On Dec 26, 6:52*pm, Molly Brown wrote:
On Dec 26, 1:38*pm, Dean Hoffman wrote:

* * The links are to the Carpe Diem site. *It's written by an economics
professor. *He is comparing what Americans could buy back in the 60s
with what we can buy now. * Things are better now.

* *http://tinyurl.com/2bal4ta

* *http://tinyurl.com/3y79pgq

* *The stuff in his examples are used in the home.

Mr. Mark J. Perry should take off his idiot cap and compare how many
hours we have to work to buy the same EXACT things we use today with
the same EXACT things we used then. You can no longer buy the same
exact appliance you used then; in fact I wish you could because it
lasted ten times longer. Here are some examples of some things that he
REALLY should have compared instead:
A five pound bag of Potatoes
A pound of 20% fat Ground beef
A pound of plain rice
Seeing a doctor
Seeing a dentist
Seeing a lawyer
Trash pick-up service (once a week)
A kilowatt of electricity used
A cubic foot of water used
A cubic foot of natural gas used
All these have stayed exactly the same.

You're probably getting by fairly cheaply on food compared to in
the past.
A couple tables here from the United States Department of Agriculture
if you're interested:
http://tinyurl.com/25c6tbe
http://tinyurl.com/29d89lh
One more here using 1988 as the baseline:
http://tinyurl.com/2c22yl7