Cagle World

Should you invest in the stock market now or wait?

That is the tough question the money experts are discussing.

Stock prices continue to fall and NASDAQ.com says what’s “Even more unnerving is that nobody knows how long this downturn will last or how far prices will fall before the market bottoms out and starts to recover.”

“Unnerving” is well put.

I have a modest little nest egg that I want to invest in stocks, but I don’t have the stomach to see it shrink if the market keeps dropping — even though I know my egg will eventually grow in the long term.

I don’t pretend to understand the many factors that cause the stock market to rise and fall and this economics stuff has always confused me.

At Penn State, my economics professor thought I was a fool.

Purcell: A rapidly-growing economy is good, sir, because then we can all get rich!

Professor: Rapid growth causes inflation, you nitwit!

Purcell: Low unemployment is terrific because that means everyone gets to have a  job!

Professor: Low unemployment can cause wage pressures, which causes inflation, you goof!

Believe it or not I got a B-plus in the class. To every question, I simply gave the opposite answer to the one I thought was correct.

Today’s global economy is really confusing to me. Everything is hopelessly linked together in ways even the geniuses don’t really comprehend.

Inflation is out of control in the USA thanks to government debt and spending, so the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates to quell it, which could cause the economy to slow down, which can hurt the stock market — or something like that.

A dictator invades Ukraine, which is causing a fertilizer shortage, which is causing food prices to soar because farmers are seeing smaller crop yields — or something like that.

All I know for sure is that American cars are built with motors made in Mexico, bumpers made in Brazil, ignition systems made in Taiwan — and then they’re assembled in Canada.

You want an American car, buy a Honda. They make those in Columbus, Ohio.

And all this interweaving of international investment means anything that happens anywhere in the world can make or break our stock market, which will impact the day I can finally retire.

We’re now flirting with an official bear market, a period in which stock prices decline by 20% or more from a recent peak.

The  Dow Jones Industrial Average is only off 15%, but the tech-heavy Nasdaq index is down 30 percent from its all-time high.

And the S&P 500, which is considered a barometer of the health of corporate America, briefly fell into bear territory last week before recovering slightly.

NASDAQ.com wisely suggests that people nearing retirement age may want to hold off on retiring for a little while because bear markets can be especially painful to retirees trying to live off their shrinking stock portfolios.

The Wall Street Journal reports the S&P 500 has declined an average of 36% during bear markets going back to 1929, so things could still get much worse.

In any event, here’s what’s unnerving to me:

Depending on how well I invest now, I’ll either spend my retirement years flipping burgers or sipping toddies at a Caribbean resort — and I’ll probably end up doing both.

So what is my investment plan?

If I ever determine what the heck the correct one is, I’ll follow my Penn State economics wisdom and make the opposite investment.

–

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].

Prom season is upon us.

It’s wonderful to see the excitement on the faces of young people as they pose for photos in their front yards, dressed up in their finest duds.

I hate to admit it, but I feel bad for these young people.

As they stand there being photographed, enthralled by the last event of their high school years, they have little idea what their future holds.

After spending their entire lives in an era of low inflation, cheap money and a growing economy, they must now feel the sting of higher costs.

Because their fancy dresses — along with everything else in our inflation-wracked economy — are so expensive this year, the trend for many young women has been to choose lower-cost fabrics, according to MSN.

Many kids will head off to college where they and their parents will be greeted with ever-increasing college bills.

I hope they make wise choices. If they don’t have the big bucks to pay for college, I hope they don’t borrow tens of thousands of dollars to do so.

I also hope they do what many wise students have been doing for years — start at a community college, where the costs are reasonable, then transfer the credits to another school in their junior year.

Finding meaningful, well-paying work is hard enough without starting your career up to your neck in student-loan debt.

Speaking of debt, our political leaders keep racking up ridiculously huge debt and deficit numbers.

As baby boomers retire — as we cash our Social Security checks and run up Medicare bills — guess who is going to have to pay them?

That’s right, those young, smiling people posing for prom photos on mom and dad’s lawn.

Worse yet, as our country’s never-ending debt strangles the economy, at some point many of the government programs today’s high school grads will be funding will have to be cut, which means they likely won’t get to enjoy them when they become old.

