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I guess I'm the older one here. I pumped Texaco gas in 1966 for 13 cents a gallon. I was making a huge salary at $1.25 an hour. But things were a lot cheaper back then. A new Corvette was about $3500.00. The average home cost about $18,000.00. You could fill the trunk of an Oldsmobile with groceries for 20 bucks. Those trunks were big enough to get 5 people in if you were going to a drive in movie. The drive in movie were $1.25 and you got to see 2 movies along with cartoons and newsreel. A 45 record was 49 cents. That how we bought music back then. A doctors office visit was 10 bucks. There was no insurance. My mom was in the hospital for 10 days, cost my dad $1500.00. There was no cable TV. We didn't have TV at all until the mid 50's and then it was only 2 channels and was on only from 7AM to 11PM. Remember the test pattern? There was no sports channel or anything like that. It was 1965 when color TV came out here. The color was horrible and washed out but it was in COLOR! There was no such thing as a cell phone but we had these things called Pay Phones that were on a lot of street corners. You could buy a set of great tires for under a hundred bucks. A starter for your car was 20 bucks as was the water pump. Batteries could be had for 10 bucks but the good ones were $19.95. A great stereo in the car meant you had 2 speakers instead of one. The real cool guys even had reverb units although hardly anybody even knows what one is anymore. Dual glass packs on the car would cost you $75.00 installed. Twin antennae on the back of the car was a cool thing. Cost you less than 10 bucks for it. Mag wheels were for the rich people. They cost $25.00 each for American Mags. I drove a 34 Ford coupe drag car. I had $750.00 in the car and won the class trophy with it every week at the NHRA drags. Most telephones were party lines with about 5 on a party line being average. If you wanted to make a long distance call, you had to go thru the operator, no direct calling and no area codes. Postage was 3 cents for a letter. When it went to 5 cents, you could almost guarantee it was delivered the next day. A nice pair of dress shoes from Thom McAns cost $9.95. My first pair of PF Flyers were $7.95. My first 3 piece suit cost $39.95 at Robert Halls. Shotgun shells were $3.95 per case of 20 boxes. You could buy a nice shotgun for $100.00. The Browning Auto 5 costs $149.00. I still have several boxes of Winchester 22 High Power ammo that is marked 49 cents for a box of 50. I have several boxes of Winchester EZXXS match ammo that is marked 79 cents a box of 50. I took up reloading back in the 70's. A box of 243 bullets cost $2.49. Powder Dupont 4320 was $4.95 lb.
Yeah, everything was cheaper including wages. My first house payment was 88 bucks and that was insurance and taxes figured into the payment. My taxes are now 4 times that on a homestead with over 65 exemption. Maybe it's just the memories but it sure seems like we were a lot happier back then. There were very few arrogant folks and very few that thought they were entitled to anything. If the folks were having problems and couldn't find work or handicapped, the local church took care of them. As a neighbor, it was your duty to help them out as well. Neighbors saw to each other. In those days, we didn't even have locks on the house and most often, the keys never left the ignition. People didn't steal like they do these days and then don't think anything about it. Most normally, when someone told you something, that's the way it was going to be. A mans word was good enough. But, yeah, things were completely different back in the day.
You do? I haven't bought a TV in a very long time, though I occasionally check the prices, but it wasn't that long ago that flat screen TV's were a new thing, and they cost thousands of dollars. Sure, they've gotten cheaper, but they're still very pricey, where I live. $180 for a flat-screen TV? A good one? Not in my world.
Define "Good."
Its not top of the line, but a Vizio 39" Flat screen is $199 at Costco, a 4K 2150 is 40" is $199 at Walmart, a 720P 40 Inch is $150 at best Buy, a 1080 P is still under $200.
Its crazy how quickly the price of consumer electronics drops these days. I remember when I was a kid and my friends all crowded at one friends house watching a DVD...Within a few short years you could pick them up at Walgreens or wherever for cheap.
I only noticed when walking through Costco with my wife and she commented on the low price, something I'd spent nearly twice as much on a few years ago.
It's probably politically incorrect to say this, but regarding the prevalence of two income households, that may well be the reason that real wages have not kept pace. Labor, like any other commodity, has its price controlled by supply and demand. If demand hasn't increased over the years, but the rate at which women have entered the workforce has increased substantially, then the supply of labor has increased without a proportionate increase in demand. The laws of economics then tell us that this situation will cause a drop in the price of labor, more commonly referred to as a decline in real wages.
I am not a misogynist or a sexist. I am not advocating for a return to the days where women were not supposed to work. I am merely pointing a potential cause for differing economic conditions today relative to what they were in the past.
To me it makes sense for one spouse to manage the household and children full time. It does not matter which one. Whomever is best equipped to manage the household or bring in income should do so. It is bizarre to me that managing a household is looked at as somehow a lower calling. Managing finances, loans, bills, nutrition, meal planning, child rearing, selecting products, maintenance, repairs, upgrades, investing, etc, etc. is much more complex and involved than sticking two pieces of pipe together or bolting a seat into a car over and over, or even planning a marketing event (or more likely being part of a team thatplans a marketing event). Why is it considered lesser?
Any one person trying to manage a household and an outside career will end up doing both less well than they could if they focused and usually less well than they need to. Even splitting up household management while both partners try to work full time does not work well. Household management is a full time job plus. What happens when you hire two different part time people to split a full time job? Now give those two people another full time job on top of the part time job. How well does that work?
Ultimately, I think it would be better for everyone except TV manufacturers and the like to have one partner manage the household and family.
