Future Noir

It's seems like everyone is dizzy with the price of petrol. Gas passes the lips regularly in our daily discussions. Reality of cheap fuel has left us for the moment and panic rushes into our patriotically vacant souls. The price of anything that must be moved long distances or involves petroleum in its manufacture is going up. Period. Once offsets in wages catch up, another price hike will have already hit, leaving those without wage increases with even less. Fuel and the time to burn it increase in cost and those who make a buck speculating take that buck, we're in for an inflation ride for a good while. Even if politics turns your head, you're affected. The robber barons are back with a vengeance. 2009 has already seen the biggest price spike in memory and we're not even there yet. The global economy has us tethered to our creditors in a death grip and we so tangled, even if we eked back to our previous manufacturing glory, it wouldn't find a market.
So what now, a service oriented economy, with pharmaceuticals and education as our major exports? We'll teach you how to sell and use drugs, the right ones. Big thoughts for a lowly mechanic who's main goal is to be a homeowner before his untimely death by lack of health insurance and malpractice. What else is there but buying a space to slowly die in so when you can no longer work, at least you don't have to worry about rent while you're sitting in the dark. Maybe someone to share the misery, I mean, memories with. The future may be black, but so what. We need answers that solve the simple problems like radio spectrum allocation and honey bee colony collapse. Without solid science, we're blissfully ignorant. Pass the bliss when you're done with it.