Watching today’s prom kids makes me realize how lucky I have been.

I graduated from high school in 1980. When I got out of college in 1984 I was greeted by a booming economy and, despite being an English major, a good job with a high-tech company that was also booming.

My generation had a lot of reasons to be optimistic and all of my friends have done very well in their careers — some of them have enjoyed financial success beyond their wildest dreams.

My parents graduated in the 1950s and they, too, had reason to be optimistic.

They grew up with nothing and went on to live better than they ever expected in a country and an economy that blossomed wonderfully throughout most of their lives.

We still have an opportunity to save the future of our prom goers, but that would require us to get our act together.

We could get leaders from both parties to focus on the expensive elephant in the living room — our $30 trillion debt — and rein in federal spending now before we are forced to do so later.

But all our political leaders do is “talk.”

“Congressional leaders make progress on spending talks,” the headlines always say.

They never say, “A bold plan to rein in spending and save the future of young Americans was signed by the president today!”

So enjoy your prom, my young American friends. I hope you have the time of your lives, because, I fear, you are in for a rocky adulthood.

–

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].

After all these years, my dad inspires me still.

As I write this, the almost 89-year-old fellow is fighting to get back onto his feet as stenosis, bad knees and general old age are wearing him down.

But though his body shows wear and tear, his mind remains as agile as his sense of humor.

And as he fights his daily battles he continues to inspire his children.

The old saying “actions speak louder than words” applies perfectly to my dad.

He never was much for talking, but he is the biggest action figure I’ve ever known.

He worked long, hard hours every day at Bell Telephone and took overtime work almost every holiday I can remember to provide for us the best way he knew how.

He never did much for himself.

His greatest indulgences included a weekly case of Pabst Blue Ribbon and keeping a $5 bill in his wallet so he could get hot coffee on cold days.

His actions spoke clearly to his kids: “I’m not a sophisticated man, but I love you with all my heart and I will always take care of you.”

When he spoke actual words, he always began with three: “For Godsakes, Betty…”

Betty is his preferred name for my mother, Elizabeth. He met her in high school when he was 16.

He told me again last week he knew immediately he would marry her and they did marry five years later.

Now they have six children, 17 grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.

Marriage is hard. Family is hard. Our clan wasn’t spared the challenges, setbacks and disagreements every family faces.

But the one constant that got us through is that my father deeply loves my mother. He dotes on her. He’s lost without her.
After more than 70 years together, my dad told me his heart still beats fast when my mother walks into the room — that they still hold hands every single night as they fall asleep.

A child is the last person on Earth to accurately evaluate his parents’ relationship. Theirs is intense and sometimes confusing to us — but, goodness, they love each other.

That is one of the best gifts parents can give their kids. My parents gave us a genuine love story — and here I am at 60 and they’re sharing their love story with me still.

And my father is inspiring me still.

He’s in pain every day. The most basic tasks are becoming harder.

Sometimes, the frustration gets to him, but most days he displays incredible grace as he jokes,  “Getting old ain’t for the weak!”
I share his influence on me because I know how important he has been in shaping me and my sisters into the people we are.

I think of all of the kids, particularly boys, who are getting into trouble because they do not have a father whose actions could inspire and guide them to positive outcomes in life.

My sisters and I are not perfect, but we work hard to be good people and good spouses, parents and neighbors.

And now, as our parents age, it is our turn to repay them — our turn for our actions to be louder than our words by showing:

“We’re not sophisticated people, but we love you with all our heart and we will always take care of you.”

–

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].

I started my first business in the 5th grade when I convinced a neighbor to allow me to cut her grass with her electric lawn mower.

That project ended in immediate failure.

The mower was powered by a long extension cord — a cord I ran over and sliced in two shortly after I began mowing.

Such is the life of the entrepreneur, a life typically filled with lots more failure than success.

According to The Balance Small Business, an entrepreneur is someone who develops an enterprise around an innovation, manages the new enterprise and assumes the financial risk for its success or failure.

My definition of an entrepreneur is an independent business person who creates a service or solution that the world didn’t know it needed — and who has the passion and drive to continuously perfect that service or solution.

Walt Disney was a failed animator whose never-give-up creative vision filled my childhood with wonderful stories.

