On Sun, 05 Dec 2004 06:55:05 GMT, Gunner wrote:
On Sun, 05 Dec 2004 03:47:36 GMT, "Gary Brady"
wrote:

How did people survive before health care, retirement and other
benefits, like back in the 1900's?
Bernd

To give you some reference point, I was born in 1955. The appendectomy that
I had in 1963 cost $150.

How much did the average automobile cost in '63?

The same per pound as hamburger. Historically, auto prices per pound tracked
the price of hamburger per pound from the beginning of the 1920s to the end
of the 1960s.

Did you know that $2,000 of the price of every new car sold by GM today goes
to cover legacy union pension costs? In 1963, $2,000 would buy a nice Chevrolet
sedan. Did you know that NHTSA and EPA regulations add over $5,000 to the
cost of every new car? Did you know that today GM has more non-production
employees doing paperwork to satisfy government requirements than production
line employees?

Then we could talk about the direct burden of government. In 1960 the federal
budget reached $100 billion dollars for the first time. Today it exceeds $3 trillion
dollars, a 30x increase. Not all of that money comes from running the printing
presses at the Mint 24x7. A lot of it gets built into the cost of products via taxes
on business and business employees, their suppliers and their employees, etc.

Gary