High cost of living sours holiday spirit

The drop in gas prices certainly is welcome. Especially during this holiday season.

But seemingly everything else is going up in price — as you probably noticed at the grocery store or when shopping for housing.

And health care? My premiums have gone up 50 percent the past two years for the same coverage. The same thing for most friends of mine.

Wasn’t Obamacare actually called the “Affordable Care Act”? Of course, thanks to the testimony of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, we now understand the whole thing — including its state iteration as Covered California — was a total  fraud. He actually said, “Lack of transparency is a huge advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever. But basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

Now this:

“The American middle class has absorbed a steep increase in the cost of health care and other necessities as incomes have stagnated over the past half decade, a squeeze that has forced families to cut back spending on everything from clothing to restaurants.

“Health-care spending by middle-income Americans rose 24% between 2007 and 2013, driven by an even larger rise in the cost of buying health insurance, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of detailed consumer-spending data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“That hit has been accompanied by increases in spending on other necessities, including food eaten at home, rent and education, as well as the soaring cost of staying connected digitally via cellphones and home Internet service.

“With income growth sluggish, discretionary spending on things like clothing and movies, live shows and amusement parks has given way.”

And in California, of course, it’s even worse because of the high cost of housing.