Steve Jobs established an inventive approach to computer technology that now makes it incredibly easy for novices like me to shoot and edit funny videos of my dog (#ThurbersTail) and have a blast doing it.

My favorite entrepreneurs, though, are the millions of restless Americans who can’t stand to report to a “boss” and simply want to create their own products or services and rise or fall financially based on their quality and salability.

People like my beloved carpet cleaner, who has refined his technology and technique to get spots out of rental property carpets and furniture nobody else can remove — all while doing zero harm to the environment.

People like the daughter of a fellow I know who, as a high school sophomore, started a business in her basement creating custom protective phone cases for smartphones — a business she turned into a successful career.

The entrepreneurial bug has captivated me for many years.

When I was 17 I decided I was a stonemason and was soon making a significant chunk of money by rebuilding stone and block walls all over hilly western PA.

I got a great offer to join the corporate world after college, but at 27 I jumped at a chance to start an advertising business with a long-time pro.

We risked it all to start an IT support business with a few others, but that entrepreneurial digital dream sent me to the poor house.
For many years now I’ve been self-employed providing communication services.

But I’ve also had solid success with a venture in real estate rentals and, since I got my puppy, Thurber, I’ve had several ideas for pet-related innovations.

Much to my surprise, nobody has invented a solution to end the annoying problem of pet hair. So am decided to find a solution. I expect to soon launch a clever innovation that will help me and a few million others dog and cat owners.

I’ve long believed — and the data backs me up — that the entrepreneur is the lifeblood not only of our economy but of our quality of life (dishwasher, automatic transmission and on and on).

So why aren’t we doing all we can to support our entrepreneurs? Why are patents still so hard and costly to get?

Why do we impose so many unnecessary rules that make business startups harder and costlier?

The United States ranked 6th among 190 economies in the ease of doing business in 2019, but we should be No. 1.

We must remove the regulatory roadblocks to unleash the creativity and innovation of entrepreneurs, because in the end we all benefit from their dreams.

–

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].

“Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.”

Those are the clever words of British humorist Terry Pratchett, who couldn’t have explained the aging process more succinctly.

I know his words are true because I turned 60 this week.

It’s a heck of a thing to have burned through six decades already. If I’d known 60 years would go by so fast, I would have taken worse care of myself.

Time is a humbling thing.

I know now my greatest accomplishment — aside from an uncanny ability to catch grapes in my mouth no matter how far or high my friends throw them — was becoming a bouncer at the legendary Rathskeller pub at Penn State.

When I was half this age, I was certain I knew everything. I was cocky and brash and incredibly wrong.

Now, I realize I know very little, but the things I do know, I know well.

I know that fame is a waste of time — and excess wealth, too — as they bring with them more problems than either are worth.
You don’t who your friends really are until your money is gone. And if you ever do anything stupid as a famous person, social media will broadcast it all over the world.

Several studies have been done on the subject of happiness. Having just enough money to save a little for a rainy day and go out with the love of your life a few times a month is all the money you really need.

It’s friends and loved ones that bring us real wealth.

It’s the laughter we can only enjoy with our closest friends — people we know we can count on no matter how difficult our lot becomes.

It’s the love we enjoy from our closest family members, friends, and lifelong spouses and partners — the people we attend weddings, holiday events and special occasions with — all of our most memorable experiences.

And it’s not just people.

Why I waited until the age of 59 to get another dog — last having one as a child so many years ago — is possibly the most bone-headed decision I ever made.

Somebody said God removed the wings from pets like my best buddy Thurber, so that nobody would know they are angels.

This guy makes me laugh out loud every single day — something I didn’t realize I was failing to do until he entered my life.

When we are young, we dream of big houses, and we hope to impress total strangers.

As we grow older and wiser, we realize none of that matters. We realize that time is going by way too fast and that every single moment is precious.

I was sick as a dog with a nasty flu weeks ago and, brought to my knees, I went through a paradigm shift.

I decided I never want to waste another healthy moment.

I started eating healthier than ever. I exercise daily. I go for walks with Thurber.

I turn in at a decent hour, so I wake refreshed at 5:40 every morning ready to dive into the new day.

All I want to do now is write well, read great literature and learn how to love better, give back more, laugh harder and spend every moment with people I love as though it were the last moment I had to live.

