I thought I was getting a bargain...

...when I filled up the truck last week and paid $2.49/gallon.

Today, gas is $2.19/gallon at the same station!

If (when) it goes below the $2.00 mark, I'll take a picture and post it here so my grandchildren will know that I was not lying!

Of course, they already think I'm telling a story when I tell them that there used to be "gas wars" and I'd fill up my Volkswagen for less than $2.00.

Uhhh....NOT $2.00/gallon.......$2.00 TOTAL!!!!!

Oh, and they'd give you a plate, or a glass, or an insulated mug, or some other little gift as their special "thank you" for shopping with them!

Oh....and another blast from the past; that was when some stations were still "full service" stations and most were part self-serve and part full service! If you pulled into the full service lane, a guy in uniform met you at the car, filled your tank, checked your oil, checked your tire inflation, and washed your windshield, all for only $0.10/gallon more!

That was a LOT, people! During "gas wars," I'd often pay less than $0.20/gallon altogether! In fact, I remember buying from the Shamrock in town and paying $0.159/gallon once upon a time!

My VW bug would run for two weeks on $1.60!!!!

Of course, that really WAS a different time. Not many people drove pick-up trucks in those days. If you DID drive a truck, you could expect to get 8 mpg regardless of engine choice, make, etc. Naturally, most people who drove trucks got the big powerful v-8 engines to go with them. If you bought the stock power package, which typically consisted of an in-line 6-cylinder engine of around 200 CIs displacement and a "three on the tree" manual transmission, you might do better; perhaps up to 20 mpg on the road! Remarkable!

As I said, I had a 1962 Volkswagen. It had a 1200 cc horizontally-opposed 4-cylinder engine that was air-cooled and a four on the floor transmission. I usually got around 25 mpg, which was pretty good for that day and time of poorly-tuned carburetors and manually-adjusted valve lifters! It had been painted using an aftermarket paint, so it looked like a German helmet or something! It was forest green metallic! I wish I still had that car today! It was awesome!

Well, that was then and this is now! Today, we're looking at the advent of socialism in America, which, quite frankly, is something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. That's not to say that I didn't think it would ever happen; I just never thought I'd see it!

It's not hard to see socialism on the rise here in America and, with an increase in the practice of incrementalism by it's proponents, it's really not that hard to imagine that it's here so soon!

Uhhh.....what's "incrementalism?" It's the little by little "chipping away" of our objections to something that would have once been unimaginable! A good example; gay marriage. If someone would have said that I'd see openly and LEGALLY married gays in America 30 years ago, I'd have accused them of smoking the stuff from the evidence room! I mean, at that time, no one would have EVER admitted to being homosexual, let alone living an openly homosexual lifestyle! Now, not only have they slowly but surely come out of the closet, they've convinced a preponderance of lawmakers in the more liberal states that allowing gays to marry is a good idea! Well, that wasn't achieved all at once, but little by little over along time. That "little by little over a long time" thing is "incrementalism," and it's practiced more and more to achieve things that were once considered preposterous!

So, how did socialism, an economic system once synonymous with communism and/or fascism, get to the fore in America? Well, it started with all of the public service stuff of FDR during the depression and became entrenched because of Social Security and later, Medicare. A whole generation of Americans were raised with the notion that taking sustenance entirely from the government was okay! So, in this day and time, it's suddenly not that preposterous to imagine everyone working for the government in some form or fashion.

Uhhh....repeat after me, people:

If I have no inherent reward for doing good work and building my profit-centers, I will surely not do good work or worry about making a profit!

That's why the Soviet Union didn't make it AND why China is more capitalist today than we are! People will not do their best when there's no incentive to do their best and an economy that's based on products and services offered for no other reason than boredom will be shoddy and hardly worth the material that's put into them!

Sadly, the Russian people had to learn this lesson the hard way, the people of eastern Europe had to learn it the hard way, and the people of southeast Asia are still learning it the hard way today!

We don't really have to go there, too, do we?