A 100 page comic book cost me $0.25 US in 1970 or so, it is a few US$ now. A 12 oz soft drink cold in a deli was about $0.10, it is more usually $1.00 now. A gallon of gasoline $0.29, now about $4.50. Not a single one of these is of notably better quality now than it was then, I’d say they are directly comparable and are quite different enough in nominal price so that there can be no doubt.
Sorry not to go all the way back to 1913, but I was 13 years old in 1970 so it was easier to use what I could remember.
A 100 page comic book cost me $0.25 US in 1970 or so, it is a few US$ now.
A few dollars? 100 page comic books in the U.S. these days usually sell for upwards of $20. But comics are really another case where the product itself isn’t directly comparable between time periods.The market has shrunk tremendously, so they try to make up the difference in volume by selling high quality “glossies” rather than the old low quality “pulps,” for a larger profit margin per sale. In terms of physical quality of materials, it absolutely is better than what you’d buy in the 1970′s, although arguably the quality of the materials doesn’t have much to do with how entertaining the contents are. The writing is also completely different, since comics today target a very different age demographic than they did a few decades ago.
Any comic book fan could tell you why comic books went up in price. It has to do with 1) the collapse of the newsstand market and the decrease in readership, and 2) having to give creators better pay/royalties. (It sometimes gets blamed on the paper stock, which isn’t really true).
(And you probably didn’t mean to say 100 pages. There were 100 page comics then and there still are now, but they cost 50 cents. Typical size of a comic book is 32 pages.)
It’s also pretty obvious that gasoline has gone up in price for reasons that are not just general increase in prices.
The typical size comic books were $0.12 when I started buying them. I have no idea what they cost now.
It’s also pretty obvious that gasoline has gone up in price for reasons that are not just general increase in prices.
And yet despite its uniqueness, it doesn’t really deviate from the trend that everything else follows. Go figure.
I could have thrown in college tuition, about $2870 in 1974 when I started at Swarthmore College, currently $44,368. You still get a professor standing in front of the room for the same number of hours per semester.
You can’t legitimately cherry pick a few examples where prices went up faster than inflation and then, when called on it, cherry pick yet another example where prices went up faster than inflation. The examples are still cherry-picked; like comics and gasoline, college education is something else whose price went up unusually fast, and again for well-known reasons having nothing to do with the rise in prices in general.
If you are going to tell me what i can and can’t do, then please let me return the favor.
You can’t effectively counter a list of prices of items whose quality is the same in the 70s and the 10s but whos price is quite different without giving at least a few examples whos price goes in the other direction. It simply doesn’t make sense to challenge my methodology as cherry picking, which it was not, without doing the minimum amount of work it would require to check to see if you have any case at all by discovering even one item whos quality has not changed much between the 70s and the 10s but whos price has decreased. T-shirts? cardboard boxes? soft-serve ice cream from a truck? A bus ride across a city? You have probably literally a million things you could choose from to check their prices and you don’t bother finding even one?
It makes more sense in a discussion like this, if you realize I am right to just accept that and to not make arguments against me that have the form of sensible concerns but lack the content.
I’m not cherry picking examples. I’m remembering my trips to the store and library on bicycle when I was 12 years old and other trips I took around that age, and what the prices were. A slice of pizza was $0.25. There is simply NOTHING in my recollection that was more expensive then than it is now, not even cherries.
You can’t effectively counter a list of prices of items whose quality is the same in the 70s and the 10s but whos price is quite different without giving at least a few examples whos price goes in the other direction. It simply doesn’t make sense to challenge my methodology as cherry picking, which it was not, without doing the minimum amount of work it would require to check to see if you have any case at all by discovering even one item whos quality has not changed much between the 70s and the 10s but whos price has decreased.
If you are going to tell me what i can and can’t do, then please let me return the favor.
You can do anything you want, it just wouldn’t be a legitimate argument.
