$10,000 for a cup of coffee!

I was in line getting my morning coffee the other day and I noticed that all I had in my wallet was a few $100.00 dollar bills (a good weekend playing hold em). I started to think about the times that I have traveled to other countries, like Italy and France. Over there it is not unusual for thinks to cost 10,000L or even 100,000L. Is everything inflated there because those countries have been around a lot longer than we have. Think about it, I am sure at one time in there history, you could get an expresso in Italy for a few Lira. Now everything seems to cost 10,000 Lira.

How long will it be until we are paying $10,000 for a cup of coffee. Will there come a day when I will look into my wallet and think, "dam all I have is $100,000 dollar bills." Maybe we will get to the point where we actually carry around $1,000,000 bills. It is not as outrages as you think...in Italy people pay 1 million Lira for things. Ok maybe we would not get to that point in my lifetime, but I wondered what stops that kind of inflation. Maybe four more years of George Bush.

I remember when gas was under a dollar a gallon...yeah I am old. Now if it is under two dollars a gallon, you think you are getting a deal. How long before it is $10.00 a gallon...$100.00 a gallon. I realize that we make more money now and a dollar is not what it used to be, but that is my point. If salaries keep going up, then the cost of goods have to increase, then the amount you need to live increases and pretty soon you are paying $10,000 for a cup of coffee. Maybe I should have paid more attention in economics class.

Another thing I don't understand (there are many), why do we still use pennies? You can't buy a dam thing with them. All they do is take up space. Why not just round to the nearest nickel and get rid of the pennies. If you are like me, you have a jar of them in you house and you don't know what to do with them. I save them until I get enough of them to buy something, then I have to take them to the store and put them in the counting machine. The machine charges me 10% or some ridiculous amount just to count them. The sad thing is that they make new pennies at the mint all the time. They never get to remove any because we are all hoarding them in jars at our house. I think I will send the government my jar of pennies this year when I have to pay taxes. Maybe if we paid our government officials in pennies, they would see the futility in them and remove them from circulation.