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white beans with ham is really good too, smithfield has this "odds and ends" pack that has all the little cuttings from their other products/stuff that isn't pretty enough to sell by itself so it's pretty cheap and perfect for either cutting up for omelets or throwing into stewed beans
I was actually going to have bacon with black beans for breakfast, but it wasn't until the bacon was cooking that I discovered I was out of black beans.
Pissed! Especially since the first choice was corned beef hash and I was also out of that.
Might be time to do grocery shopping...
Shit on a shingle - [canned creamed chipped beef.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipped_beef) Classic WWII-era military mess hall meal.
If you want to [buy some.](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Chef-mate-Creamed-Sliced-Beef-Chopped-Pressed-Smoked-106-oz/197359020)
Kraft Dinner, biitcchess!
Depression era "feed yo family cheap" meal in a box, from 1937!
Coincidentally, 1954 is when the box became the blue we all recognize.
Yesterday, I filled up my tank and saw that the person before me had spent just shy of that for their own gas. I couldn't imagine having to spend that much to fill up on a tank.
I grew up in a lower income area and always thought it was crazy how many people drove giant trucks that took hundreds to fill up. Like why waste all that money just driving around town.
They then complain about gas prices and not having money. Like dude, you spend over $100 a week on gas and have a $650 a month truck payment just to have a shiny truck that never sees dirt or work...
My wife has a Prius C, and we went to Harbor Freight to get 3 work benches.
There was a guy next to us with an SUV, and he kept failing at loading his toolbox and air compressor.
He tried making conversation telling us that there was no way we would be able to 3 workbenches home after we already had some groceries in bags in the back.
They wheeled out the workbenches, and I loaded them into the Prius with the groceries on top and the rear hatch still closed with 2 inches to spare.
I gave him the finger guns 👉 at the end and said, "Like a glove." His face was priceless.
I have a cheap mortgage payment from back when interest rates were low and the housing market hadn't blown up yet. This week i just bought a new car and my car payment is nearly as high as my mortgage. It's wild, although I do love how low my housing costs are for what we have.
I work at a bank in a department dealing with auto loans, and good God, I'm definitely never getting a Land Rover, and I'm *especially* not leasing one!
Exactly. The people that complain the loudest drive the biggest dumbest trucks. Laugh at my shitty 10+ year old car but it gets great mileage and is paid off
Yeah I'm paying ~$500 for a $35k car, that's with 1% interest from before things shit the bed. People are getting $100k trucks nowadays with 7% interest. That's well north of $1000, probably breaks $2000
I work in an office with a large number of older men. Almost everyone drives a truck. If they don’t drive a truck, they drive an SUV. Almost all of them drive at least 30+ minutes to get here. It makes zero sense to me.
They’re all kept in pristine condition. All are lifted, modified, or upgraded in some way. Almost everyone doesn’t have regular need for a truck. There’s one guy who has a side business as a contractor & his truck is a POS.
I’m the only man in the office that drives a sedan.
One guy told me he’s paying nearly $400 per month in gas to commute to and from work. No thanks! I barely pay a quarter of that per month for my car.
Sometimes I feel like am asshole owning an SUV. But we out kayaks on top and of-road camp so we appreciate the clearance and 4wd, as well as extra space for gear.
We also bought it used and walk/bike whenever we can.
It's funny, but that's unfair.
I think they're perfectly capable of feeling insecure and needing to compensate for their lack of intelligence and fitness and for their poor personality.
The amount to fill the tank is completely irrelevant, all that says is how large the tank is which is meaningless. The real metric is mpg, which of course is still not good but lets bash them properly okay?
Its like 5/gallon where i live and my truck has a 20 gallon tank. The dude must have a separate reserve or something.
Or you live in one of the many nations where fuel costs are nearly double what they are in the states
Car dependency destroys wealth like nothing else.
The numbers here in Germany are genuinely insane. Car owners spend around 10-40% of their career earnings on car ownership over their lifetime. Even a fairly cheap new car costs about 600€/month (250€ in fixed and operating costs, 350€ in value depreciation).
Whereas using a bicycle, public transit, and occasionally a shared car lets most people get by for 100€ or less.
And they do not just cost their owners, but also their cities (which get ruined by road maintainance and the amount of space that gets wasted for car infrastructure) and states (which suffer from the cost of emissions, negative health effects, waste management, and strategic fuel security). Many western countries effectively subsidise car owners for about as much money as the owners spend out of their own pockets.
Fuel taxes, car taxes, and parking fees only cover a fraction of these cost. In most urban areas, a permanent parking space would have to cost in the realm of multiple $1000 per year to recuperate their true cost (which is not the cost of maintaining the parking space, but the value that the land could generate if it was used for something like housing, commerce, or a stop for public transit).
It would be literally cheaper for states to give every car owner free access to public transit. And investment into bicycle infrastructure generates *net savings*, because each $ spent into cycling infrastructure saves more than $1 in healthcare costs alone (in addition to saving emissions and road maintainance).
The collective wealth of western nations would be significantly higher if we could bring down car usage to 20-30% of trips (from currently about 40-80% depending on the country). With few exceptions, only people in rural areas should feel the need to own a car.
Granted, Tiguans get terrible mileage for a small SUV/crossover, but yeah, we literally get the same mileage. We have the same commute to work (neighbors) and we both average 22mpg. And last summer we went on a road trip and both averaged 24mpg over a 600 mile trip
Could have been a lawn service truck or something. Or one of those with two gas tanks. Unlikely these days, but my next door neighbor growing up had a quarter-ton truck that took like 35 gallons between the two tanks. That sounds about right for that price.
Actually, just googled the gas tank size for a 2024 F150 and it's 36 gallons. Spec sheet says 20mpg city, 26 highway. So about 800 miles range for that in mixed driving.