I’m not cherry picking examples. I’m remembering my trips to the store and library on bicycle when I was 12 years old and other trips I took around that age, and what the prices were.
You’re either cherry-picking examples, or by coincidence you’re picking cherry-pickable examples. I can’t read your mind, and if you indeed chose the examples for that reason, it’s just a coincidence that you chose examples that are very inapt. But they’re still inapt. Comic books specifically, as well your other examples of gasoline and college educations, have gone up in price a lot for well-understood reasons that are unrelated to the fact that things in general go up in price.
There is simply NOTHING in my recollection that was more expensive then than it is now
That slice of pizza is only “more expensive” because of inflation. Same for your T-shirts and bus rides. And if all you’re saying is that prices have gone up according to inflation, then of course they have. But by the standards of the post you were replying to, and almost anyone else, that means that pizza hasn’t gone up in price at all—that was about price compared to income and income has gone up because of inflation too, so prices have not increased relative to income.
.>You have probably literally a million things you could choose from to check their prices and you don’t bother finding even one?
That million things only went up in price because of inflation, which doesn’t count.
Comic books (and gas and college) are different because they have gone up faster than inflation, and thus really are “more expensive”, but they’re more expensive for specific reasons.
I don’t think it makes sense either with or without inflation. My first reaction that it was adjusted for inflation, since 40000 is probably below the family income of most people here. On the other hand, most people’s income is less than 40000 in 1913 dollars. On the gripping hand, the question doesn’t really make much sense if you don’t adjust for inflation. “Cars have gone up significantly in price, but are also more reliable.” If you don’t adjust for inflation, then while the question produces the author’s desired result when applied to 1913, it fails in other situations—for instance, with the price of a car today I could buy seven cars in 1963. Cars are not so much more reliable than 1963 cars to make up for such a difference, and in order to conclude the author’s point that cars are a better bargain now than in the past you have to take inflation into account.
At any rate, comic books, gasoline, and college educations are known cases where something went up in price faster than inflation.
I don’t read the original quote as an argument against the standard idea of inflation, but rather as a suggestion to additionally factor in changes in quality when discussing changes in price. It’s clear from looking at commodity prices that inflation has occurred; gas might be a bad example, but things like timber, steel, rice probably aren’t. But most consumer goods are not commodities in this sense, and 1913 or 1970 prices for them are not as directly comparable to those of modern goods.
In some cases the comparison seems to clearly favor either past or contemporary goods—I might prefer 1970 kitchen appliances or comic books, but I’d definitely prefer contemporary radios or TVs. In others it’s more of a wash—adjusted for inflation, a 2013 Ford Focus costs about twice as much as a 1970 Ford Maverick, but it’s got about twice the engine power and more interior room, and it’s far safer and more reliable.
(At a guess, incidentally, I’d say that $40000 was chosen because it’s close to the median household income in the US.)
College tuition inflation is often talked about but rarely dealt with sensibly. To understand the nature and extent of college tuition inflation, it’s important to understand
Looking at the sticker price isn’t comparing apples to apples. Aid has gone up drastically. It’s never been cheaper for a kid from a poor family to get an education. Although a lot of the increases at state schools relate to decreasing funding, a huge amount of them at private schools (and a lesser extent at state schools) is their financial aid programs. Tuition has become more progressive and we’re comparing the top prices.
Running a college is about as labor-intensive as it ever has been, which is to say, very. Prices in all labor-intensive stuff have gone up faster than CPI.
There has been a real increase, but it’s not all real and it’s not all for the reasons a lot of people assume.
Looking at the sticker price isn’t comparing apples to apples. Aid has gone up drastically. It’s never been cheaper for a kid from a poor family to get an education. Although a lot of the increases at state schools relate to decreasing funding, a huge amount of them at private schools (and a lesser extent at state schools) is their financial aid programs. Tuition has become more progressive and we’re comparing the top prices.
But if you’re middle class the price has gone up and may be unaffordable.
