Recently I gained some insight as to how farcical our credit problems are in this country, when Aussie Pitts received a letter in our mailbox offering her a $100,000 home equity line of credit.
First of all, Aussie is my dog and I doubt her doghouse is worth anywhere near $100,000 after the recent real estate collapse. Then, there is the fact that Aussie has been dead for several years now.

Besides dogs being offered credit cards in the mail, there are other signs of an economic ill wind all around us. It’s bad enough that 28 percent of Americans have their total retirement savings tied up in lottery tickets, but even more distressing is the fact that a Bangladesh bank has opened what it hopes will be the first of many branches in the United States.

When the only way people can get their hands on lunch money is to borrow from a third-world bank, you know we are in trouble.

I’m already hearing the blame being laid at the muddy feet of “greedy” farmers and ranchers for the impending recession. Before we all get too carried away, let’s put things in proper perspective.
It’s true: Food prices are up 7 percent over the last year, but compare that with an increase in gas prices of 27 percent and banking fees that are up 25 percent. The Post Office is charging me 50 percent more to mail one of my books this year than they did last year and they are getting ready to raise their rates yet again.

The water company is talking about tripling our water rates, trash collection charges are up 10 percent and electricity, 11 percent. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health insurance premiums for the average American have risen 78 percent since 2002 and it now costs more to send your son and daughter to an Ivy League college than the median income in this country. Just one textbook for one college class can now cost more than I paid in 1972 for a full year’s tuition.

And yet, people are mad they are paying 7 percent more for food.
Even that figure distorts how much farmers and ranchers are really receiving. My wife works in a grocery store and hears the complaints every day from people wailing that a head of lettuce costs $1.99. What they don’t know is that the farmer who cared for the crop for three months received just 36 cents of that.

Top sirloin steak may be $7.99 per pound, but I don’t think the 89 cents that the rancher received is too much to ask for a year’s worth of work. It’s true, food prices have gone up 7 percent this past year, but when you consider that the producer gets just 20 percent of the food dollar, it means that the producer received an increase of 1.4 percent this year.

When I was in college, I recall that the average American paid 16 percent of their disposable income for food. Know what it is now? Less than 10 percent – and that includes all food, even eating out. That’s the lowest rate in the world, by the way.

The Farm Bureau has an eye-opening way of putting all this in proper perspective. Farm Checkout Day was Feb. 6. This means that your average American earned enough money in 37 days to pay for their family’s food for an entire year. By comparison, it takes 60 days to pay for housing, 50 days for health and medical care and 50 days for recreation and clothes.

And get this: Tax Freedom Day, the date when your average American earned enough to pay his family’s taxes for the year, occurred on April 23 – the 114th day of the year!

I hope that the city folks who read this column won’t be so quick to blame the farmer and rancher the next time they go to church just to get something cheap to eat at Communion. What they should be doing is getting down on their knees and thanking God that our farms and ranchers are not being run by the D.C. fat cats who are taking three times more of your money than what it costs to feed your family for a year.

Even the Wall Street speculators who got us into this mess could tell which of the two is the better investment.