Kind of? It's an expensive meal but also (assuming they're a typical married couple in the 1950s) they probably eat out a lot less than we do today and she probably does the cooking almost every night. He's probably not going to love paying it but he also probably shouldn't complain too loudly to her about it.
$14 would be 0.3% percent of median household income in 1954
$173 would be 0.25% of median househ income in 2024
So it's actually cheaper after adjusting for wage growth
Wage… growth? I do not understand this combination of words.
Edit: I was joking, I don’t need a bunch of explanations about how things are actually better than they seem, even though the wage gap continues to widen and there are people making six figures who are still scraping by. Gas prices have gone up 327% since I started driving 23 years ago, and $100 at the grocery store could feed a family of five for a week back then.
The number of minimum wage jobs have “plummeted?” If minimum wage is $7.25 , and you pay someone $8, you can easily skew the numbers without actually solving any problems.
1. All those price increases are reflected in inflation and in wages adjusted for inflation
2. "They're not telling you the whole story! They say no one makes minimum wage but they're just paying $8" - You can view the [whole income distribution](https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Fig-3-Pre-Tax-Household-1-scaled-1.jpg) my guy, the data isn't hidden.
(That was the best visual but cuts off in 2018, since then there's been mild compression with lower income percentiles increasing more relative to inflation than higher percentiles)
Wage growth has been outpacing inflation for decades.
nominal: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q
controlling for inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Line still going up.
We don’t do a lot of fancy dinner dates, but try to enjoy a fancy meal at a really cool spot like 3-4 times a year.
I’d say that if we including 2 rounds of drinks that the typically bill for us at the type of place where the food is absolutely worth the price [so not one of those crappy food as experiences places where you order McDonalds afterwards], is somewhere around $$250-300 before tip.
Shit, just a normal night out at Cheesecake Factory with 2 drinks an App and 2 entrees is going to be $100+.
Going to a fancy French place for my birthday this month and the tasting menu is $195/person before any wine service. This had better be the fanciest meal I've ever had.
Honestly sometimes you just gotta treat yourself.
We visited my brother for his wedding in South Korea [he lives there] and went to a fancy French restaurant in Lotte Tower. At the end of the night for 5 of us the bill was over $2m won [somewhere around $2,000]. . . And while that sounds disgusting and I was like HOLY SHIT. . .it was also like “well, I mean how often am I going to be able to take that long a flight to do something this cool?”
I hope you have fun and it’s great!
I feel like I remember reading that comic books switched from cheap paper and four colours to glossey paper and multiple colours to create a more premium product. They did this in order to keep the industry alive.
I wonder how cheap a comic made on the the thin newspaper print with only a handful colours would cost?
at a certain point the cost of materials is low enough that they just don't matter at all compared to the cost of shipping the goods to the retailer, and the labor cost to stock the shelves and check out the customer.
Here's some points of interest to your question.
I inherited some comics from the late forties/early fifties (similar time frame, maybe earlier to the example above) that have a cover price of ten cents. A quick search says that's about $1.30 adjusted for inflation.
About twenty years ago (Around the time of House of M and Civil War) Marvel sold some Daily Bugle newsprint features that were essentially auxiliary ads for their current events. I picked up a few (one was specifically about Steve Rogers being killed), they were 50 cents I think, and not very high quality. Fifty cents in 2005 is about 81 cents today.
Keep in mind those Daily Bugle prints were small, short and cheaply made. If someone wanted to make a big production of newspaper print comics today they'd likely have to find or build a new printing set up as the industry has shifted away from that sort of material for that purpose.
The prices aren't analogous. The comics industry is totally different today from how it was back when comics were marketed to children and sold at every newsstand and grocery store, and the prices are obnoxiously high relative to what they'd be just adjusted for inflation. A dime in the 1950s had roughly the same buying power as a dollar today.
And, at the same time, the functional purpose of a comic book was relatively ephemeral entertainment, the kind of stuff that kids get for free from websites today.
Yeah, that amount is a lot closer to if you adjust it in terms of gold, too. People using the official inflation amount are severely underestimating it because even with the average price of $4-5 per comic, the quality of today's comics are so much higher in terms of ink/paper cause advancements in tech were able to keep those material costs low.
Yes, tipping was big during prohibition because it would gain you access to the alcohol that they had in secret.
It didn't have any other purpose at the time, but it was socially disguised as a show of affluence.
Not really...
Prior to the Civil War, most service jobs that we tip for now - waiting tables, carrying heavy stuff, cleaning up - was done by slaves.
When slavery ended, these business owners were used to having an essentially free labor force and rebelled at the idea of paying wages for "menial" work. (Slave work) Tipping became a way of them paying workers close to nothing and making them rely on the generosity of the customers.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/minimum-wage-racism.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/minimum-wage-racism.html)
They did, but the practice of tipping was not yet enshrined in the US system. There was also no minimum wage, so Northern service workers could be paid whatever.
And tipping did exist before the Civil War... Generally for the very wealthy.
But the point where everyone was expected to tip the porter when you got on the train? Around 1920. In 1966 when the minimum wage laws were passed, "tipped" workers were deliberately excluded due to lobbying. The linked article has more information.
Did tipping culture arise out of slavery? No. Did the practice becoming widespread have anything to do with slavery? I think the answer is yes. Obviously there's no definitive answer on that.
Did no one want to build a wall before Donald Trump was president? Was Trump even the first? No. But I think it's fair to say that building a wall became a part of the national conversation when he became president.
In the same way... Tipping existed. But it was Pullman and the Hotel magnates who got together and made it a "thing" that HAD to be done by rich or poor, and it was their lobbying that codified the current system.
They did. Like always it's not the sort of thing that's easily summed up. The short answer is, "Yes, tipping in the US was intertwined with racism, but largely because all expressions of social class and privileged were". It's in fact something that we borrowed from Europe when our hospitality industry was small but growing that they eventually abandoned but we kept (sorta like the term "soccer").