Right now however it would make the labor shortage even more problematic.
Hello, I'm Roberta from Florida
and I was reminiscing with a friend the other day… and we talked about how life used to be when we were younger and how everything was so much cheaper.
I got so excited that I did a bit of research and the differences between then and now are really astounding(even though they exaggerate a bit or my memory is playing tricks on me).
Anyway I found this page and I thought you might find it useful as well. https://thedetailedhistory.com/20-ex...ck-in-the-60s/
There are other selective price surveys out there, such as the Morris, NJ library survey.
Some things aren't directly comparable. Chains that used to cater to middle class then are considered low end now. There's more of a split now between quality goods and cheap goods. Good such as electronics, furniture, and clothing become obsolete faster (hidden price increase).
As others have said, inflation lifts both incomes and prices.
Automobiles must have been very much cheaper. As a high school student in 1966 I paid cash for a beautiful 10-year old fully loaded out Ford Fairlane on a part time job after school that paid $75/month (about $565/mo now). Now I drive a 21-year old middle of the road model Ford truck out of necessity and I make significantly more that $565/mo.
Finally there's the question of value vs. price. Even if an item today is more expensive in real dollars, that does not mean you are getting less value for the money than you did in the past. For example, in the 1960's cars rarely lasted over 100,000 miles. Cars now sometimes go over 200,000 or even 250,000 miles. Even if today's car is more expensive in real terms, you might still be getting better value for today's car than you did in the past.
Actually, many, many '60s cars could and did last well past 100,000 miles. This going by cars I've owned and friends and family cars. And cars I've read about.
For example, I took ownership of my '66 Dodge Dart GT V-8 in 1979 when it already had 109,000 miles.
Had the engine rebuilt in 1990 at about 170,000 miles only because it was burning oil. It was still running fine and had plenty of power. Had the transmission rebuilt in 1988 at around 160,000 miles (my fault- too many powerbrake burnouts!). That car eventually racked up 235,000 miles and was still running. Note that I did many burnouts with that Dart. And winding out 1st gear to 40 mph and 2nd to 70 mph. Never a complaint from the engine or transmission.
Same as above with my brother's 1966 Plymouth Fury III (318 V-8). That one racked up over 250,000 miles; one engine and transmission rebuilds.
A friend sold his '66 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham a few years ago. 220,000 miles and the original, non-rebuilt transmission!
As a rule, many '60s American cars, given proper care, could last a long time. And sometimes even without proper care!
Its crazy how quickly the price of consumer electronics drops these days. I remember when I was a kid and my friends all crowded at one friends house watching a DVD...Within a few short years you could pick them up at Walgreens or wherever for cheap.
It's always been like that.
I bought my first CD player in 1987 for $200. Every couple of years after that, I would buy a new one. Every time I bought another one, it was: a) cheaper, and b) better (smaller, had more features, etc.).
Computers? Same thing. God, my first desktop had a massive tower in 1996, and it set me back nearly two grand - in 1996 dollars! Now I buy a laptop every few years, it is much faster and does much more and is portable and I usually pay about $300 (in 21st century dollars, not 1996 ones).
I bought my first CD player in 1987 for $200. Every couple of years after that, I would buy a new one. Every time I bought another one, it was: a) cheaper, and b) better (smaller, had more features, etc.).
Computers? Same thing. God, my first desktop had a massive tower in 1996, and it set me back nearly two grand - in 1996 dollars! Now I buy a laptop every few years, it is much faster and does much more and is portable and I usually pay about $300 (in 21st century dollars, not 1996 ones).
Yeah, as JONOV said, it all depends on how you define "good". A laptop for $300? No. Not my definition of "good". When I go to the local Mac outlet, a "good" laptop is still between $1200-$2000. Sure, we don't have to get a Mac, but I was just pointing out that laptops are still expensive. It's not at all unusual for people to pay twice the amount you recently paid, to get a fair-to-middling one. Yes, that's cheaper than 2 grand. And it does depend on the features you want, speed, storage capacity, etc. But I still find them to be a significant expense. And they're not like a TV you can buy, and be happy with for 10 or 15 years. You have to get a new one every 6 years, or so. There are more than a few people who struggle to afford that, or just use the library computers.
In the late 1960s both of us worked. We only had one car but we both had to work to afford it and to afford a decent apartment. Sure, we could have lived in a dump but we wanted a clean, safe apartment. It didn't have the amenities an apartment would have today, like its own washer and dryer or a dishwasher, not even a balcony, but it was decent.
We bought a house after three years of both working. It cost $20,000 and we had to live way out and away from everything, but it was a house. No garage, just gravel for a driveway, but it was a house.
For vacations, we bought a good tent and went camping. Vacations were to Florida and one time, we drove cross country.
We didn't have a tv. With both working, we didn't have time to watch tv. We took care of our own yard and did a lot of the work on our house though. Today people don't think they have time to take care of the yard, the house, the car, or even to cook. But we did everything for ourselves instead of paying someone to do it. You save a lot of money when you do it yourself.
We ate out exactly once a year, on our anniversary. Even on our camping vacations, we were buying our food and cooking it ourselves. We never felt deprived, we just had a feeling of self sufficiency and frugality in doing things for ourselves. That's how people lived back then.
There is a comparison of costs that floats around ranching circles.
Back in the 70s, to buy a new pickup truck, one would have to sell about 5 cows.
Now, in order to buy a pickup truck, a person would have to sell a little more than 20 head.
That is not how ranchers and farmers operate, but it demonstrates one area of increased costs for many of us.
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