Christmas shopping: 1958 vs. 2012

http://www.aei-ideas.org ^ | December 19, 2012, 1:33 pm | Mark J. Perry

[virgil283]

"One way to illustrate your good fortune of being a holiday shopper today is to measure the cost of consumer goods by the number of hours it takes working at the average hourly wage to earn enough income to purchase typical consumer products at their retail prices, and then compare the “time cost” of goods from the past to today’s “time cost” for similar items.... consider the equipment with the “best stereo sound” that Sears had to offer in 1958, which was advertised for sale in its Christmas catalog for $84.95 (see picture above), boasting that “You’ll be amazed at the ‘living sound’ you’ll hear on this newest development in portable phonographs. Four tubes per rectifier. Hear every note, every shading of tone.”

I don’t think anybody today would be too amazed at the sound quality of that 1958 “state-of-the-art” stereo equipment playing 45 and LP records of the day. And certainly nobody would trade his or her iPod for that system, especially considering that the time cost of today’s iPod is only 12.25 hours of work at today’s average hourly wage (to earn $234.99 for a classic iPod), which is more than 71 percent cheaper in time cost than Sears’s best stereo equipment in 1958 (42.9 hours of work at $1.98 per hour).............

[1rudeboy]

Please reread my comment #10. I am not talking about inflation.

[BwanaNdege]

I always knew that helicopters were not really meant to fly...

“Helicopter: a group of spare parts flying in loose formation.”

“Helicopter: a mass of machinery forced into the air against its own will.”

“Helicopters don’t really fly; they’re just so ugly that the Earth repels them.”

Yep, heard them all!

[SamAdams76]

Consumer goods aside, all those who pine for the "good old days" of the 1950s would be clamoring to come back to the 21st Century within a day or so if they were actually transported back to that era Marty McFly style. Yes, you'd be looking for some eccentric white-haired man to rig up some contraption for you to take you back.

Take the state of medicine back then just for example. Heart disease or cancer were death sentences in 1958. Your doctor just told you to go home and settle your affairs. Today, you get a triple-bypass and you're back to work on Monday with the arteries of a 20-year-old man. Most cancers are treatable and have a survival rate will over 50%.

I had to get to Chicago on short notice recently. On the way to the airport, I booked my flight, my hotel and had a rental car waiting for me when I got there - all with a few taps on my mobile device. Once on the plane, I ordered a vodka tonic and had a choice of over 1,000 books and movies on my tablet to keep me occupied during the flight. Try doing that in 1958.

I can go on and on.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. People tend to remember only the good things about the past and quickly forget what a mundane existence it was (compared to today).

Of course, our standard of living and way of life today will seem primitive to those looking back on us 60 years from now.

[Paladin2]

I grew up deprived - My parents wouldn’t buy me a computer for my bedroom nor let me use the Internet.

[TexasKamaAina]

How about what's played over the Ipod as opposed to what's played on the phonograph?

Exactly right. I've often wondered at the disparity between progress in communications technology and the content it delivers - which seems to regress.

[KarlInOhio]

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. People tend to remember only the good things about the past and quickly forget what a mundane existence it was (compared to today).

I've heard that the reason why all the tools you inherited from your grandfather were so well made is because he broke and threw out all the crappy tools he bought.

[headsonpikes]

Of course, our standard of living and way of life today will seem primitive to those looking back on us 60 years from now.

One may certainly hope so, and technologically speaking, it seems virtually a tautology - obviously, next year's TVs will be better than last year's. More importantly, however, our political and societal institutions are degrading, not advancing; prospects for families and communities continue to be squelched by an engorged state, which squeezes the life out of living humans to feed itself and its creatures.

Despite their can-do spirit, Americans cannot make socialism work any better than other nations have, despite the vanity of its devotees. There is no longer natural population growth - "failure to thrive", as a biologist might describe it. I cannot believe that the System can survive another 60 years, so I predict a socio-political discontinuity.