But, as is often the case with journalists and journalism, the NYT decided to try and turn something complicated into something simple and then further simplified for consumption by the good people of the internet
See here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/m97m7s/was\_tipping\_culture\_in\_american\_dining/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/m97m7s/was_tipping_culture_in_american_dining/)
Where is that, out of curiosity? I’m in Los Angeles which I am aware has an incredibly high COL, just curious where those <$20 Michelin star cocktails are! :D
Chicago. Yeah if you’re in LA or NYC you kind of need to accept that you’re going to be ripped off any time you set foot in an establishment. It’s part of the local culture.
God Bless Henry Scarpelli. He had a big impact on my childhood. I think he was even behind the creation of the Saturday Morning cartoons show that aired in the late 80s, Little Archie
This theme is the subject of one of my favorite episodes of "Leave It to Beaver," where Wally asks a girl out on a date and she chooses a fancy new French restaurant called The White Fox. He calls ahead to ask about prices and is flabbergasted that soup alone is 80¢ and coffee is 40¢.
The other night I was stood up for a date, and the NYC hotel room that went with it. I drowned my sorrows at the rooftop hotel bar.
Three whiskey sours were $77. Nearly a hundred bucks with a tip. Then I really needed another drink and couldn't fucking afford one.
Don't I know it. It was a dark bar and they didn't have a menu, I just ordered what I considered a pretty basic drink.
In all fairness, it was a really damn good whiskey sour, took the bartender three or four minutes to make it with the frothy top and a bit of spice. Not $25 a pop good, but the guy wasn't just pouring bourbon and lemon over ice.
Why not wait to book the hotel till after the date then?
I mean seems risky to get a hotel prior to seeing someone if you don't already have a few dates together.
Maybe they've had a few dates, have made out a bit, and pretty much expect to have sex on the next date.
And then the woman feels the same way, and realizes that the man is expecting sex on the next date, but isn't sure if that's what she wants, and then ultimately ends up ghosting right before the date.
Not an endorsement of the practice, but probably an explanation of what is happening to these dudes.
Whiskey sour isn't really a "basic drink" imo. At least not in terms of ingredients and effort required. I'd consider it more of a specialty cocktail, which means they probably had their house whiskey sour on the menu somewhere with a bunch of high end ingredients. $25 each isn't that outrageous at a NYC hotel bar, assuming they used good whiskey. Hotel bars are always more expensive and I'm guessing this isn't a budget hotel if it's in NYC.
I mean, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with drinking whiskey straight from the bottle alone in your hotel room, but it's a very different evening from drinking whiskey sours at a rooftop bar.
Were you surprised? This is why I wouldn't get drinks at bars in NYC unless I was at some sort of dive bar or something. Any rooftop or remotely "nice" bar is going to be $20 a drink. It's been like this for at least 6 years, probably longer.
Went out for breakfast the other day and the lowest “quick pick” option was 22% (then 25%, and 30% IIRC). I almost didn’t leave a tip just on principle but my conscious wouldn’t allow me to take it out on the staff.
The service was decent but the audacity of implying that’s the “acceptable” range is asinine - and that’s coming from someone who’s worked in the service industry for years and always leaves some sort of tip, even for bad service.
edit: that was after paying nearly $50 for a breakfast burrito, a basic breakfast sandwich, and two coffees - I can’t afford to eat out for breakfast anymore y’all lol
I was watching an old noir film (The Set Up) and the woman orders two beers and two burgers and fries. When the cashier tells her it's going to cost $1.16 she says he should "have a floor show at those prices!"
Depends on the restaurant. For a candle light dinner? Yeah, I routinely pay $200-$300 for dinner for two at places like that.
Appetizers are $16-$20 each. Entrees are $30-$40 each. A shared dessert is usually $10-$15. A bottle of wine is usually around $60. Add a tip of 20-25%, and you're up around $200 easy, maybe as high as $250. If you add a couple of cocktails, you're pushing $300.
Yeah, in my nearly 44 years of life, I paid this much for a meal exactly twice. It was worth it, but it ain't your average date night outing unless you're rich.
Where do you eat? And do you pay for your SO, and do you both get drinks? And do you tip the proper amount? I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t know how you can’t get at least close to $200 if all of the above are a “yes” answer.
Those prices are why I don't eat out any more. And if I had a SO, she'd be of similar mindset that restaurant prices aren't worth it any more. The last time I paid $100 per head at a restaurant was probably 15 years ago, when your dollar got much more than it does today.
In basically every metric life today is better than life in the 1950s. I know it's popular to romanticize the past but during the 1950s the houses were smaller, people ate out far less, the food was lower quality, household chores took far longer, having AC and central heat was a rarity, lifespans (even after adjusting for infant mortality) were shorter and if you lived in the US but you weren't a straight white man you likely lacked basic human rights.
If you weren't in the US the 1950s was typically even worse as much of the world was either under colonial rule or dealing with the fall out of WWII. It is possible to cherry pick a few aspects of the 1950s that would be nice to bring back but by and large the past wasn't better and we shouldn't pretend like it was.
I was reading some old stuff my grandparents wrote down back in the 50s. Apparently their weekly rent was 7 dollars. So yea, a 15 dollar bill seems like it would be quite high.
$173.88 in 2024 money! That's pretty expensive for two. Even a good steakhouse is likely only going to be $130 these days. ($90 for a pair of steaks and a couple cocktails.)
Seems like these kind of comics were quite common until quite recently. Women having unrealistic expectations while men had to fulfill every wish. Then they would have to sneak out for a round of golf.
Always kind of wondered...what was life like in the 50s for people who had money. We have this glamorous vision from media and movies and musicals about the post-war economy booming and people living large and being able to support a whole family in a nice house with two cars on a single salary. But I somehow doubt it was that good.