Running a college is about as labor-intensive as it ever has been, which is to say, very. Prices in all labor-intensive stuff have gone up faster than CPI.
And the ratio of administrators to professors has also exploded.
But if you’re middle class the price has gone up and may be unaffordable.
My basic point was just the fact that the numbers we compare have nothing to do with each other. (The really don’t.)
And the ratio of administrators to professors has also exploded.
The number of administrators, as traditionally defined, has changed little, though the number of professional staff has increased a lot. The biggest increase has been the growth of IT, though it goes beyond that. The part of this which is IT-related is somewhat mirrored by most other labor-intensive stuff.
A 100 page comic book cost me $0.25 US in 1970 or so, it is a few US$ now. A 12 oz soft drink cold in a deli was about $0.10, it is more usually $1.00 now. A gallon of gasoline $0.29, now about $4.50. Not a single one of these is of notably better quality now than it was then, I’d say they are directly comparable and are quite different enough in nominal price so that there can be no doubt.
Sorry not to go all the way back to 1913, but I was 13 years old in 1970 so it was easier to use what I could remember.
Nitpick: well the gasoline no longer has lead in it.
counter-nitpick because of government regulations about mixing with ethanol the current gallon has fewer watt-hours in it.
A few dollars? 100 page comic books in the U.S. these days usually sell for upwards of $20. But comics are really another case where the product itself isn’t directly comparable between time periods.The market has shrunk tremendously, so they try to make up the difference in volume by selling high quality “glossies” rather than the old low quality “pulps,” for a larger profit margin per sale. In terms of physical quality of materials, it absolutely is better than what you’d buy in the 1970′s, although arguably the quality of the materials doesn’t have much to do with how entertaining the contents are. The writing is also completely different, since comics today target a very different age demographic than they did a few decades ago.
Any comic book fan could tell you why comic books went up in price. It has to do with 1) the collapse of the newsstand market and the decrease in readership, and 2) having to give creators better pay/royalties. (It sometimes gets blamed on the paper stock, which isn’t really true).
(And you probably didn’t mean to say 100 pages. There were 100 page comics then and there still are now, but they cost 50 cents. Typical size of a comic book is 32 pages.)
It’s also pretty obvious that gasoline has gone up in price for reasons that are not just general increase in prices.
The typical size comic books were $0.12 when I started buying them. I have no idea what they cost now.
And yet despite its uniqueness, it doesn’t really deviate from the trend that everything else follows. Go figure.
I could have thrown in college tuition, about $2870 in 1974 when I started at Swarthmore College, currently $44,368. You still get a professor standing in front of the room for the same number of hours per semester.
You can’t legitimately cherry pick a few examples where prices went up faster than inflation and then, when called on it, cherry pick yet another example where prices went up faster than inflation. The examples are still cherry-picked; like comics and gasoline, college education is something else whose price went up unusually fast, and again for well-known reasons having nothing to do with the rise in prices in general.
If you are going to tell me what i can and can’t do, then please let me return the favor.
You can’t effectively counter a list of prices of items whose quality is the same in the 70s and the 10s but whos price is quite different without giving at least a few examples whos price goes in the other direction. It simply doesn’t make sense to challenge my methodology as cherry picking, which it was not, without doing the minimum amount of work it would require to check to see if you have any case at all by discovering even one item whos quality has not changed much between the 70s and the 10s but whos price has decreased. T-shirts? cardboard boxes? soft-serve ice cream from a truck? A bus ride across a city? You have probably literally a million things you could choose from to check their prices and you don’t bother finding even one?
It makes more sense in a discussion like this, if you realize I am right to just accept that and to not make arguments against me that have the form of sensible concerns but lack the content.
I’m not cherry picking examples. I’m remembering my trips to the store and library on bicycle when I was 12 years old and other trips I took around that age, and what the prices were. A slice of pizza was $0.25. There is simply NOTHING in my recollection that was more expensive then than it is now, not even cherries.
...he said, on the Internet.
