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I remember going out in the 80s as a family of four and the bill averaging around $20-25 total. I miss that. It's nearly or over $100 to take my family out to eat now.
Something I like to consider, how different is your salary today compared to one from then? Do you, technically, make 4x as much now vs an 80s wage, in line with the 4x cost increase?
Naturally, it’s still not going to be a great answer either, but I’ve learned to take things with a grain of salt and instead of comparing dollar costs from then and now, get a wage from the same time and convert it all to working hours.
Example, my gramps liked to talk about 10 cent cheeseburgers at a time when they were a dollar. He also used to make about a dollar an hour compared to my $8/hr at the time. Yes, that means it’s not equal inflation between wage and cost(that’s the real problem), but at the same time they are both up and cheeseburgers were not as drastically more expensive than they used to be.
Unless you want to rope quality into this then it’s just depressing...
What I’m saying is, dollar for dollar, everyone gets hooked on seeing a platter meal so much cheaper than today and despairs. They forget the guy buying it also made near ten times less than you do at the time.
TL;DR: My understanding: While not equal and unfortunately drifting apart, costs and wages both inflate. Weren’t wages almost as low as that food price at the time?
In 1988 I was a single mom without child support. I had no help and no generational wealth. I went to free (except for books) community college in the mornings, then rushed to my M-F bartender job from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm. at a tiny establishment frequented by construction workers.
Working 30 hours a week, I paid for a 2 bedroom/2 bath spacious apartment in a beautiful area with pool and a view. Utilities and bills were as much as rent, and childcare alone took as much as all expenses. I still had what would amount to $560 in today’s dollars PER WEEK for clothes, vacations, entertainment.
We often went to Disneyland. We flew around for holidays. We wore the nicest clothes and I threw big parties.
What’s going on right now - what young people are trying to deal with - is fucking criminal. Everyone should be able to live in comfort with disposable income the same way people did 36 years ago. No “well inflation” or “but wages” excuses.
When you look through old ads and feed them into an inflation calculator, a few things become obvious:
- Housing has gotten expensive much faster than inflation.
- College tuition has gotten expensive much faster than inflation.
- Food went up slightly slower than inflation for most of the last few decades, but caught up in the last 4 years to close that gap.
- Cars have gone up slightly slower than general inflation, but the bottom of the new market has essentially disappeared, replaced with the fact that used cars last a lot longer. In terms of cost to drive a particular distance, the price of fuel going up slower than inflation and efficiency going up over the years has made it so that transportation costs per mile are cheaper than they used to be.
- Furniture and apparel have gone up much slower than inflation, and are comparatively cheap compared to 50 years ago.
- Electronics, audio/visual equipment, communications equipment, etc., have gotten much, much cheaper over time, when adjusted for inflation.
So we're in a weird place where the average monthly rent costs like 10 big screen TVs, where you can video call people on the other side of the world using a device that costs like 10-20 hours of unskilled wages, but where a semester of university at a state school costs 1000 hours worth of wages.
The ratios are all messed up.
Oh for sure.
I was just a kid, so my income was $0, and I was not involved in the family finances enough to know what my dad was bringing home.
Sure seems like it took 40 years for that burger platter to go from $2 to $5, and only 5 years to go from $5 to $15.
My dudes really out here talking about the phenomenon of inflation as if it’s some brilliant discovery they just worked out
Hit up Al-Macs diner if you’re ever in Fall River, MA