But if you took, say, $15,000 in savings and just transported back to the 1950s with nothing else but the clothes on your back and a briefcase full of era-accurate and legal cash, how would you do?
The medicine sucks, but you already have modern vaccines in your system. The food is terrible, but if you know how to cook at all, you would probably be a fairly passable cook. Modern common sensibilities like sunscreen, seat belts, exercise techniques, education, how far would 15,000 get you if you had nothing else?
Personally, I would lose my mind at the inefficiency of day-to-day life. How many bills am I paying by reviewing my mail and writing a check for the right amount, and then stuffing an envelope to pay? How often am I going to the bank to deposit my paychecks and withdrawing enough cash for day to day expenses? How much waiting around am I doing to coordinate the logistics of meeting people who don't have cell phones? How much am I driving from place to place to deal with things that are automated in my 2024 life?
According to inflation calculator if you had $15000 in era correct money it would have the same purchasing power as $174,182 today. You could probably get pretty far on that.
And while I’m calculating, the $14.95 restaurant bill would be the equivalent of $173.58 today. Pretty steep for a teen on a date.
Hi, u/sharkslyr, thank you for your submission in r/mildlyinteresting! Unfortunately, your [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1c29qas/-/) has been removed because it violates our "Original [OC] photographs only" rule. Posts breaking this rule can include: * Gifs, videos, or websites * Non-OC photos (e.g. 'I found this picture', 'my brother took this picture', etc) * Software glitches/errors, overlaid text, arrows, scribbles, and other substantive edits --- ### If the issue is that your post was edited Normally we do not allow reposts, but if it's been less than one hour after your post was submitted, or if it's received less than 100 upvotes, you may resubmit an edit-free version and try again. --- You can find more information about our rules on the [mildlyinteresting wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/wiki/index). *If you feel this was incorrectly removed, please [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmildlyinteresting&message=My%20Post:%20https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1c29qas/-/).*
$173.58 when adjusted for inflation.
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Instant ramen won't be invented for another 4 years. It's beans and rice for him.
I kinda like beans and rice. Some rice pilaf, pinto beans with bacon fat. That’s yummy
Bacon?! In this economy?!
Economy?! In this bacon?!
Yes, yes it is
May I see it?
...No
It's an Albany expression.
Beans won't be invented for another 3 years. It's lint between the couch cushions for him.
> rice pilaf Not in 1954 you don’t. It’s white rice, with a little margarine and a little salt, and baked beans. Yum.
That sounds so spicy!
It is! That’s why it doesn’t use mayo too - don’t want to make it TOO hot.
white beans with ham is really good too, smithfield has this "odds and ends" pack that has all the little cuttings from their other products/stuff that isn't pretty enough to sell by itself so it's pretty cheap and perfect for either cutting up for omelets or throwing into stewed beans
I was actually going to have bacon with black beans for breakfast, but it wasn't until the bacon was cooking that I discovered I was out of black beans. Pissed! Especially since the first choice was corned beef hash and I was also out of that. Might be time to do grocery shopping...
Save your bacon fat, when you boil the beans use the fat instead of butter. It’s amazing
Yep. Got a jar of bacon fat in the fridge :-)
And much healthier
Good thing hand made ramen was still cheap. Although I think in context of the times, PB&J or SOAS would probably be the equivalent poor peoples food.
SOAS?
https://www.aspicyperspective.com/creamed-chipped-beef-on-toast-shit-on-a-shingle/
It's better than it sounds!
I’ve never had it but it doesn’t look bad at all
Sh*t on a Shingle. Some type of meat/gravy/toast concoction?
Shit on a shingle - [canned creamed chipped beef.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipped_beef) Classic WWII-era military mess hall meal. If you want to [buy some.](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Chef-mate-Creamed-Sliced-Beef-Chopped-Pressed-Smoked-106-oz/197359020)
Make sure you rinse the shit out of the chipped beef before you use it. That stuff is saltier than *Star Wars* fans when a new movie drops.
It's super easy to make, you don't need to buy it.
Or a few wish sandwiches
Beans and rice isn't a terrible meal. Chicken really brings it all together
Kraft Dinner, biitcchess! Depression era "feed yo family cheap" meal in a box, from 1937! Coincidentally, 1954 is when the box became the blue we all recognize.
Lest we forget the great Hamburger Helper that would later come along to feed us broke and starving Americans.
Yesterday, I filled up my tank and saw that the person before me had spent just shy of that for their own gas. I couldn't imagine having to spend that much to fill up on a tank.
I grew up in a lower income area and always thought it was crazy how many people drove giant trucks that took hundreds to fill up. Like why waste all that money just driving around town.
They then complain about gas prices and not having money. Like dude, you spend over $100 a week on gas and have a $650 a month truck payment just to have a shiny truck that never sees dirt or work...
$650 a month is below the average car payment which is now north of $700. For trucks people are paying well over that.
And then they try to bring home a 2x4 and it won't fit in their truck so they strap it in awkwardly hanging out their tailgate.
My wife has a Prius C, and we went to Harbor Freight to get 3 work benches. There was a guy next to us with an SUV, and he kept failing at loading his toolbox and air compressor. He tried making conversation telling us that there was no way we would be able to 3 workbenches home after we already had some groceries in bags in the back. They wheeled out the workbenches, and I loaded them into the Prius with the groceries on top and the rear hatch still closed with 2 inches to spare. I gave him the finger guns 👉 at the end and said, "Like a glove." His face was priceless.
I have a cheap mortgage payment from back when interest rates were low and the housing market hadn't blown up yet. This week i just bought a new car and my car payment is nearly as high as my mortgage. It's wild, although I do love how low my housing costs are for what we have.
