Speaking of inflation–or NOT–69 years ago today, December 30, 1953, the first color TV sets went on sale for about $1,175. This is the equivalent in purchasing power to about $13,114.76 today. And, of course, the picture tubes of those early TVs could be counted-on to burn-out in 4 or 5 years, leading to repair costs that simply don’t exist with modern technology.
Yeah, The Good Old Days were just… wonderful… NOT.
You have to understand that the announced inflation rate is based on a fictitious market basket and does not reflect what most people are buying on a daily basis. So the actual tha regular folks buy can range up to 19%. Normally I pay about $14 to ship a ups package. Just cost me $19. The good news though is many folks have just stopped buying stuff so the rate for them is zero. Learned all this in Econ 101.
That inflation rate I suspect is based on COLA.
You can not base inflation on individual items. Hobby items I bought for $1.99 in the mid 60s, now often are in the $30-50 range, unchanged from 1965. Other items have dropped considerably like the above TV reference.
As I wrote, I try to use items that do not change or have not changed much. Gasoline is gasoline; oh, its changed a bit, more additives, etc. Milk is milk; yeah, back then you could only get whole milk, homogenized or not (my mother like the “not” she would siphon off some of the cream just for her cup of tea…).
I know it’s not science, but it makes good sense…
Alright, look at gas, 1966, $0.35, today $3.00, less than 10 times more. Bread, 1966 generic $0.23, today $1.23, slightly more than five times as much,
B&W TV, 21 inch TV, $200, Today, 45 inch color TV, <$500.
Instead of saying COLA, I should have said CPI (consumer price index):
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures the monthly change in prices paid by U.S. consumers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates the CPI as a weighted average of prices for a basket of goods and services representative of aggregate U.S. consumer spending.
The CPI is one of the most popular measures of inflation and deflation. The CPI report uses a different survey methodology, price samples, and index weights than the producer price index (PPI), which measures changes in the prices received by U.S. producers of goods and services.
Difficult to compare electronics. Prices of electronics have DECREASED in the last few decades.
We’re whipping that horse again but productivity and technology increases are the only ways to increase wages without impacting inflation. Electronic have decreased due to technology improvements. You have to strip away the productivity improvements to get to the inflationary impact on products. Aging to pay fast food workers for example $16 an hour instead of $8 is inflationary since it is for the same product at the same level of productivity. Shrinking the labor force of people willing to work at all doesn’t help either.
Back in 1970 I could have bought a new ford for $3000. I don’t think I could buy a serviceable used ford for that now. I never bought a ford though but I wanted one.
If you ride it on the freeway with the throttle pinned wide open, expect to only get around 80-90 mpg. Even with the throttle wide open, you’ll be an obstruction to the rest of the freeway traffic.
In order to accelerate 3500 lbs of mass to 60 mph, you have to give it 421,262 ft.-lb. of kinetic energy. A horsepower is 550 ft.-lb. of energy per second. 35HP is 19,250 ft-lb of energy per second. 421,262/19,250 = 21.88 seconds if there was no rolling resistance or air resistance. In the real world, it would take a bit longer as the increasing power consumed by rolling and air resistance reduces the power available for acceleration. In fact, at a certain point, the rolling and air resistance consumes all the available power, and the car hits its terminal velocity or “top speed”. How much power does cruising at 60 mph consume in a 3500-pound sedan? Well, if it’s getting 35 mpg at that speed, it’s consuming 1.7 gallons of gas per hour. How much horsepower can a consumption of 1.7 gallons of gas per hour generate? Well, let’s look at the consumption figures of a Continental o-200 airplane engine which burns 8 gallons per hour at its 100 HP maximum and around 5 gallons per hour when throttled down to 70 HP. If 70 HP is 5 gph, then 1.7 gph would be around 24 HP. Probably a little less because there is a thermodynamic efficiency drop off when engines are throttled down to such a low power. The reason a big V-8 can’t match the gas mileage of a four in a car of similar mass and body profile is because the big engine is not working hard enough to be efficient at the power required for cruising.