Maybe it’s time to alter Pratchett’s clever quote:

“Inside every old person is a wiser person trying to make great things happen with whatever God-given time he has left!”

–

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].

“In this world, nothing can be said to be certain but death and taxes.”

That quote is often attributed to Ben Franklin or Mark Twain, but whoever said it, no truer words have ever been spoken.

I filed my annual income tax extension on April 18, 2022, the last day of this year I was able to do so.

Every year, I vow to get my tax receipts in order and to my CPA by early March, and every year I don’t and must file an extension.

To make the task easier for me, my CPA set up a Quicken account that allows me to record in real time every check that comes in and every expense that goes out.

But I don’t use that convenient tool as I should, either — and I never know for certain how much money I’ll receive back from the IRS or have to pay until October, when my 2021 return is finally due.

Taxes are on my mind all year long, regrettably, and it seems in one form or another they are always due.

I can always sense when it’s tax-paying time: It’s when I start to save a little money and enjoy, wrongly, the exhilarating sense that I am finally getting financially ahead.

In the autumn I have to pay taxes on my house and the handful of rental properties I’ve been able to scrape together — and the taxes are sizable.

Then when spring rolls around I have to write a massive check to the IRS and be reminded that my silent business partner, the federal government, always gets its cut of my income.

Most people agree that some taxes are necessary and some government is necessary — but I’d be a lot happier if our federal government were half as big and my taxes were half as much.

The truth is, despite a record windfall in federal tax revenue — it’s up 26% over the first five months of fiscal 2022 — Washington is currently spending $2 trillion more than it’s taking in.

The more revenue that’s sucked into DC, the more the politicians in charge there want to spend it — and the more they want to raise taxes to do so.

The “Biden Administration is proposing $2.5 trillion in tax increases over 10 years,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

Our national debt already stands at an incomprehensible $30 trillion, yet we keep spending with abandon and ignore the advice of genuine leaders who worried about our spendthrift ways long ago.

“As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Well, Ike, we sure could use more leaders like you today  — both Democrat and Republican — who see reckless government spending for what it is: robbing future generations to subsidize the current generation.

All I know is that though I can extend filing my tax return until October, I still had to pay my estimated taxes by April 18, 2022 — which meant, as usual, I had to dramatically downsize my savings account.

That’s why taxes are always on my mind.

–

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].

I recommend the seasonal flu — but please allow me to explain.

About a week ago, I felt suddenly rundown and weak. I just wanted to lie down.

I thought nothing of it at the time. My family is facing some difficulties at the moment, difficulties we all must face now and again — and all of us are getting beat down.

But it wasn’t just fatigue.

Was it the big C, I wondered?

Nope.

I’d never tested positive for having COVID-19. Did that dreaded virus finally find a way to feast on my blessed good health?

Nope.

It turned out to be just a regular flu — but there was nothing regular about it.

A particularly nasty and highly contagious bug that’s spreading rapidly around my region, it turned out to be the worst case of flu I ever recall having in my life.

With the intense national — and global — focus on a deadly “novel coronavirus” these past three years, it’s easy to forget how deadly the regular flu is.

According to the CDC, which has always had a hard time pinning down the exact numbers, the flu has been killing anywhere from 17,000 to 97,000 Americans every year since 2012.

Healthline says the flu has caused at least “3.5 million flu illnesses, 34,000 hospitalizations, and 2,000 deaths” in the United States this season.

And I was among its victims.

I went to the ER to make sure it was the bug causing my issues, and that my heart and fundamentals were sound — and I am very lucky they were (and are).

Then I returned home and commenced immediately lying in the same spot without moving — no food, nothing — for the next four days.

My teeth itched. I felt like a piano was sitting on my chest. The nausea would not relent.

It was one of the best weeks of my life.

It’s a challenge all too common in affluent America: you can easily lose sight of how good you have it until you are reminded how bad things can get.

I recall filling my truck up for $40 a tank not long ago — and now it costs $70 a tank.

All I can think of as I stand there pumping is how hard I worked the prior few years and how I was able put a nice little buffer in my savings account to prepare for a rainy day.

Now I think of the 1% return my savings account is paying against the 8.4% inflation rate from last month — and the 9.6% rate it is going to be this month — and I realize how much I took for granted the low-low inflation rate we’ve been enjoying for several decades.