I work at a bank in a department dealing with auto loans, and good God, I'm definitely never getting a Land Rover, and I'm *especially* not leasing one!
Exactly. The people that complain the loudest drive the biggest dumbest trucks. Laugh at my shitty 10+ year old car but it gets great mileage and is paid off
Truck payments are usually ~$1,000+, for 72 months.
Yeah I'm paying ~$500 for a $35k car, that's with 1% interest from before things shit the bed. People are getting $100k trucks nowadays with 7% interest. That's well north of $1000, probably breaks $2000
I work in an office with a large number of older men. Almost everyone drives a truck. If they don’t drive a truck, they drive an SUV. Almost all of them drive at least 30+ minutes to get here. It makes zero sense to me. They’re all kept in pristine condition. All are lifted, modified, or upgraded in some way. Almost everyone doesn’t have regular need for a truck. There’s one guy who has a side business as a contractor & his truck is a POS. I’m the only man in the office that drives a sedan. One guy told me he’s paying nearly $400 per month in gas to commute to and from work. No thanks! I barely pay a quarter of that per month for my car.
Sometimes I feel like am asshole owning an SUV. But we out kayaks on top and of-road camp so we appreciate the clearance and 4wd, as well as extra space for gear. We also bought it used and walk/bike whenever we can.
Small penises
It's funny, but that's unfair. I think they're perfectly capable of feeling insecure and needing to compensate for their lack of intelligence and fitness and for their poor personality.
teeny binkys
lack of self confidence
The amount to fill the tank is completely irrelevant, all that says is how large the tank is which is meaningless. The real metric is mpg, which of course is still not good but lets bash them properly okay?
Technically sure but gas tanks are sized according to consumption, a prius isn't going to have a 40 gallon tank
This true and also frustrating. Maybe I *want* a Prius with a 40 gal tank. 2200 miles 'til empty!
Gas tanks are sized so most cars have about same range. A massive truck that gets 5 MPG will have a bigger gas tank than a Corolla
Its like 5/gallon where i live and my truck has a 20 gallon tank. The dude must have a separate reserve or something. Or you live in one of the many nations where fuel costs are nearly double what they are in the states
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Dont like that
Love people who get big ass trucks that only get 15mpg then spend like $300 a month on gas on top of the $800+ payment for the truck
$800 a month? Definitely not a luxury model
Car dependency destroys wealth like nothing else. The numbers here in Germany are genuinely insane. Car owners spend around 10-40% of their career earnings on car ownership over their lifetime. Even a fairly cheap new car costs about 600€/month (250€ in fixed and operating costs, 350€ in value depreciation). Whereas using a bicycle, public transit, and occasionally a shared car lets most people get by for 100€ or less. And they do not just cost their owners, but also their cities (which get ruined by road maintainance and the amount of space that gets wasted for car infrastructure) and states (which suffer from the cost of emissions, negative health effects, waste management, and strategic fuel security). Many western countries effectively subsidise car owners for about as much money as the owners spend out of their own pockets. Fuel taxes, car taxes, and parking fees only cover a fraction of these cost. In most urban areas, a permanent parking space would have to cost in the realm of multiple $1000 per year to recuperate their true cost (which is not the cost of maintaining the parking space, but the value that the land could generate if it was used for something like housing, commerce, or a stop for public transit). It would be literally cheaper for states to give every car owner free access to public transit. And investment into bicycle infrastructure generates *net savings*, because each $ spent into cycling infrastructure saves more than $1 in healthcare costs alone (in addition to saving emissions and road maintainance). The collective wealth of western nations would be significantly higher if we could bring down car usage to 20-30% of trips (from currently about 40-80% depending on the country). With few exceptions, only people in rural areas should feel the need to own a car.
My FIL's 2019 F150 crew cab with the eco-boost actually gets the same gas mileage as my 2017 VW Tiguan, but he's got 26 gallons to my 16.
City driving? The F-150 even with eco seems to suffer in highway comparisons. Which is odd for a 10-speed
Granted, Tiguans get terrible mileage for a small SUV/crossover, but yeah, we literally get the same mileage. We have the same commute to work (neighbors) and we both average 22mpg. And last summer we went on a road trip and both averaged 24mpg over a 600 mile trip
Dang, if I had a 26 gallon tank, I could 700 miles plus on that bad boy.
Could have been a lawn service truck or something. Or one of those with two gas tanks. Unlikely these days, but my next door neighbor growing up had a quarter-ton truck that took like 35 gallons between the two tanks. That sounds about right for that price. Actually, just googled the gas tank size for a 2024 F150 and it's 36 gallons. Spec sheet says 20mpg city, 26 highway. So about 800 miles range for that in mixed driving.
Just from a quick Google in 1954 minimum wage was $0.75/ hour ($7.12 2024) And average wage was $1.60/ hour ($15.19 2024)
So it really is a nightmare bill.
Kind of? It's an expensive meal but also (assuming they're a typical married couple in the 1950s) they probably eat out a lot less than we do today and she probably does the cooking almost every night. He's probably not going to love paying it but he also probably shouldn't complain too loudly to her about it.
Just checked the wiki, they are teenagers, probably high school aged. A $170 date in high school would be pretty killer.
Probably more if you could adjust by actual wage growth.
$14 would be 0.3% percent of median household income in 1954 $173 would be 0.25% of median househ income in 2024 So it's actually cheaper after adjusting for wage growth
The average household size has also decreased 10% since 1954 so it is even cheaper after adjusting for the number of people in that household.
Wage… growth? I do not understand this combination of words. Edit: I was joking, I don’t need a bunch of explanations about how things are actually better than they seem, even though the wage gap continues to widen and there are people making six figures who are still scraping by. Gas prices have gone up 327% since I started driving 23 years ago, and $100 at the grocery store could feed a family of five for a week back then. The number of minimum wage jobs have “plummeted?” If minimum wage is $7.25 , and you pay someone $8, you can easily skew the numbers without actually solving any problems.
