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Yeah, the Big Mac now has no meat and is really small. There isn't much at McDonalds that I like anymore. It just got too small. I guess there is too much pressure for everyone to be thin and blaming McDonalds for overeating. Oh well, they were good times!
On my dad's teaching salary in 1972, he was easily able to buy a new 1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass with cash. He made three times the price of that car even as a sixth-year teacher in an average suburban New Jersey public school. Now, when you consider that Oldsmobile was one of GM's "upscale" lines (on par with Buick but just below Cadillac), and the Cutlass was a mid-size car, let's compare it to the Buick Regal of today (as it was comparable to the Buick Regal in 1973 when the Regal was introduced on the GM "Colonnade" body). The MSRP of the 2014 Regal starts at $29,690. (Now I know that you can often get cars for below MSRP, but if you get anything above the most basic model, you'll pay more... so taking the starting MSRP is reasonable. My dad special-ordered his car; he didn't buy one off of the lot. Stands to reason he optioned it out to an extent.)
Multiply that price by 3 and you get $89,070. Where in America can you make that much money as a 6th-year public school teacher? Oh, and we can't forget sales tax. Sales tax wasn't introduced in New Jersey until 1976. So to make everything equal, the Regal in NJ would cost its price plus 7% sales tax which would be $31,768.30. NOW multiply by 3 - you get $95,304.90 as the modern-day equivalent of the salary my dad was making in 1972.
Find me a school district in America where a teacher on step 6 of the salary guide, with a bachelor's degree only, can make $95,304.90 per year. I might just box up my keyboards and go back into the classroom.
Minimum wage in 1972 was $1.60/hour. Average gas prices were 36 cents per gallon - meaning a minimum wage job (before taxes) would buy you ~4 1/2 gallons of PURE gasoline. Today it buys you around 2 gallons of that fuel-system-rotting garbage they call "E-10" (90% gasoline, 10% ethanol). In 1972 an hour of minimum wage work would buy you ~2.5 Big Macs. Today it'll buy you 1.57 Big Macs, and the stories told here make it very clear that a Big Mac today ain't as much nor as good as it was in 1972.
I'll take 1972's economic conditions any day, over today's.
Yeah, the Big Mac now has no meat and is really small. There isn't much at McDonalds that I like anymore. It just got too small. I guess there is too much pressure for everyone to be thin and blaming McDonalds for overeating. Oh well, they were good times!
Oh, you can be sure back in the 50s they used all real beef. Honestly, as a kid I did not think they were really anything special from what I ate at home. I wasn't a big meat eater, but it was more the fun of eating out in a restaurant.
I actually hope the orangeade was made with oranges!
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