Having your good health taken from you suddenly — but temporarily in my case, thankfully — makes me want to focus my energy on important matters, not trivial ones.

From now on I do not want to waste one fraction of a single second discussing politics on social media, but I do want to spend as much time as possible with my mom and dad as long as we have them to enjoy.

Every time I see them now — and I wasn’t able to do so at all the past week — I ask them a new question about their lives and other family members.

They are a fountain of wisdom and I want to capture as much of their experience and knowledge as I can while they are still able to share it.

And now you know why I recommend the seasonal flu!

–

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].

Where did all the nurses go?

One of my family members ended up in the ER for a week after a bad fall.

The hospital we chose and its staff were wonderful in every way, but this time, one important thing was missing: an appropriate number of nurses to deliver superior care.

The nurses who were there did their best. They are working long hours and exhausting themselves and, still, the ones we met were cheerful and supportive.

There is a special place in Heaven for people in this profession.

But where did all the nurses go?

We moved our family member to a skilled nursing center last weekend, where physical therapy will hopefully restore mobility.

But that center, too, is short on nurses. By our count, there are six nurses for 200 patients — mostly elderly patients who need exceptional attention and care, but are just not getting it.

I assumed that the COVID-19 pandemic was behind the shortage and, to a degree, it is.

Though it sped up the retirement of many nurses across the country and made things worse, according to Healthline, the nursing shortage has been a challenge going back 10 years.

The greater challenge is that demand for nurses is soaring because America is getting older as millions of Baby Boomers enter their golden years.

Health reforms have also given more people access to quality health insurance, which has led to more patients at hospitals.

Currently, the average age of RNs in this country is 50 — and long hours working heavy workloads is simply burning nurses out and causing more errors in medical treatment.

For someone whose loved one needs exceptional medical care RIGHT NOW, this is a very unsettling issue.

It’s one of so many shortages of late: Empty shelves in grocery stores, cars that are way too expensive because our supply chain is a mess and airplane flights that are canceled or delayed.

This situation is not the America I’ve known most of my life.

I’ve encountered many very smart and accomplished people in the business world who solve gigantic problems and get things done to the benefit of us all.

So where are the smart people who are working on the nursing shortage?

A complex challenge requires a complex solution.

Will our federal government ever figure out how to do real immigration reform and let more nurses and physical therapists and doctors into our country?

Can’t our universities restructure and ramp up their nursing programs to bring many new talented nurses into the field?

And can’t hospitals and long-term care facilities pony up better salaries and offer flexible, non-burnout schedules that allow nurses – who generally get into this field because they want to care for people – to do their best work?

How about retention bonuses and longer vacations to sunny climates where nurses can recharge?

Hey, employers, can’t you create grants to fund nursing education? You, too, federal government.

The fact is, the more overworked the nurses are at your facility, the more medical mistakes will be made — how many massive lawsuits do you want to pay for when you can get ahead of the problem and produce a pipeline of new nursing talent?

Get creative for goodness sake.

I’m seeing firsthand how a severe and chronic nursing shortage – and a total lack of problem solving – is having a negative impact on my beloved family member.

Come on, America. We’ve got work to do.

–

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].

I’m glad there’s widespread confusion about what a woman is. I’ve been confused my entire life.

In the most basic sense, the difference between a male and a female is that a female has two X chromosomes and a male has an X and a Y chromosome — or, in my experience, a “WHY” chromosome?

I was raised an only boy with five sisters. All my sisters ever said to me was:

Why did you eat all the graham crackers?

Why can’t you stop picking your nose?

Why don’t you ever change the toilet paper roll when the toilet paper runs out?

I love my sisters, and we had lots of laughter growing up in our lively house, but I was an agitation to them most of the time — especially when they caught me using their toothbrushes.

They refused to sit next to their “icky, stinky” brother in our station wagon, so my Dad banished me to the third seat — the one that faced backwards, which kept me in a perpetual state of motion sickness.

To his credit, my father advanced gender neutral clothing four decades before it was fashionable — though he was motivated by cost savings.

Despite my having five sisters, he made me wear hand-me-downs. It wasn’t too bad most of the year, but I must tell you, Easter Sunday was unpleasant.