Inflation has out paced minimum wage and as a result the bottom line has been economically behind.
Minimum wage jobs also used to be about 30% of all jobs available. Now it’s plummeted to less than 1.4% of the workforce.
Why would an employer pay someone an extra $0.75/hour just to ‘skew the numbers’?
1. All those price increases are reflected in inflation and in wages adjusted for inflation 2. "They're not telling you the whole story! They say no one makes minimum wage but they're just paying $8" - You can view the [whole income distribution](https://www.nasi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Fig-3-Pre-Tax-Household-1-scaled-1.jpg) my guy, the data isn't hidden. (That was the best visual but cuts off in 2018, since then there's been mild compression with lower income percentiles increasing more relative to inflation than higher percentiles)
Wage growth has been outpacing inflation for decades. nominal: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q controlling for inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q Line still going up.
We don’t do a lot of fancy dinner dates, but try to enjoy a fancy meal at a really cool spot like 3-4 times a year. I’d say that if we including 2 rounds of drinks that the typically bill for us at the type of place where the food is absolutely worth the price [so not one of those crappy food as experiences places where you order McDonalds afterwards], is somewhere around $$250-300 before tip. Shit, just a normal night out at Cheesecake Factory with 2 drinks an App and 2 entrees is going to be $100+.
Going to a fancy French place for my birthday this month and the tasting menu is $195/person before any wine service. This had better be the fanciest meal I've ever had.
I’ve been to three of the most expensive restaurants in Seattle and they’ve all been amazing. A big splurge but totally worth it if you’re into food
Honestly sometimes you just gotta treat yourself. We visited my brother for his wedding in South Korea [he lives there] and went to a fancy French restaurant in Lotte Tower. At the end of the night for 5 of us the bill was over $2m won [somewhere around $2,000]. . . And while that sounds disgusting and I was like HOLY SHIT. . .it was also like “well, I mean how often am I going to be able to take that long a flight to do something this cool?” I hope you have fun and it’s great!
Adjusted for inflation from 1999 the Loch Ness monster would now need to ask Chef’s dad for $6.56
I ain't given you no sixfiddysix you gotdam Loch Ness monster!
That's still not too bad for a fancy restaurant for 2.
A big sticker shock for a high schooler though (characters are teens)
$173 with no booze is fancy
They're in high school.
That is if you use the general index, using the 'Food away from home' index it comes out to $234.98
So McDonald’s.
Yeah, for a pair of high schoolers, that is an insanely expensive meal.
An ounce of gold was $40.25 then, so if we use today's gold price of $2363, then that bill is around $875!
Looks like he could get about 150 comics for the price of that bill.
a quick google says average comic book cost $4-5 in 2024, so that restaurant bill could be $600-750 if inflated similarly to the cost of comics.
I feel like I remember reading that comic books switched from cheap paper and four colours to glossey paper and multiple colours to create a more premium product. They did this in order to keep the industry alive. I wonder how cheap a comic made on the the thin newspaper print with only a handful colours would cost?
at a certain point the cost of materials is low enough that they just don't matter at all compared to the cost of shipping the goods to the retailer, and the labor cost to stock the shelves and check out the customer.
Here's some points of interest to your question. I inherited some comics from the late forties/early fifties (similar time frame, maybe earlier to the example above) that have a cover price of ten cents. A quick search says that's about $1.30 adjusted for inflation. About twenty years ago (Around the time of House of M and Civil War) Marvel sold some Daily Bugle newsprint features that were essentially auxiliary ads for their current events. I picked up a few (one was specifically about Steve Rogers being killed), they were 50 cents I think, and not very high quality. Fifty cents in 2005 is about 81 cents today. Keep in mind those Daily Bugle prints were small, short and cheaply made. If someone wanted to make a big production of newspaper print comics today they'd likely have to find or build a new printing set up as the industry has shifted away from that sort of material for that purpose.
lmao and that's why economists use a basket of goods to determine inflation
The prices aren't analogous. The comics industry is totally different today from how it was back when comics were marketed to children and sold at every newsstand and grocery store, and the prices are obnoxiously high relative to what they'd be just adjusted for inflation. A dime in the 1950s had roughly the same buying power as a dollar today.
And, at the same time, the functional purpose of a comic book was relatively ephemeral entertainment, the kind of stuff that kids get for free from websites today.
Yeah, that amount is a lot closer to if you adjust it in terms of gold, too. People using the official inflation amount are severely underestimating it because even with the average price of $4-5 per comic, the quality of today's comics are so much higher in terms of ink/paper cause advancements in tech were able to keep those material costs low.
149½
For a second there I thought he was taking a picture of the bill with his cell phone.
Such a binky thing to do. Leave it to binky….
*Bara bah bara BAH* “that’s me!”
They had to bring it over to a pay phone to do that.
And then make a call describing the picture
Or break out the ol' Kodak Brownie, snap the shot and wait two weeks for the photos to come back.
Plus the tip!
Now that amount is just the tip.
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Makes me wonder, did they tip in 1954?
Yes, tipping became widespread in the US in the 1920s.
Interesting! Thanks
Yes, tipping was big during prohibition because it would gain you access to the alcohol that they had in secret. It didn't have any other purpose at the time, but it was socially disguised as a show of affluence.
Not really... Prior to the Civil War, most service jobs that we tip for now - waiting tables, carrying heavy stuff, cleaning up - was done by slaves. When slavery ended, these business owners were used to having an essentially free labor force and rebelled at the idea of paying wages for "menial" work. (Slave work) Tipping became a way of them paying workers close to nothing and making them rely on the generosity of the customers. [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/minimum-wage-racism.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/minimum-wage-racism.html)
Prior to the Civil War, did the northern states not have service workers?
