Conference nyoss1::market_investing

    Tough question, but I do know the minimum  wage was .65cents an hour
    which was what I received as a stock clerk.
    Rog

    The other big problem is that different products increased in
    cost at different rates in different parts of the country.
    
    My parents live in upstate New York and the cost of housing did
    not increase in cost nearly as fast as New England.
    
    Martin

   
    A few items I can remember:
                                                1955     1993
    		
    First class postage                        $0.03    $0.29
    
    Coke, vending machine, 12 oz.               0.10     0.70
    
    Milk, whole, one gallon                     0.35     2.00
    
    Candy bar, Snickers                         0.05     0.50
    
    Loaf of white bread                         0.20     1.69
    
    Movie theater ticket                        0.35     6.00
    
    Electronic computer, 1000 bytes RAM         $10M    39.95
    

    Well, in 1955, my parents bought their first house, when I was two.  It
    cost just under half of what we just paid for a CAR.
    
    /Charlotte

if you use the Consumer Price Index published by the Department of Labor..using
1959 as the base....


$1.00 (1959) = $0.24 (1991)

/mtb

    Re -.1
    
    Don't you mean:
    
       $1.00 (1991)  = $0.24 (1959)  ?
    
    /jrh
    

Thank you for your help so far.

Q1: What is the current minimum wage in the US ?

Q2: What would be a good guess for the buying power of the US$ of
    pre-WWII (1938) as compared to today ?

-- Hubert

    Q1: I don't know.
    
    Q2: This is not hard to give a bad answer to (you can look
    up GNP deflators and CPIs and such and get an answer along 
    the lines of one 1928 dollar is worth five thirty five* today),
    but this certitude is misleading:
    
    1.	Relative costs of material and labor have shifted over the
    	years: in 1938 labor was cheaper in terms of material: so 
    	things we now would replace would have been fixed, and so
    	on;
    
    2.	The relative wages of skilled and unskilled labor were 
    	different: skills (particularly professional skills) were
    	far more highly rewarded than they are now: in 1938 it
    	wasn't uncommon for families of lawyers and engineers
    	to have a servant or two.  So a lawyer in 1938 would
    	seem richer to us while an unskilled laboror would seem
    	poorer.
    
    3.	Taxes have changed (upwards, alas).  Accounting for this
    	is difficult--are taxes an expense (government getting
    	more expensive) or a dead loss of income, or something
    	in between?
    
    4.	People bought different things.  While we can compare
    	prices of bread, for example, most of what people now
    	spend money on didn't exist or has changed greatly
    	(e.g. people still buy cars as they did in 1938, but
    	the cars are very different on the inside).  Worse,
    	the purpose and use of cars has shifted from a luxury
    	and a toy in the 'teens to necessity now.  The motives
    	for purchase of a car and thus the amount a person
    	would be willing to spend on a car have changed since
    	1938.
    
    5.	Peoples' expectations change: 1938 was no longer the
    	depths of the Depression, but people had been trained
    	by necessity to do a lot with a dollar.
    
    At a guess, if you wanted to write a novel in which the suburban
    east-coast family of an engineer were doing '90-ish things like
    going to movies and eating food bought at the grocery store, a
    good approximation would be about 20-to-1, but with the more
    modern goods much more expensive (price a refrigerator!) and 
    the local tomatoes and comic books and the like far cheaper.
    Read old stories and novels, look up prices in old newspapers,
    and ask an older person for prices and wages they remember.
    
    		-John Bishop
    
    * Don't trust this 5.35 figure--it's one of the 82% of all
      statistics that are just pulled out of the air.

    re .0
    
    If it helps $1 (1948) = $3.74 (1986)
    
    re -.1
    
    Its does not matter that what people buy has changed since 1928
    or whatever.  What matters is the relative buying power of  $1, 
    when used to buy the things people want (whatever they may be).
    
    However having said that, I have to say that PRICE inflation is
    not evrything there is also PAY inflation (ie salary increases),
    as well as TECHNOLOGICAL and INDUSTRIAL and ECONOMIC development.
    
    What really counts is the STANDARD OF LIVING, and THAT by any
    comparation you want to make is better today (1993) then in 1928.
    People live longer, healphier, are better informed, and exist
    in greater material confort and security.
    
    Gil

The most meaningful metric that I've seen is
the number of hours required to purchase a given
product.  It factors in wage inflation as well as 
price inflation.

Some typical but unscientific numbers:

			1973	1993
Sporty car	      $2,500	$ 13,000
Average Eng Salary    10,000	  30,000
Car as % Salary		  25%	    43%


McDonald's BigMAC	$1.00	$1.70
Min Hourly wage		 2.00	 3.50
Hours for a BigMAC	 0.50    0.48

One could do this for refrigerators, homes, etc. You can even
compare across country borders.


Gim

	  

    Interesting auto cost comparison is a 1957 chevy bel air cost $2600.
    today a ford taurus cost approximately $16500.
    

    
    
    The American Automobile isn't a good example of real world economics.
    I've never bought a new car, the jack the price up to some silly
    amount, then give you some back as a 'rebate', then set an arrangement
    for a 5 year loan to pay for it!
    
    Colorado Springs has a lot of flash cars, mainly bought by all the
    military here. They get into these silly arrangements for super flashy
    new cars that cost $200/month, for 5 years. How are folks supposed to
    save?
    
    sorry, anybody notice a hot-button here? 8-)
    
    Simon

    Re: .3 -- of course, the price of a postage stamp was also $.03 in
    *1855*. The original intention of the 3� silver piece and the 3�
    "nickel" (first coin to be called a nickel, by the way, since 5� pieces
    were silver half-dimes) was for the convenient purchase of postage
    stamps. That was also the purpose of the $3 gold piece minted around
    that time: to buy stamps in sheets of 100.
    
    Re: .7 -- I think the minimum wage is now $4.10, due to a recent act of
    Congress.
    			Jim B.