Newest Victim of the Obama Recession – The Tooth Fairy

Visa inc. performed a survey on the current economic situation and discovered that no one, not even the tooth fairy is immune from the reaches of a poorly performing economy.

The survey, released on August 3rd, found that the tooth fairy left an average of $2.60 per tooth in 2011 while $3 per tooth was the going price in 2010.

Unfortunately, teeth are not much of a commodity and are therefor not experiencing the huge run-up in prices. Inflationary pressures are instead driving down the ability of the Tooth Fairy to afford the one item desired most.

Not all areas of the country were impacted similarly. Children in the Eastern U.S. saw a 38% cut from $3.40 to $2.10 per tooth while children on the West coast fared the best with a 4% increase from $2.70 to $2.80 for each lost tooth. It is unclear whether the children on the west coast have unionized to protect their wages or if some other government intervention was responsible for the against-the-stream market increase.

While Congressional members are on summer recess and not immediately available for comment, some rumors are surfacing that perhaps a government program could be launched to help pay those 10% of children that the survey discovered received no money from the Tooth Fairy at all – an increase from 6% last year.

A break down of the children who fared best and worst also points out a wealth disparity. While 18% of children received 5$ per tooth this year and children develop 20 teeth before losing them, that’s $100 per child in the best situation. 56% of children receive only $1 or less. Broken down, 18% of children are amassing  almost three times the wealth as the bottom 56%. We are awaiting comment from the Obama administration on this obvious unfair distribution of tooth income.