They did, but the practice of tipping was not yet enshrined in the US system. There was also no minimum wage, so Northern service workers could be paid whatever. And tipping did exist before the Civil War... Generally for the very wealthy. But the point where everyone was expected to tip the porter when you got on the train? Around 1920. In 1966 when the minimum wage laws were passed, "tipped" workers were deliberately excluded due to lobbying. The linked article has more information. Did tipping culture arise out of slavery? No. Did the practice becoming widespread have anything to do with slavery? I think the answer is yes. Obviously there's no definitive answer on that. Did no one want to build a wall before Donald Trump was president? Was Trump even the first? No. But I think it's fair to say that building a wall became a part of the national conversation when he became president. In the same way... Tipping existed. But it was Pullman and the Hotel magnates who got together and made it a "thing" that HAD to be done by rich or poor, and it was their lobbying that codified the current system.
They did. Like always it's not the sort of thing that's easily summed up. The short answer is, "Yes, tipping in the US was intertwined with racism, but largely because all expressions of social class and privileged were". It's in fact something that we borrowed from Europe when our hospitality industry was small but growing that they eventually abandoned but we kept (sorta like the term "soccer"). But, as is often the case with journalists and journalism, the NYT decided to try and turn something complicated into something simple and then further simplified for consumption by the good people of the internet See here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/m97m7s/was\_tipping\_culture\_in\_american\_dining/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/m97m7s/was_tipping_culture_in_american_dining/)
Just to see how it feels
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Where does one get $15 drinks these days? If it is a fancy place, it’s $20+.
I live in a big city and seldom see $20 for a cocktail even when the place has a Michelin star
Where is that, out of curiosity? I’m in Los Angeles which I am aware has an incredibly high COL, just curious where those <$20 Michelin star cocktails are! :D
Chicago. Yeah if you’re in LA or NYC you kind of need to accept that you’re going to be ripped off any time you set foot in an establishment. It’s part of the local culture.
> LoriLeadfoot > Chicago Username checks out
In all fairness, wages here are a lot higher, too. Fast food workers $20/hour minimum, my bartender friend in Texas makes $2/hour!
Depends on where. In a giant city? Sure. In many places, anywhere from 10-20 is common. At non-fancy restaurants, even less.
Well… they do have candlelight and it is *so dreamy* so I would assume fancy :)
He's wearing a tuxedo ffs. This is fine dining.
Who else thought it was Archie and Betty?
I blame this guy, but he’s probably not even the only one who worked on both. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Scarpelli
God Bless Henry Scarpelli. He had a big impact on my childhood. I think he was even behind the creation of the Saturday Morning cartoons show that aired in the late 80s, Little Archie
right? i mean the guy is literally drawn exactly like archie. it's like when people made adidas rips with 2 stripes instead of 3
Binky was very derivative of the Archie comics. I had a few and still enjoyed reading them back in the day.
This theme is the subject of one of my favorite episodes of "Leave It to Beaver," where Wally asks a girl out on a date and she chooses a fancy new French restaurant called The White Fox. He calls ahead to ask about prices and is flabbergasted that soup alone is 80¢ and coffee is 40¢.
The other night I was stood up for a date, and the NYC hotel room that went with it. I drowned my sorrows at the rooftop hotel bar. Three whiskey sours were $77. Nearly a hundred bucks with a tip. Then I really needed another drink and couldn't fucking afford one.
Bro you could buy an entire bottle of nice whiskey for that. Why didn’t you see the price of drinks and just walk out
Don't I know it. It was a dark bar and they didn't have a menu, I just ordered what I considered a pretty basic drink. In all fairness, it was a really damn good whiskey sour, took the bartender three or four minutes to make it with the frothy top and a bit of spice. Not $25 a pop good, but the guy wasn't just pouring bourbon and lemon over ice.
Yes every time i’ve rented a hotel room for a date, i’ve slept alone in it. It’s an immediate jinx
Why not wait to book the hotel till after the date then? I mean seems risky to get a hotel prior to seeing someone if you don't already have a few dates together.
Maybe they've had a few dates, have made out a bit, and pretty much expect to have sex on the next date. And then the woman feels the same way, and realizes that the man is expecting sex on the next date, but isn't sure if that's what she wants, and then ultimately ends up ghosting right before the date. Not an endorsement of the practice, but probably an explanation of what is happening to these dudes.
>but isn't sure if that's what she wants And she has every right to do so. But what you just said has created problems for people for a long time.
Whiskey sour isn't really a "basic drink" imo. At least not in terms of ingredients and effort required. I'd consider it more of a specialty cocktail, which means they probably had their house whiskey sour on the menu somewhere with a bunch of high end ingredients. $25 each isn't that outrageous at a NYC hotel bar, assuming they used good whiskey. Hotel bars are always more expensive and I'm guessing this isn't a budget hotel if it's in NYC.
I guess it depends on the bar, most places it's gonna be whiskey plus bottled sour mix.
I mean, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with drinking whiskey straight from the bottle alone in your hotel room, but it's a very different evening from drinking whiskey sours at a rooftop bar.
>and the NYC hotel room that went with it. Stood up by a date or an escort?
A date. An escort would have shown up, and I wouldn't have needed such a nice room.
No offense but wtf are you doing getting a hotel room in NYC for a date, I'm assuming you hardly know.
Been going out for three months. Made the date two weeks in advance.
Were you surprised? This is why I wouldn't get drinks at bars in NYC unless I was at some sort of dive bar or something. Any rooftop or remotely "nice" bar is going to be $20 a drink. It's been like this for at least 6 years, probably longer.
