Something fun you may want to look at sometime is the "inflation calculator.”
For instance, if you had $100,000 in 1913, it had the same buying power as $2.5 million today.
I was interested in comparing gasoline prices. Seems to me I feel like we’re paying so much more today to run our cars than we did in the glory years of the 1960s.
What’s odd is that, when adjusted for inflation, we seem to be paying about the same.
According to the web sources I’ve seen, fuel cost about 30 cents a gallon in the 1960s. That’s about the same as $2.42 today. By 1969 the price of gas inched upwards to an unreasonable 35 cents a gallon. For 1969 that was the same as --- you guessed it, $2.42.
By 1971 about $5 would fill your tank. That comes out to just over $31 in 2019 dollars. That’s probably about what a lot of people are paying to fill up at local stores today.
Then again in the 1960s it seems like every place had gas attendants. They’d check under the hood and would make sure you tires were properly inflated.
Not sure what kind of a price you can put on that today.
Sometime between the 1960s and 1970s people realized they could no longer afford to pay people to pump gasoline for others.
As far as minimum wage is concerned, back in 1975 it was about $2.10. That would almost been $10 an hour now.
The calculator gives you a real idea of how people felt about money in the past.
Think about that if you’re ever watching an old television program or old movie.
For instance, if Beaver Cleaver bemoans losing $2 on a bad deal in "Leave it To Beaver,” that’s because that money in 1957 had the buying power of $20 today. And for a kid, $20 is a lot of money. I’m not a kid and I’m still pretty fond of $20.
You may also remember the scene in the film "It’s a Wonderful Life,” when old man Potter offers protagonist George Bailey a salary of $20,000 a year to come work for him.
It would have been like a very healthy six-digit salary today. It’s also noted that Bailey was earning about $50 a week. That’s like $33,000 now.
One example that interests me is the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.
Back in the late 1930’s President Roosevelt was told the development of the bomb would require a $2 billion investment.
Yet he had to kind of keep the whole project somewhat quiet because of war secrecy. I’m not sure how he did it but somehow Roosevelt funded a project that in today’s dollars would be like almost $40 billion.
Being president is a powerful job when you can lay your hands on that much money by yourself.
(Steve Gust, editor of Edmond Life & Leisure, may be reached at [email protected].)
