OT: Energy prices continue to fall

Sure...and stamps for stuff like butter etc. Do you remember margarine that was coloured white (looked like lard), each package had a little packet of bright orange/yellow colouring powder that you mixed with the margarine?...they weren't allowed to sell it ready mixed lest someone might think it was butter.

Then later it 'was' allowed.

Especially in Wisconsin. . . . That's what my Dad told me, anyway. . . .

So you're saying margarine is basically colored lard? And they tell us it's better than butter? OK, what have they been smoking? Ain't BC Bud, that's for sure. . . .

Charles of Kankakee

OK, In Kankakee, gas went down from 2.90 to 2.83 in one day. But they are all the same. Up here, I can drive 6 blocks and go from 2.99 to 2.77 in Schaumburg. I've seen it for 2.73 at one of the oasis yesterday. . . . So if Kankakee has price fixing, why doesn't Schaumburg? I dare someone to make sense of that . . . .

Charles of Kankakee

...and if one did have it then one had worked for about two hours for it...what was the hourly wage back then? maybe 50 cents an hour? (5 gallons), what is it now? maybe $25 an hour? (6 gallons).

The NUMBERS mean NOTHING.

What matters is "How long must one work for a staple?"; a gallon of gas, a months rent, a car, a loaf of bread...etc.

The price means nothing...it's just numbers. If a loaf of bread cost a million dollars it wouldn't mean anything if the hourly wage would allow you to buy the same 'amount' of bread in an hour as if it cost 10 cents a loaf.

In 1950, phone calls were 5 cents. Stamps were 3 cents. The minimum wage was probably 75 cents still. Gas was less than 20 cents a gallon in most of the places I know of. . . . Don't know the price of bread back then.

Charles of Kankakee

I grew up in a Kosher household. Margarine? Nope.

-Philip

Gord Beaman wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

The province of Quebec is still ike that. White margarine. The butter lobby is pretty powerful there.

My brother thinks that because his name is David that he can't eat pork . . . .

Seems funny that just now they are discovering that most margarines aren't as healthy for you as plain ordinary butter. . . .

Charles of Kankakee

Let David continue believing he cannot eat pork products. His arteries will thank him.

-Philip

You have got to be kidding. People today live far better than at any time in the past. Candy was three pieces for a penny and a movie was 5c but in those days few had a penny or a nickel for such things. Hell we were lucky to get a second pair of shoes in a years time. The minimum wage was .25c in the fifties. I don't remember that there was a minimum wage before the war. There were few jobs to be had in the late thirties anyway.. The war was what actually ended the depression, not anything the government did. Before the war a new car was $700, after the war it was $1,700. Inflation ruled because of the war. The government spend ten times what it took in to save our asses, far more than they are today to do the same. Today the average family has two cars or more. When I was a kid only doctors, lawyers and the like owned cars. In 1955 a new Buick was $3,500 and the average wage was $1.50 an hour today things are actually cheaper in comparison, considering Jimmy Caters nearly four years of double digit inflation, where the value of everything dropped nearly in half. Refrigerators, stoves, TV all cost around the same as they did thirty years ago. The only things that have gone up, adjusted for inflation, are those things in which the government got involved with environmental cost and things like cars and health care. ;)

mike hunt

My grandfather was a licensed buttermaker in Wisconsin. I used to hang out at the churn and get a fee sample of fresh butter when I was a kid. That's most likely the reason I can't stand the stuff now. I've got his trophies for the highest butter fat content he won back in the 1930s. Nothing that will plug up your arteries faster is a couple packs of smokes a day and a good portion of real butter whether it's raw butter or ingredients in cookies cake ect ect.

We use olive oil.

Margarine and pork fat foods will do you in faster.

-Philip

no they won't.

Yes they will. Traditional German, Polish, Phillipino, or other southeast Asian diet with lots of pork and you find lots of clogged arteries and arterial sclerosis.

-Philip

Compared to what? Beef is worse than pork. Wild game such as deer is better than both. For myself I limit my intake of beef and pork. Pure creamery butter is 100 percent cholesterol, cholesterol is what plugs up your arteries. Your liver makes cholesterol. Some livers make more than the body needs, like mine. So I have to take medicine keeps that under control. Your arm has to control the food side and be careful not to take in too much of it in the form of food such as pure creamery butter like my grandfather won big trophies for, high fat content. Here's a site you go to to read about all the different fats that are in foods ect:

There are a bunch more places that will all say the basically the same. Yes, there is a case against some margarine, but I'll take my chances over eating butter.

I'm quite a bit ahead of you. Family history and at my age, I've already seen what genetics and long term cultural diets do to people. Perhaps from earlier correspondences you forget that I still volunteer time at a hospital. Regarding your "this is worse than that"... the pork products associated with arterial occlusions are ground products (more so pork than beef) packed in 'skins', ie sausages, kielbasa, etc. This is very traditional and cultural. Yes, you can eat beef and pork with less long term risk when you eat lean cuts of meat that you can identify. Can't do that with a sausage product or a ground beef product. Olive oil instead of margarine is smart. I hope you don't harbor the notion that a statin drug will equally offset bad eating habits. Many people wrongly think so.

-Philip

You didn't read my message. I said some people have livers that produce more cholesterol than the body needs and so the medicine to slow down the production. I've been though the whole gambit, diet first then the Zocor, I'm at 148, without Zocor it's 265 and rising, diet or not. I'm not a big person, I weigh 155 and am 5 ft 10 in. It's not a replacement for good diet I agree. Processed meat is a whole different ballgame again. You know all about that so no need to talk about it.

Here is another good site of advice:

BTW, my family on my fathers side has history of cardiovascular problems. My father had his first heart attack at age 49. His mother died at age 57 of stroke. Her sisters and brothers all died of similar problems. I think we all have livers that produce too much cholesterol and the diet they used to maintain was rich with butter fat. Lots of pastry and greasy food.

You spoke too soon. Oil went up $4.39 today.

just a spike due to the new storm brewing. Gas fell again here, $2.45/gal. Remember Carol, oil in the ground will not last forever. We right now or in the next few years are peaking in oil reserves. It's all downhill from hereabouts. Our grandkids will have to be looking to an alternate fuel as oil will be needed for more important uses than you driving your civic. Like what's going to lubricate the wheels of your electric solar powered vehicle.