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BS: Inflation !
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Subject: BS: Inflation ! From: John MacKenzie Date: 09 Dec 07 - 06:27 AM I just worked out today that my first week's wages after I left school, would buy me 6 x 1st Class postage stamps at today's prices. G. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: Newport Boy Date: 09 Dec 07 - 06:43 AM Oh dear, Giok - that's a very slippery slope. You must have been underpaid, or you're much older than me )-: My first week's pay as a graduate engineer would buy 4.5 pints of beer at today's prices. I'd deliver the letters by hand! I do remember buying French bread at twopence farthing a loaf. Phil |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: John MacKenzie Date: 09 Dec 07 - 06:58 AM At south of England prices, it wouldn't buy me a pint of Guinness at today's prices. Then, it would have bought me about 15 pints ! I am very old though :) G |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: Sandra in Sydney Date: 09 Dec 07 - 08:07 AM my first weeks wages in 1970 (I'm obviously much younger!!) was $25 - dunno what this buys in today's prices for Guinness cos I only drink water, but I remember my rail weekly cost $2.90 & looking on State Rail's website, the same weekly today costs $41. I remember buying a 6 cent newspaper & they now cost $1.20. If I can remember this 1970 stuff why can't I remember recent stuff? Maybe I need to drink Guinness instead of water. sandra |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: number 6 Date: 09 Dec 07 - 09:02 AM In my salad days I could buy a bottle of Szekszárdi (Hungarian wine) for a $1.80 CAD. Now it costs $12.95 CAD. Outrageous! biLL |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: Liz the Squeak Date: 09 Dec 07 - 09:10 AM I'm even younger. My first ever wages, earned at the age of 15 were for waitressing in a pub. For three hours work, I would earn a princely sum that today would buy me a pint and a half of beer. I remember my father having an apoplexy when petrol hit £1.00 per gallon. Now it's that for a litre. Today £40 will fill my petrol tank, it would have bought an engine back then. LTS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: Bill D Date: 09 Dec 07 - 09:23 AM When I was 7, the price of a popsicle went from 6¢ to 7¢. That's a BIG % increase. That was in 1946. I once bought gas (petrol, for those who use longer words) for 17.9¢ a US gallon. THAT was only in 1971. My first wages were 35¢ per hour at a small grocery store. 2 weeks got me $14. I could not afford today to buy the house we bought 25 years ago...the price has tripled, and my income has not. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: John on the Sunset Coast Date: 09 Dec 07 - 10:27 AM Bill D, you are old! Seven years old in 1947. So was I. I guess we've grown old together alone. I don't remember gasoline being that cheap in 1971. That's the first year I used my car for work (as a salesman) and in Los Angeles gas was about $0.25. Rent on our 2 bedroom apartment was under $200.00, and in that same neighborhood it is minimum $1500.00 in those now older buildings. Now that I am retired the house I bought in 1985 would be out of reach. My first job out of college (1963) paid $463.00/mo. That would not have paid my monthly gasoline bill these last couple of years. But for all my complaining, and I suspect everyone's here, I have lived most of my adult life better than did my folks at a comparable age. I not sure my son will say the same when he is 68. BTW, my first job, at age seven, was selling my father's left over pastries, when available, door-to-door for 10 cents apiece, getting to keep the proceeds. Sometimes made as much as a dollar. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: Amos Date: 09 Dec 07 - 10:44 AM Wow, our numbers sure have gone to hell. In the early 1950's my parents bought a large house in Connecticut for $55,000. In 1987 it was worth $800,000 and today it would be worth perhaps 1.5 or 2 million dollars, long since sold for much less. I went to work at 17 for the then legal minimim wage of $1.25 an hour (before taxes). I pumped gas in 1962 for $.30/gal. If we had not bought our house over ten years ago we would not have been able to afford it today. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: folk1e Date: 09 Dec 07 - 10:56 AM 1977 saw me being paid £7,10 I could get drunk(ish) for a pound (3 pints but then I was only 16) Petrol for my Yamaha 50cc moped was 30p a gallon (1/8th the price of beer)! Beer is now £2.00 and petrol £5/gallon |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: Bill D Date: 09 Dec 07 - 10:58 AM (John ..to be fair, that 17.9 gas was in a gas war in Kansas...the usual price was about 25-29 at the time) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: JohnInKansas Date: 09 Dec 07 - 01:34 PM Gasoline prices in Kanss (Wichita) hung at about $.249/gal for most of the period 1955 thru about 1960, with occasioanl local "gas wars" when you could get a tankful for $.10/gal. As I recall, a quart of good engine oil was about $.35; but I was able to have access to "bulk" oil, mostly at $.10/qt through '57. I bought my new alto sax for $350, out of $.50/hr wages, in 1956. The same third-tier instrument now would be >:$2,400, based on a look a couple of years ago. One of the worst "inflations" is in state and local taxes. For several decades Kansas income tax was approximately 10% of what the Federal income tax was. (In fact, by statute it was fixed at 10% for some years.) State income tax here is now around 45% of federal tax on the same income, and federal taxe rates have gone up siginficantly as well, at least for low to medium incomes. The "temporary post-war sales tax" was 2% and locally it's now 8.5%. Not only are wages inflated (and buy less), but taxes now take a much larger percentage of them. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: Bee Date: 09 Dec 07 - 02:46 PM Quote: "In my salad days I could buy a bottle of Szekszárdi (Hungarian wine) for a $1.80 CAD. Now it costs $12.95 CAD. Outrageous! " - number 6 Oooh, Bill! back in the old days we drank a lot of that wine - but we called it SexandDivorce. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: autolycus Date: 09 Dec 07 - 03:13 PM There must be an "inflation graph over the last 1000 years somewhere". I saw one a very few years ago in The Guardian. It showed that there was a long period in the (I think) 16th,17th and 18th centuries when inflation was nweglible, whereas it's rocketed since 1900, with the slope getting sharper all the time. We're any number of times richer in a lot of the West since the 50s, but more or less no happier, so the gulf between happyness and costs has grown and grown and grown. Ivor |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: Bert Date: 09 Dec 07 - 03:31 PM My first weeks wages as an apprentice boilermaker was £2/4s/6d |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: number 6 Date: 09 Dec 07 - 05:49 PM Bee ... "SexandDivorce" ... I like that! That (then cheap) wine provided a poor student with a lot fuel for merryment. biLL |
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Subject: RE: BS: Inflation ! From: Bobert Date: 09 Dec 07 - 07:00 PM Yeah, I remember 17.9 cent a gallon gas but next to the 65 cents an hour I was makin' it seems expensive... My first car was $25... It was a '46 Ford and ran okay... I had to put a master cylindar on it ('bout $3 plus 39 cents worth of brake fluid)but that was it... It had a heater but no radio... I ordered some Moon discs for it for 'bout 10 dollars so the hub caps were worth almost as much as the car... I drove it for 2 'er three years, sold it, less the Moon dics, for $35 and bought a '51 Pontiac door $15 and a '49 Studebaker for also $15... The Stude ran fine... The Pontiac was a piece of junk but I was able to get another kid to buy it for $15 and used the money to buy a floor shift kit for the Stude for the $15 from J. C. Whitney... Meanwhile during all this I had moved up to the big time and was making 95 cents an hour working at the Northern Virnia Sun working an addressograph machine... That was the big dough... 95 Cents an hour!!!! Thems was the good ol' days... B~ |
