Some friends and relatives will call me old. I disagree as age is a comparison to something else. Having said that, I do remember when:
Mr. Mangia (we called him the grocery man) would show up at our house with his truck full of meat, veggies and fruit. He had installed a freezer or two in his Step-Van so the meat we’d buy from him was butchered. More specifically, he would take our meat order and show up 1-2 days afterwards with the cut of meat we wanted.
But Mr. Mangia also sold Bazooka bubble gum from his truck. His price was 2 pieces for a penny.
Dad was a doctor with a very low overhead. He had majored in accounting in business school before attending college before attending pre-med school before attending med school. So he did his own books.
At the end of every month, Mom would assemble the daily journal into monthly bills and write them out. We three boys got to fold the bills, stuff the envelopes, seal the envelopes, stamp the envelopes with (I believe I began stamping the bills with $0.04 stamps). Next we sorted the bills by zip code for the post office and Mom or Dad would drive the bills to the post office.
Each of us boys received $1 per month for our services.
When I turned 12, I began a newspaper route. It was a small route consisting of 30-40 customers. As I recall, I netted about $0.50 per week per customer. At the time I thought I was wealthy.
At sixteen, I began working for Bill Koch at Sports Car Forum. This was a Jaguar, MG, Austin, and Fiat dealership on the East side of Columbus. I was paid $2 per hour for cleaning the cars (both new as well as used). From time to time, I drove a brand-new Jaguar XJ-12 to West Virginia and traded it for a new Jaguar XK-E, which I drove back to Columbus. I also did this with MGs, Austins and Fiats.
By the time I graduated from high school, I had accumulated enough savings to pay full-time tuition at The Ohio State University for four years. As I recall, three quarters per year was $800 if you were attending full-time.
Many ways we interact and conduct business have changed over the past several decades. As a result, comparing prices is difficult in many cases. But here’s some prices from the early 1970s to give you an understanding of how much inflation has taken from you. When I was in high school, I missed buying the following cars (I graduated in 1975). The car, the price I negotiated and today’s price are:
1962 Jaguar XK-E $1500 $105,000
Aston Martin DB4GT $2000 $382,000
(for a DB4, not a DB4GT. The last price I saw for a DB4GT was $1.4M)
Jaguar C-type $2500 $3,100,000
In 1985, I purchased a Ferrari Dino 246 GT for $22,000. I did this as a Porsche 944 turbo sold for close to the same figure and my opinion of Porsche was they were a liability, not an asset (most vintage Ferraris increase in value over time). Today’s price for the same car is $425,000.
Now I realize supply and demand has a lot to do with the increase of these cars, as they have gone from older, used, quirky cars to collectible art.
Here’s another price you may be able to identify with better. College tuition. From $800 a year for a full-time, in-state student to $31,000. That’s a 3775% increase or an 86% increase per year, on average.
You may argue I went to college when the only computers were mainframe or there was little technology compared to todays. But left to the marketplace, that is, allowing capitalism to work its wonders without outside interference, a price for the same product should go down over time due to competition as well as better and newer technology lessens the value of older technology.
Why the HUGE difference?
I would argue there’s only two entities which have worked to increase tuition so greatly. Inflation and the national government getting involved in education to a much greater level are the two factors.
Thanks to these two factors, of which Bidenomics is a symptom, $20 is the new $1.