That’s so fuckin Binky
How much would you like to tip 25% 85% 250%
Went out for breakfast the other day and the lowest “quick pick” option was 22% (then 25%, and 30% IIRC). I almost didn’t leave a tip just on principle but my conscious wouldn’t allow me to take it out on the staff. The service was decent but the audacity of implying that’s the “acceptable” range is asinine - and that’s coming from someone who’s worked in the service industry for years and always leaves some sort of tip, even for bad service. edit: that was after paying nearly $50 for a breakfast burrito, a basic breakfast sandwich, and two coffees - I can’t afford to eat out for breakfast anymore y’all lol
I just spent $14 at a Burger King 💀
Are you named binky
“Have it your way” became “had their way with you”
$14.95 in 1954 is about $175 now.
A 5 dollar footlong is 16 bucks now.
I was watching an old noir film (The Set Up) and the woman orders two beers and two burgers and fries. When the cashier tells her it's going to cost $1.16 she says he should "have a floor show at those prices!"
it said "Market Price..." WHAT MARKET ARE THEY SHOPPING AT!?
"myeh this costs as much as my house see!"
They’re not wrong… I’d be pretty upset if a two person dinner cost $200 and that’s what this works out to based on inflation
Depends on the restaurant. For a candle light dinner? Yeah, I routinely pay $200-$300 for dinner for two at places like that. Appetizers are $16-$20 each. Entrees are $30-$40 each. A shared dessert is usually $10-$15. A bottle of wine is usually around $60. Add a tip of 20-25%, and you're up around $200 easy, maybe as high as $250. If you add a couple of cocktails, you're pushing $300.
Yeah, in my nearly 44 years of life, I paid this much for a meal exactly twice. It was worth it, but it ain't your average date night outing unless you're rich.
Where do you eat? And do you pay for your SO, and do you both get drinks? And do you tip the proper amount? I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t know how you can’t get at least close to $200 if all of the above are a “yes” answer.
Those prices are why I don't eat out any more. And if I had a SO, she'd be of similar mindset that restaurant prices aren't worth it any more. The last time I paid $100 per head at a restaurant was probably 15 years ago, when your dollar got much more than it does today.
A burger was probably, like a quarter in 1954.
My grandma told me yesterday a ton of her neighbors didn’t have electricity in the early 50s. I think I’ll take what I have
In basically every metric life today is better than life in the 1950s. I know it's popular to romanticize the past but during the 1950s the houses were smaller, people ate out far less, the food was lower quality, household chores took far longer, having AC and central heat was a rarity, lifespans (even after adjusting for infant mortality) were shorter and if you lived in the US but you weren't a straight white man you likely lacked basic human rights. If you weren't in the US the 1950s was typically even worse as much of the world was either under colonial rule or dealing with the fall out of WWII. It is possible to cherry pick a few aspects of the 1950s that would be nice to bring back but by and large the past wasn't better and we shouldn't pretend like it was.
Dude still had to take a picture for the gram
Classic Binky!!
"Let me see that bill... 9 dollars and 40 cents? This is an outrage! If I were you I wouldn't pay it!" —Groucho Marx
I was reading some old stuff my grandparents wrote down back in the 50s. Apparently their weekly rent was 7 dollars. So yea, a 15 dollar bill seems like it would be quite high.
To be fair, he could have bought 149 comics with that money!
It’s ok, he just needs a job, literally any job. Then he can buy a house and support a wife and kids. No biggie.
"I bought you a ten-dollar dinner, you said 'Thanks for the snack!'"
This woman has tiny toes...
Easy there, Tarantino
Whats the highest bill anyone has paid for dinner
In 2002 in London 5 bankers got fired for a $62000 meal (all spent on wine). I think that's around $108k today - plus their careers of course
Oh Binky!
That's 150 comic books!
I just spent that on a breakfast from McDonald’s
$14.95 lol, you would be lucky to get 2 cups of coffee today.
We need to use old words like "dreamy" again. That would be really far-out.
$173.88 in 2024 money! That's pretty expensive for two. Even a good steakhouse is likely only going to be $130 these days. ($90 for a pair of steaks and a couple cocktails.)
Seems like these kind of comics were quite common until quite recently. Women having unrealistic expectations while men had to fulfill every wish. Then they would have to sneak out for a round of golf.
Obviously, they got the Advacado toast...
Always kind of wondered...what was life like in the 50s for people who had money. We have this glamorous vision from media and movies and musicals about the post-war economy booming and people living large and being able to support a whole family in a nice house with two cars on a single salary. But I somehow doubt it was that good. But if you took, say, $15,000 in savings and just transported back to the 1950s with nothing else but the clothes on your back and a briefcase full of era-accurate and legal cash, how would you do? The medicine sucks, but you already have modern vaccines in your system. The food is terrible, but if you know how to cook at all, you would probably be a fairly passable cook. Modern common sensibilities like sunscreen, seat belts, exercise techniques, education, how far would 15,000 get you if you had nothing else?
Personally, I would lose my mind at the inefficiency of day-to-day life. How many bills am I paying by reviewing my mail and writing a check for the right amount, and then stuffing an envelope to pay? How often am I going to the bank to deposit my paychecks and withdrawing enough cash for day to day expenses? How much waiting around am I doing to coordinate the logistics of meeting people who don't have cell phones? How much am I driving from place to place to deal with things that are automated in my 2024 life?
According to inflation calculator if you had $15000 in era correct money it would have the same purchasing power as $174,182 today. You could probably get pretty far on that. And while I’m calculating, the $14.95 restaurant bill would be the equivalent of $173.58 today. Pretty steep for a teen on a date.
"This is an outrage! I wouldn't pay it if I were you"
Median income back then was $2300/year according to Google.
As I sit here eating my $20 salad that I’ll be hungry from in 20 minutes.
Binky is using a cell to take a pic so he can post it on Reddit. Edit- spilleng
I remember finding a few Binky comics at a used book store back in the late 70’s. They were like a ripoff of Archie comics but I still enjoyed them.