Some Thoughts on Prices

After reading Pimme's post about school lunches and comparing how much they cost from the time I was in high school until she was (40 cents to 95 cents), I got to thinking how much prices have changed for other common items.

Gasoline, of course, is the most obvious and dramatic. I can remember when I was a kid in the sixties, my father would see a station advertising a gallon for 31 cents. He'd say, "I can do better", and drive on. And he could.

When I started to drive in the mid-70s, it was up to around 50 cents a gallon and we thought that was outrageous. I remember in college being able to fill up my tank from almost empty for about five dollars. Gas prices hit a dollar a gallon for the first time around 1979 and stayed pretty much in that neighborhood for about twenty years. Those days are gone forever, I'm thinking.

When I was a lilttle kid, McDonald's had only a very basic menu, and a burger cost fifteen cents; fries and drink, ten. Now, that small burger is a dollar. The Quarter Pounder was introduced when I was junior high age, and I think it cost about 75 cents when it first came out.

My mother used to send me up to the local 7-11 to buy her cigarettes, which they'd sell to kids in those days, and cost 35 cents a pack. I'm thinking that they could raise them to ten dollars a pack, and smokers would keep buying them.

When I was about ten, I remember seeing a magazine ad for a brand new Volkswagen beetle for 1800 bucks. Now, all you can get for that is a worn-out old beater.

I can remember seeing paperback books for $1.95 and hardbacks for around eight dollars. Now, the paperbacks cost eight bucks.

My first apartment in the mid-70s was $199 a month, and it was a decent apartment in a nice neighborhood. You can't rent a phone booth for that now.

Also during my college years, I remember getting five loaves of bread for a dollar. Now, the cheapest white bread is about a dollar for one loaf.

But not all prices go up. The common pattern when new technology is released to consumers is for the price to start high and slowly come down.

I remember when digital watches first came out in the early 70s, you couldn't touch one for under 300 bucks. Now, you can get the same thing in a drug store for 2 dollars.

The first VCRs from the late 70s were big, hunky contraptions that cost over a thousand dollars. The last VCRs before DVDs took over were not only much smaller and streamlined, they could be had for under a hundred bucks as well.

The first monochrome IBM PCs, which came out in the mid-eighties cost about six thousand dollars. Now, I'm seeing cheap computers in Wal Mart for four and five hundred dollars that can run circles around those old dinosaurs.

Somehow, though, I don't think we'll ever get to the point where we see computers sold in drug stores for ten bucks.