WARNING: RANT AHEAD
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First, let me start by telling you that we in ES donīt get gas supplied through our homes the way some of you do in other countries, but rather SOME of us (mostly middle class) buy gas cilinders to cook on gas stoves. Why? Because it is a LOT less expensive than an electric stove...or, perhaps I should say WAS... The gas here is heavily subsidized, as are water and electricity, and one of the first things the new government wanted to do was "make sure that the subsidy goes to those that really need it"....ok, nothing wrong with that... You might remeber that a while back I was complaining about my water and electricity bill... now itīs the gas. This, though, is a lot trickier... because you can either have the cilinder brought to your home or you can go buy it...so... how are they going to know you really "need it" (a.k.a: that youīre poor)?...so, their decision has been to eliminate the subsidy completely...the gas cilinder I buy currently costs $5.10.... this same cilinder will cost me $13.10 in the near future!...
Honestly, everyoneīs joking about this right now (what else can we do? Cry about it?)..."we should go on that raw food diet"..."I want a turbo-kitchen"..."letīs go solar!"...etc... Now, it may not seem like much, and, in reality, in my house it might mean less junk food and sodas or animal protein, or other things like that...but...what does it mean to the family that makes $500 a month pre-tax? Or, even worse, to those living on minimimum salary at $200 per month pre-tax??
The truly poorer of the poor donīt even use gas, as $5.10 is already out of their reach, they use wood stoves...for the truly rich, the difference is nothing... so...guess who gets affected the most??
Ah, and in case we were thinking of switching from meat to beans, because of all the rain, the NEXT crop of beans will be low, so some distributors have decided to recoup those losses beforehand by raising the price of beans from $0.60 to $0.90 per Lb...now, what about the people that were barely making it on beans, corn tortillas and an occasional egg??
sorry, rant over!
157% increase in the price of gas! And beans are up from $0.60 to $0.90
September 25th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
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