Think about that price of gas. At 2.50 (hereabouts) it is actually no more expensive now than it was in 65. How much was hamburger then? now?
Jack's hamburgers for fifteen cents.
They're so good good good.
Well, that was the regular, fairly small fast food burger in 1965. Bigger burgers around $.35. Gas around $.30
I came out of the Navy in ‘65 and went to work at a starting wage of $1.75 an hour. I had just turned 21. I was told not to tell anyone my starting pay because there were people who had worked in that plant since it opened up and didn’t make that much. I would say that it takes at least twenty five dollars an hour now to equal the buying power of that $1.75 in real terms, the official figures from the government are laughable. Gasoline has come down so it its only about ten times 1965 prices but food is so much higher that the sales tax we pay on a restaurant meal in SC is MORE than the price of the meal INCLUDING sales tax was in 1965. You need more money now just to eat than you needed for everything back then. If my wife and I had only my social security check and nothing else and 1965 prices we could buy a new car every year and BURN the old one and still have plenty of money to live very well indeed. People who have even a halfway decent job now draw more money, in nominal terms, every month than the Navy paid me for three years of active duty.