I often look in awe at the phenomenally improved standard of living we have in North America. As a very rough way of looking at it, I use something I call the Rule of Ten. Here's how it works:
Very roughly speaking, for many jobs people nowadays earn about ten times what they earned back in the mid-1950s. The minimum wage is roughly ten times what it was then, teachers' starting salaries are roughly ten times what they were then, and new assistant professors in economics earn roughly ten times what they earned back then.So what has happened to prices since then? For the most part, prices have risen less than tenfold.
- A 17" B&W television back then was $120 as I recall; for $1200 today you can buy one heck of a big high-definition television set.
- A large reel-to-reel tape recorder was about $75; for $750 today you can buy an iPhone4. And maybe a tivo, too!
- 45 rpm singles listed at 99 cents back then; today you can buy two single songs (as if you ever really wanted both the A and B sides of those 45s) for $1.98 from iTunes, the equivalent of about 20 cents back then. And you don't have to leave home to do it.
- Levis were $4 then; standard name-brand jeans are about $25 now, maybe more for designer jeans in upscale outlets.
- Soft drinks from a machine were 5-10 cents. Today the prices range from 50 cents - $2.
- A good steak dinner at a nice restaurant was $2.70; that's not far from today's prices that range from $25 - $30.
- A cross-country long-distance call (placed through an operator, of course, since there was no direct-dial possible) was maybe $3/minute. Compare that with today's plans that charge less than $.03/minute which, applying the rule of ten, would have been only $.003/minute back then.
- etc.
Of course there are exceptions. A house that went for maybe $6K then would likely sell for more than $60K today, but maybe not, depending on the locale.
Gasoline was 29 cents/gallon then, not much different from the $2.90 today.
Most drug-store paperbacks sold for $.25 - $.50 then, much less than the $5 or less that the rule of ten would imply today.
It's hard to tell about cars. Bottom-of-the-line cars listed at about $1500 then. I guess that's not far from the $15000 today. Of course today's cars are more fuel efficient and safer and, for the most part, much better built. But today's cars seem smaller, too; or maybe it's just that I'm bigger. And even the cheapest car available today has to be miles better than the Henry J was back then.
At the same time, the environment seems much cleaner now. I was raised in a factory town in Michigan that had tonnes of pollution from all the foundries, the paper mill, the Marathon refinery, etc. When I visit that town now, most of the foundries are gone and those that remain have reduced emissions. You can barely smell the paper mill, even when you drive past it. And Marathon no longer pumps tonnes of sulphur crud into the air. [digression: it's dumb but I have some nostalgic memories of those awful smells]
Probably most importantly, though, are the new products and the improved products that we have today, compared with 50 years ago: electric toothbrushes, cell phones, pharmaceuticals, personal computers, CT scans, etc.
The Rule of Ten helps me keep most of these things in perspective. It's rough and imprecise, but it is still informative for lots of things.