[geeks] Mr Bill?

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Quoth Geoffrey S. Mendelson ...

> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 06:58:28AM -0400, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> >And what was the prevailing wage when gas was less than 30 cents a  
> >gallon?

I can't tell you the _prevailing_ wage, but I believe that when I started to
drive, in 1963, and gas was about US$0.25/USgal, the minimum wage was
US$1.25.

> >Gas isn't that expensive, once you adjust for inflation

Yep.  Most things seem to cost about ten times now what they did when I was
in high school.  Many of those things are much better, though; the quality
of, say, the average car has gone up a lot.

> In 1973, I was making $9k a year as a progammer.

I was making a little more than that, as a programmer, in 1973, but not
much.  By the end of the decade, though, I was making well over $20k, doing
the same sort of stuff.

The 70s had a lot of inflation; that's when it really started.  Prices of
ordinary things had been pretty much the same from the early 1900s to the
early 1960s.  A bottle of Coca-Cola, for example, was a nickle (US$0.05)
from the day they started bottling it until the early sixties.  By the
middle 70s it was $0.20.  A Model T ford was $360 in 1916, and you could
still buy a new car for $1500 in the middle sixties.  It was a lot better
car than a Tin Lizzie, too, even at 4 times the price.

Who was it who said "Son, prices ain't gone up.  Money's gone down."

-Shel