Comments made in the year 1955!

"I'll tell you one thing, if things 
keep going the way they are, 
it’s going to be impossible to 
buy a week’s groceries for $10.00. "

"Have you seen the new cars 
coming out next year?  It won’t 
be long before $1, 000.00 will 
only buy a used one."

"If cigarettes keep going up in 
price, I’m going to quit; 20 cents 
a pack is ridiculous."

"Did you hear the post office is 
thinking about charging 7 cents 
just to mail a letter."

"If they raise the minimum wage 
to $1.00, nobody will be able to 
hire outside help at the store."

"When I first started driving, who 
would have thought gas would 
someday cost 25 cents a gallon. 
Guess we’d be better off leaving 
the car in the garage."

"I’m afraid to send my kids to the 
movies any more.  Ever since they 
let Clark Gable get by with saying 
DAMN in ‘GONE WITH THE WIND’, 
it seems every new movie has 
either HELL or DAMN in it."
 
"I read the other day where some 
scientist thinks it’s possible to put 
a man on the moon by the end of 
the century. They even have some 
fellows they call astronauts 
preparing for it down in Texas ."

"Did you see where some baseball 
player just signed a contract for 
$50,000 a year just to play ball? 
It wouldn’t surprise me if someday 
they’ll be making more than the 
President."

"I never thought I’d see the day 
all our kitchen appliances would 
be electric.  They are even making 
electric typewriters now."

"It’s too bad things are so tough 
nowadays.  I see where a few 
married women are having to 
work to make ends meet."

"It won’t be long before young 
couples are going to have to hire 
someone to watch their kids so 
they can both work."

"I’m afraid the Volkswagen car 
is going to open the door to a 
whole lot of foreign business."

"Thank goodness I won’t live to 
see the day when the Government 
takes half our income in taxes.  I 
sometimes wonder if we are 
electing the best people to 
government."

"The drive-in restaurant is 
convenient in nice weather, 
but I seriously doubt they 
will ever catch on."
 
"There is no sense going on short 
trips anymore for a weekend.  It 
costs nearly $2.00 a night to stay 
in a hotel."

"No one can afford to be sick 
anymore.  At $15.00 a day in 
the hospital, it’s too rich for 
my blood."
 
"If they think I’ll pay 30 cents 
for a hair cut, forget it."

One reason, Inflation.

I was alive in 1956. I do remember being able to mail letters for a nickel.

I remember the day in -- maybe it was 1975 -- when the price of gas went up beyond 50 cents a gallon. How awful!

A few years after that, I thought to myself in the grocery store that it was unbelievable how I had to pay a DOLLAR for a loaf of bread, and paying $2 was absolutely impossible.

I sometimes wish that in the current recession there would be a price crash like there was in the Depression, but I know that would be a disaster. If only inflation meant that wages would go up too. It used to. There was a time when you could get 12% interest on certificates of deposit in a bank. I don't expect to see that again.

Inflation. Yup. Even the reasoning with higher prices seems similar. I can remember when free was less expensive even.

You mean: "Free Shipping" isn't FREE?

Most of these statements don't reflect what a person might have said 55 years ago. Seventy five years ago, perhaps, but not 55 years.

When I was first married I could go to the store buy a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk hand them a dollar and get 20 cents back.

That's what inflation means. We don't live in inflationary times right now, although some items double in price overnight. Phone calls in public payphones cost fifty cents now over 25 cents before. Many dollar stores in Canada doubled the prices of their items. When corn and wheat were used just recently to make cars go, the price of bread went up 50 percent overnight, and it's still there.

Everything goes up except salaries. In 1972 you could buy 7 bus tickets for one hour's pay at minimum wage. Now it's three tickets and a third.


Everything goes up, except the great price crash when Chinese imports first appeared; some items went down to one-tenth of their retail price. Many retail items became very cheap, food doubles in price every four or five years. Housing prices are relatively stable against average income. At least for renters. In 1975 I paid $125 monthly rent for a room in a rooming house, all utilities included, now I pay $415 for the same service, but the items are better. Better sound-proofing, better electricity, (fewer outage), internet included as well as all utilities. For me the phone service availability is the only thing that suffered in the last 20 years.

More cables, more programs, better colour, now three-D, at marginally higher price than the old cable service my uncle had for his B/W tv with a push-button box.

Women are relatively at the same price, and restaurant food is too.

Sooooooo... right now the effect is not completely inflationary, if you consider minimum wage earners. I don't know what you call it when prices go up but salaries don't. I think this is what the protests against the G8 meetings are all about, and the SOPA, Sit-ins, etc. etc.

The left side of politics is getting more popular, and the right side is fortifying its positions. G8 protests are getting more impactful in the media, and the industrial investing world is digging in, the protests make less and less impacts on the decisions of the large and profitable corporations. Both locally and globally.

We are headed for a big war, probably world war, between China and the USA. The UK, and countries near China (Japan, India, Philippines, Australia) will side with the US. Their proximity to a supernova economic giant is frightening them, so they will want to lessen the effect of it, USA will be the ally. Africa, south america, and most of Europe, and definitely the Arab world, will be with China. Africa and South America has poverty issues; Arabs have long-standing resentment against the USA; Europe is not at all happy with either, coz it itself wants to become a superpower, but they can't pull out of such a big and fun party. They have to side with someone, and it will be America, I say, because they are both populated by whites predominantly.

Both the USA and China will want to preempt the growth of the other camp, so the war first will manifest with grabbing other lands that have a good return, in terms of war-supplies, incl. manpower. China will overrun India and South East Asia, and the war will start officially with their overtaking Japan. America is unfortunate this time with its isolation by geography. It may overrun the northern part of South America, and will secure supplies-rich Canada. Russia will supply manpower to the USA in the war.

Regarding the left-right issue... it's not an issue that can be resolved. Revolutions will occur, and up to that point the situation will get gradually worse, until the world economy collapses, due to a Marxian and Marx-described overproduction crisis. All economies depend on growth for health, and the cheaply and abundantly available goods will make this happen, as well as the growing number of the disenfranchised, who will be poor despite all the goods made and available, coz they won't be able to afford to buy them.

There will be therefore political struggle between the left and the right, and political struggle between superpowers and their allies.

Whether the two will coincide or not, I don't know; but if they do, one will bring on the other. (Civil war and revolutions will bring on the world war, like the Nazi revolution brought on the second world war, or else world wars will trigger revolutions like after the first world war in Europe.)

I suspect this will erupt within the next five-ten-fifteen years, no later than that.

People: voters and such, will be told this is a war over survival, and they won't be told that immense genocide would be planned, against the enemy, and not based on religion or on race, like in WWII, but much more deadly and much more effective. Neutron bombs will be the most popular and most used weapons. If you remember the eighties, Neutron bombs destroy people and other biological living things, but it leaves objects and non-living things relatively undamaged. Perfect weapon to destroy people but not wealth or machines of industry. It kills almost every living thing in its effective range, but it has no very long lasting irradiation future, and does not whip up dust clouds or heat hurricanes, so the area of its devastation can be made habitable soon after the explosions.

The vast majority of those quotes could have been said by anyone in my home town when I was a kid, and although I'm old, I'm a lot closer to 55 than 75.

56 years ago...I wasn't even a wet spot.

Gone with the Wind?..."Damn".... HA! Blazing Saddles did the first fart on film.

I liked the way women dressed then. It was sexy! I am a huge fan of pin up art from that era.

George Petty and Antonio Vargas from old Vanity Faire magazine...

There's an 'ol milk jug in my backyard.

i still have one of these in my toolbox

Dude...there are women present! Put your sex toys away till after 9 pm.