Back in my college days, a nice meal was a can of tuna, a can of cream of mushroom soup, a box of mac & cheese, and some frozen veggies. That recipe cost right about $1, and was enough for 2 good sized meals. Not any more.
The 6oz can of tuna is now nearly 3x what I remember paying, and as a bonus, it's now 5 oz, rather than 6oz. And have you priced mac & cheese? Jeez! Even the discount brands are really high. Frozen veggies, not very cheap either, even for the house brands. That same recipe is now between $4 & $5, and the amount you've got is substantially less than one used to get.
Another example is OJ. Not all that long ago I used to complain about paying $2.50 a carton for "real" (not from concentrate) OJ. Now, a carton is close to $4.00, but the best part is that the carton is no longer a half gallon. The carton has shrunk from 64oz to 59oz.
Heck, the other day I saw a convenience store stocking a "case" of soda that had 18 cans!
And eating out? I very rarely go to a "real" restautant any more, as any meal, even a "discount" lunch, will cost at least $8, once you include tax & tip. Something really frightning is that I remember when McDonald's first introduced their Quarter Pounders & QP w/ Cheese. The QC was .59, and the QPwC was .69! A "regular" McDonalds meal was right about $1.
Mark
My grocery store sells “1 Pound” bags of coffee that say (12 oz) on the package.
And it’s more like $5.50 instead of $4 too in TX anyway.
Where I live the sales tax on a restaurant meal is now more than the entire meal PLUS tax was in the sixties. Back then if you had a hundred dollars you could go on vacation, now you can barely take a day trip for that. Let me go further and I invite anyone who disagrees to prove me wrong. If my wife and I had only my social seccurity check and no other income and prices were at 1950 levels we could buy a new Ford every other month, BURN the old one and still have enough money to live very well.