Free Republic

Does anyone in the United States not have a microwave oven? As of 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau reported “nearly universal” coverage—97 percent of U.S. households1—up from about one in four households in the mid-1980s and barely one percent in 1971.2 Apparently anticipating the growth trend that was to come, the Bureau of Labor Statistics added microwave ovens to the Consumer Price Index “basket of goods” over forty years ago.3