Is This The Right Time...

...to add a 20 cent tax to each plastic shopping bag? My family of six went grocery shopping for the week on Sunday, and it took 15 plastic bags to carry home our purchases. With the proposed plastic bag tax, that would have added $3 to our total. Projected out over a year, that's $156 added to our food budget. Who can afford that? We would just drive to Moscow and do our grocery shopping. The plastic bags there are free and we wouldn't spend $3 in gas to get there and back. Sign the online petition to stop this tax here if you haven't already.

The Department of Labor's Consumer Price Index for food and beverages jumped 10 points between July 2006 and July 2007, and then leapt nearly 12 points between July 2007 and last month. Prices have slowly increased throughout the year.

According to the index, a dozen eggs cost an average of 51 cents more now than they did a year ago. Red delicious apples are up 38 cents a pound, and white bread costs about 18 cents more per loaf. Chicken and ground beef are more expensive, too, and the price of milk rose almost 5 percent in July alone.

- "Paying more, getting less; Area residents forced to make sacrifices as food prices continue to climb," Moscow-Pullman Daily News, August 16, 2008

Wholesale inflation surged in July, leaving prices for the past year rising at the fastest pace in 27 years, according to government data released Tuesday.

The Labor Department reported that wholesale prices shot up 1.2 percent in July, pushed higher by rising costs for energy, motor vehicles and other products. The increase was more than twice the 0.5 percent gain that economists expected.

(snip)

Food prices rose by 0.3 percent in July after a 1.5 percent surge in June. Beef prices jumped by 7.4 percent, the biggest increase in nearly four years. Milk prices shot up by 5 percent, the biggest gain in a year, while soft drink prices rose by 2.4 percent, the largest increase in four years.

- "Wholesale prices rising at fastest pace since 1981," Seattle Times, August 19, 2008