Ouch!!! Wet rates keep going up!

The hourly rate on all of the planes in my flying club just went up
again (second time in a year).

Archer II's just went up by another $10 per hour. Flying rates in the
past 6 years have gone up by a factor of 1.6 times yet I am still
making the same salary I was making in 2001. If this keeps up, I sure
won't be flying much...

I keep hearing claims that inflation is low, but fuel costs have
doubled in the past 6 years, and housing prices have also nearly
doubled (my house is appraising from almost twice what I paid for it
in 2000), and consequently my property taxes have doubled. Seems to
me that inflation is running pretty high since energy and housing are
both pretty big portions of everyday expenses.

Salaries are being held down by offshoring of jobs. We have lost
close to 5,000 high tech jobs in Boise in the past 2 years alone,
mostly due to offshoring by Micron and HP. With that going on, very
few people in the high tech industry in this area have gotten raises
in the past 5 or 6 years, and if they did, it was pretty small (a
couple of percent one time).

I don't see how GA is going to attract many new pilots if this trend
continues...

Dean