One of the things I see people do is buy huge pickups

 with monster engines in them when all they generally do with them is go back and forth to work.

One of those dopey little clown cars will do that and a lot cheaper, too.

My pickup is a 4 cylinder and serves me well, occasionally getting me 30 miles per gallon on the highway and dragging my stuff to and from work. On the way to work I generally bring the grub for a tour with me stuffed into three coolers and several boxes. I suppose I could get by with stuffing it all into the back seat  and trunk of a sedan but the pickup bed makes it a lot easier.

The pickup was also a lot cheaper than a sedan, too.

Still, if the pickup didn't get good mileage and wasn't cheap to run I would not have it.

A lot of the reasons for an oversized rig make no sense to me. While I certainly think that anyone can spend their money any way they want, I often wonder about the average working stiff that spends half the value or more of his house on a damned vehicle.

Especially when he only uses it to go back and forth to work. I see a lot of that in my line of work.

I heard a waitress that owns a horse complaining that she was going to need to go out and buy a new, large pickup to pull her horse trailer.

I asked her how often she showed her horse and she said it was three or four times a year. I asked her why she didn't simply buy an economical small car and rent a truck as needed.

She looked at me stunned. I told her to think it through and run the numbers before she coughed up a hefty pile of money for something she would have to drive daily and in addition to that cough a hefty amount of gas and maintenance. Even a set of tires for a large truck can run a grand in a lot of cases.

That's a lot of money for a set of tires when you consider I put good rubber on my little rig for under half of that. 

When you consider that I get well over twice the mileage-sometimes three times- of some of these behemoths people are spending a lot of money for what comes down to little more than status.

I guess some people do need big trucks. They tow something or haul heavy equipment around daily or something along these lines. I know a guy that does concrete work on his time off and hauls a mixer and concrete ingredients around. A big truck here makes sense.

Still, I really don't have a lot of respect for conspicious consumption. It makes no sense to me.

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I know someone that is incessantly babbling about how everything ought to be fair.

OK, let's make things fair.

Let's take the Federal budget and divide it up equally by every single person in the country over the age of 18 and have them pay that much.

That would be a true case of everryone paying their fair share. Nothing could be fairer. Income be damned. The government spent such and such, divided by the population and here's your fair share to pay.

Betcha if the government did that even once we'd see an awful lot of things cut back on faster than you could shake a stick at.

I think stuff like the Zepplin subsidy would vanish like magic.

Betcha that the next congresscritter that even suggests he get another raise would be tarred and feathered.

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I am thinking of buying a farm when I retire and grow nothing because if I play my cards right I can get paid to do that.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html