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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (358510)	4/9/2010 1:47:39 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 793640

By the time you added the lot and construction costs you were looking at around $5000.

To: KLP who wrote (358510)	4/9/2010 12:55:08 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 793640

In years past and in the present, the basic staples and necessities are things to compare. No you have to compare everything. If your nominal income doubles, and the nominal price of necessities also doubles, while the nominal price of luxuries stays the same, you would be wealthier, but adjusting just for necessities would say that your real income is unchanged. Except for housing (which is an investment good as much as a consumption good and which is subject to bubbles, and to government intervention to raise prices) necessities make a smaller and part of what we spend. And housing isn't the same as housing in the past either, even if you adjust for the larger average size of today's houses, you still don't cover the differences. Houses today have to meet codes for things like fire resistance that they didn't have to 100 years ago. You also have modern appliances that often come as part of the houses cost, you have efficient heating (as opposed to say a fireplace), central air (as opposed to opening a window). One thing that makes inflation stats higher than they otherwise would be is that common purchase items that are cheap now, used to be luxuries and didn't get counted in the CPI until after they had most of their price drop. The expensive new item comes out, very few buy it, and it doesn't get counted, then it drops a lot (say VCRs going from $1000 to $200) and now it gets added, but its already had most of its price drop that never figured in to the CPI. ---------- Looking through these pages will give you a sense what it was like in 1895, when the average worker had to put in 16 hours to earn enough money to buy a hair brush or 260 hours for a one-speed bicycle. Yes. That's one of the best measures of how much richer we are now. We can buy many things for a lot less labor. Here is some more on that theme mjperry.blogspot.com mjperry.blogspot.com mjperry.blogspot.com

To: KLP who wrote (358510)	4/9/2010 1:04:40 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793640

Since we have been comparing things to the way they where from a long time ago, here is some more examples of that (mostly not about prices this time), or of things people said, from around 100 or so years ago. ---- Another poor prediction c. 1906 From the September 4, 1906 NYT: Secretary Root and his party, who reached this city [Santiago, Chile], who reached this city on Saturday, breakfasted to-day with Baron de Giskra at the Austrian Legation and spent the afternoon visiting the schools...The Secretary declared that, while the nineteenth century was the century of the United States, the twentieth century would be the century of South America, and that no part of the world had better prospects. The opening of the Panama Canal would revolutionize the world's commerce, and the west coast of South America would be benefited most. divisionoflabour.com Markets in everything c. 1907 In the early 1900s, social drinking by women was still a bit frowned upon. Regardless of social mores, there were obviously those who wanted nip from time to time. From the Jan. 22, 1907 NYT: The cocktail bracelet is the latest for women. There are fashionable women of this city who wear circlets on their wrists which sometimes contain a Martini dry or a Manhattan. The bracelets have one drawback, it is said, and this is they will not accommodate the cherry that goes with the fairy cocktail. The other night a Pittsburg attorney observed a woman of fashion place her lips to her bracelet. He thought that she was paying tribute to her own loveliness, but learned later she was merely refreshing her inner self with a mixture of cordials....With one of those graceful movements which appear to be natural with a woman the drink may be imbibed without fear of detection...A Broadway goldsmith sells numbers of the bracelets every week, and as most of the purchasers prefer secrecy in connection with the transaction they pay a pretty penny for the dubiously useful trinkets. divisionoflabour.com We are a much-governed people From Aug. 24, 1905, NYT is a report of the twentieth annual American Bar Association meetings in Narragansett Pier, R.I. The key-note speech was given by president Henry St. George Tucker who had the following nuggets: We are a much-governed people, and there is nothing which affects the American citizen, from infancy to the grave, awake or asleep, in motion or at rest, at home or abroad, in his personal, social, political, or property rights which is not the subject of regulation by the State. The home is no longer a man's castle, but it may be a prison house, with the Board of Health as jailer. When the State as parens patriae steps in and assumes control by boards and Commissioners and other agencies of the safety of society, of the health and morals of the people as well as their property rights, special care must be taken not to endanger any of those inalienable rights of 'life, liberty, and property' guaranteed to every citizen under 'the law of the land.' For it must be remembered that these are rights which do not proceed from government but are antecedent to government, and are those for the preservation of which Governments are ordained. Wow. What would poor Mr. St. George Tucker have to say about the society an additional hundred years of regulation and control has created? What are the chances that any president of the ABA could give a speech containing these two paragraphs at a national ABA meeting without being booed off the stage and having his/her reputation and intentions dragged through the mud by the pundits and talking heads? Why can't we have rhetoric such as this and not what we get today? divisionoflabour.com The Gentle Cynic c. 1906 From the July 15, 1906 NYT: * Making a mountain out of a molehill appeals to the real estate speculator. * The people who write articles on how to succeed are not always able to sell them. * A fellow never knows he is in love till the girl tells him. * It is true that a woman promises to love, honor, and obey, but a man promises to endow her with all his earthly goods, so it's an even break. * A man never hears the best things that are said about him, because he is dead then. * Only a few of us can have our faces on banknotes. Most of us would prefer to have our hands on them anyway. * There are no return tickets issues from the frying pan into the fire. * The fellow who is looking for trouble frequently overestimates his capacity. divisionoflabour.com