Do you know how hard it is to outrun the neighborhood bully with your panty hose bunching up on you and your bonnet flopping in the wind?

When I grew up in the ‘70s, bullies were everywhere in our suburban neighborhood.

Since I had no older brother to teach me how to fight, my sisters taught me.

I’ll never forget my first scuffle. After a bully shoved me, I looked him dead in the eye and I said, “You are soooooooo immature!”

Luckily, my sister, Kris, blossomed into one of the toughest street fighters in our neighborhood.

When Terry Leper busted up my go-cart, she pummeled him until he blubbered like a baby.

She was barely 5’3” and 100 pounds against Leper’s 6-foot 180-plus pound frame. How she overpowered him is anyone’s guess, but Leper’s reign of terror ended that day.

Then the next day Kris tattled on me for failing to put the toilet seat down.

The point is, I never knew what was coming from my sisters. Every day brought new surprises. But I was never as perplexed as my dad was.

He was forever saying things that caused my sisters and mother to get angry with him. He never understood what he did wrong.

When the feathered Farrah Fawcett look was in style — and my sisters persuaded me to be the first kid at St. Germaine to sport teen-pop-star David Cassidy’s famous shag haircut — all of us spent way too much time shampooing and conditioning our hair in the shower.

The water, gas and electric bills were astronomical.

When my dad pleaded for the umpteenth time for us to cut back on our shower time, one or more of my sisters would storm out of the room, slamming a door or two.

“For godssakes, Betty, what did I do?” my dad said, hopelessly befuddled by the women in his life.

So it’s refreshing that so many others, including a Supreme Court nominee, are as now as confused as my father and I have long been about what a woman is.

–

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].

Finally, people have found something to agree about.

Last week, economics professor Teresa Ghilarducci penned an op-ed for Bloomberg News in which she offers tips on how people who earn less than $289,000 a year can cope with inflation.

Her piece got quite a negative Twitter reaction from people across the political spectrum.

If you make over $289,000 a year, the column tells us, inflation will not sting as bad as it would if you make $50,000 a year.

Paying upwards of $5.00 for a gallon of gas is a lot harder to do when you don’t make nearly $300,000 a year, apparently.

I majored in English, but even I could figure that out.

But the advice she gives to plebeians to cope with inflation is what really set the negative Twitter reactions off.

How to deal with rising fuel prices? Ditch your car — heck, sell it as a shortage of new cars has made your used car worth way more than it should be — and jump on a bus.

Public transportation fares are only up 8% compared to gasoline which is up 38%, you see.

You may not like riding on the bus — I like to drive directly to my desired destination — but tough beans for you because some people are secretly very happy fuel costs are soaring and you are being forced to choose greener alternatives.

The cost of meat has soared considerably, as well, but not to worry, porridge is good for you! Simply replace your Sunday pot roast with a bowl of lentil and bean soup.

Though her column didn’t mention it, some think now is also a good time to try another alternative to meat: edible bugs!

Unlike cows and pigs, raising edible insects requires a fraction of the land, water and other resources. Bugs are cold-blooded invertebrates. They are efficient. Much more of the food they eat is converted into edible bug body parts than is the case with our friends the cows.

Cows are warm-blooded vertebrates. They need to consume lots of food just to keep their body temperature steady. Their food is grown on farms. Fossil fuels must be burned to harvest, process and transport that food. Farming requires lots of land and water.

In other words, inflationary pressures offer a great opportunity to explore new delicacies, such as Bug Wellington and Bug Tartare.

Were you among the millions of Americans who got a pet during covid? I am. I was blessed to be joined by my best buddy ever, Thurber the yellow Labrador.

But being a plebe, the column suggests, I probably didn’t think things through and I’d be wise to “rethink those costly pet medical needs.”

That is, if it comes down to Thurber getting a pricy medical treatment to save his life, maybe it’s better to just let the little guy suffer on to an untimely end — because pet medical procedures are best paid for by people earning $300,000 or more per year.

I know I am just a commoner, but I, too, have some ideas on how to beat inflation.

I’m going to vote the dummies out of office whose inane government spending policies are directly causing the value of our money to erode.

And when they lose their taxpayer-funded paychecks, I’ll gladly point them to the least expensive places to get edible bug soup.

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Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].