spend it helping someone who really needs it.
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