You can do anything you want, it just wouldn’t be a legitimate argument.
You’re either cherry-picking examples, or by coincidence you’re picking cherry-pickable examples. I can’t read your mind, and if you indeed chose the examples for that reason, it’s just a coincidence that you chose examples that are very inapt. But they’re still inapt. Comic books specifically, as well your other examples of gasoline and college educations, have gone up in price a lot for well-understood reasons that are unrelated to the fact that things in general go up in price.
That slice of pizza is only “more expensive” because of inflation. Same for your T-shirts and bus rides. And if all you’re saying is that prices have gone up according to inflation, then of course they have. But by the standards of the post you were replying to, and almost anyone else, that means that pizza hasn’t gone up in price at all—that was about price compared to income and income has gone up because of inflation too, so prices have not increased relative to income.
.>You have probably literally a million things you could choose from to check their prices and you don’t bother finding even one?
That million things only went up in price because of inflation, which doesn’t count.
Comic books (and gas and college) are different because they have gone up faster than inflation, and thus really are “more expensive”, but they’re more expensive for specific reasons.
You misread it. Eugine is right.
I believe the original quote was talking about prices unadjusted for inflation.
I don’t think it makes sense either with or without inflation. My first reaction that it was adjusted for inflation, since 40000 is probably below the family income of most people here. On the other hand, most people’s income is less than 40000 in 1913 dollars. On the gripping hand, the question doesn’t really make much sense if you don’t adjust for inflation. “Cars have gone up significantly in price, but are also more reliable.” If you don’t adjust for inflation, then while the question produces the author’s desired result when applied to 1913, it fails in other situations—for instance, with the price of a car today I could buy seven cars in 1963. Cars are not so much more reliable than 1963 cars to make up for such a difference, and in order to conclude the author’s point that cars are a better bargain now than in the past you have to take inflation into account.
At any rate, comic books, gasoline, and college educations are known cases where something went up in price faster than inflation.
I don’t read the original quote as an argument against the standard idea of inflation, but rather as a suggestion to additionally factor in changes in quality when discussing changes in price. It’s clear from looking at commodity prices that inflation has occurred; gas might be a bad example, but things like timber, steel, rice probably aren’t. But most consumer goods are not commodities in this sense, and 1913 or 1970 prices for them are not as directly comparable to those of modern goods.
In some cases the comparison seems to clearly favor either past or contemporary goods—I might prefer 1970 kitchen appliances or comic books, but I’d definitely prefer contemporary radios or TVs. In others it’s more of a wash—adjusted for inflation, a 2013 Ford Focus costs about twice as much as a 1970 Ford Maverick, but it’s got about twice the engine power and more interior room, and it’s far safer and more reliable.
(At a guess, incidentally, I’d say that $40000 was chosen because it’s close to the median household income in the US.)
College tuition inflation is often talked about but rarely dealt with sensibly. To understand the nature and extent of college tuition inflation, it’s important to understand
Looking at the sticker price isn’t comparing apples to apples. Aid has gone up drastically. It’s never been cheaper for a kid from a poor family to get an education. Although a lot of the increases at state schools relate to decreasing funding, a huge amount of them at private schools (and a lesser extent at state schools) is their financial aid programs. Tuition has become more progressive and we’re comparing the top prices.
Running a college is about as labor-intensive as it ever has been, which is to say, very. Prices in all labor-intensive stuff have gone up faster than CPI.
There has been a real increase, but it’s not all real and it’s not all for the reasons a lot of people assume.
But if you’re middle class the price has gone up and may be unaffordable.
And the ratio of administrators to professors has also exploded.
My basic point was just the fact that the numbers we compare have nothing to do with each other. (The really don’t.)
The number of administrators, as traditionally defined, has changed little, though the number of professional staff has increased a lot. The biggest increase has been the growth of IT, though it goes beyond that. The part of this which is IT-related is somewhat mirrored by most other labor-intensive stuff.