Can we stop pretending?

[Scuba]

[malthaussen]

1. It's a nice visual, but...

Twenty bucks wouldn't have bought that much food in 1978, nevermind 1998.

-- Mal

[MADem]

5. Yes--I really like the concept of the ad, and we don't have to lie about it. nt

[WillowTree]

30. That was exactly my first thought, too. Thank you.

[SheilaT]

32. My thought exactly.

[AwakeAtLast]

39. Maybe on buy one, get one free day?

That would be the only way, I think.

[billhicks76]

42. It Actually Is True

What the graphic doesn't show is that not only do things like food cost more (gas is 400% more expensive than 20 years ago and so are cigarettes) but the rub is that sizes of products have dropped immensely. What used to be 16 oz is now twelve. Peanut butter, candy bars and many other items are made smaller because people would have sticker shock if they remained the same.

[Drunken Irishman]

43. Exactly what I thought too.

[Warren DeMontague]

45. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what's in that 1998 cart.

Sure as shit doesn't look like anything I was buying with 20 bucks.

[KurtNYC]

2. Yes, impossible. Food is up but not as fast as many other things

Rent and healthcare are the primary reasons people become homeless.

Food is one thing people cut back on when everything else has already gobbled up what little money they have.

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. That isnt reflective of the actual rate of inflation

minimum wage in 1998 was $5.25 an hour, using CPI inflation that's equivalent to about $7.50 an hour in current dollars (not much more than the actual current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour). The difference is that gasoline in 1998 was under a dollar a gallon in most places (oil hit an all time inflation adjusted low of around twelve bucks a barrel that year, thanks to the effects of the Asian financial crisis); in some places it was as low as sixty-three cents for a gallon of unleaded. Oil prices have increased about tenfold since 1998 because production of conventional crude oil has been flat since 2005 and other oil sources like deepwater/shale/tar sands are expensive to produce. The effect of unavoidable rises in oil pricing has a hell of a lot more to do with ability to survive on the minimum wage in a country whose transport infrastructure is very stupidly and short-sightedly built around cars.

[The2ndWheel]

7. When gas is that cheap

of course the transport infrastructure is going to be built around cars. The cheaper something is, the more ways you'll find to use/waste it. We'll force ourselves to find ways to consume such cheap energy.

The ability for one person being able to go wherever they want, any time they want, faster than they could ever go on foot, potentially carrying far more weight than even 5 people(or however many) could do in one trip. That's the dream.

It's not really stupid or short-sighted. When you have access to so much energy, and so much space to cover, it's sort of inevitable.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. The problem with that is that it's not that cheap, anymore, and never will be again.

Leaving aside the environmental impacts of fossil fuels.

[The2ndWheel]

10. Well yeah, from an environmental view it's never been cheap

Hell, roads, especially something like an interstate highway system, are one of the most environmentally destructive projects humans have ever thoughts up. Let alone the cars on the roads that just add to the total.

I completely agree that our entire way of doing things is now built around cheap energy, and that more expensive energy will cause problems. In that regard, it was stupid and short-sighted to design our society the way we did. However, I doubt we could've done it any different, for any number of reasons. Cultural, psychological, geographical, historical, etc.

[Spider Jerusalem]

12. In the USA? Mostly geographic

notice that Europe which is much more densely populated and has been for some time has functional mass transit, for instance.

[The2ndWheel]

16. Yeah, geography is a big one

The US has been about expansion from day one. Europe was where all those people wanting to expand came from.

[blackspade]

23. Your current dollar point is correct....

But doesn't take into account the rising costs of food.
A gallon of milk was around a $1 (if not cheaper) in '98 and adjusted for inflation that would still only be @ $1.70.
Milk is now well over $2 and other foods have had a similar price trajectory.

So while the graphic is off, the imagery is correct.

As for your analysis of oil, I agree.
I would add to that that other infrastructure costs, such as gas and electric are also part of this energy dynamic that has sapped the spending power of the US consumer.

[Spider Jerusalem]

27. Fuel costs are responsible for most of the increase in food costs above the rate of inflation

since everything moves by truck. Longterm climatic changes and the effects of prolonged droughts driving up feed prices and so on have to be taken into account as well; it's not as simple as just allowing for inflation and saying "a gallon of milk that cost this much in 1998 should cost that much in 2014"; how much does it cost to produce?

[blackspade]

33. You may well be right, but by the same token, allowing for inflation....

based on the minimum wage is also not so simple.
ex: How much more productive is the worker? does this number account for wage theft? etc....

What you are describing also doesn't take into account price manipulation, subsidies, etc.

The point I was trying to make based on the min wage vs inflation was that food prices, for instance, has grown faster than inflation.

[davidpdx]

46. A chart like that might do better with a graph showing the increase in the price of oil

While I have no problem with charts, often things like these are posted unsourced and you are pretty much expected to take them as the "word". Several times I have pointed out errors in charts and was told I was just being nitpicky. Of course who needs facts, right?

[Dr Hobbitstein]

4. As someone who spent money on groceries in 1998, 2005, and 2013...

That graphic is NOT representative at all. I spent an average of $80/week in '98, around $100/week 2005, and about $150/week now. Of course, in 1998 and 2005 I was single with no kids. Now I have a wife and a kid.

[sufrommich]

6. I'm 57 years old and have never seen $20.00 buy that

amount of groceries. It's a nice thought but no one will take it seriously because it exaggerates the point.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

9. 57 here, too, and I agree.

[Skittles]

34. I agree

[gollygee]

13. I wasn't buying that much food for $20 in 1998

not by a long shot.

There's a good point to be made but that's ridiculous. I'm afraid it will make people dismiss the whole issue as exaggerated because the photo is.

[heaven05]

14. geez!!??

the point is, purists, 20.00 dollars is buying no where near what it did 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago. When one is on an inafix income as I am, I count every penny. And each penny is buying less and less. Thanks Scuba, point well made in spite of the................ No lies detected. Just reality thinking while living in the real, not contrarian, world.

[Scuba]

15. Glad to see someone actually gets it.

[merrily]

22. 43 recs so far. Some are indeed getting it.

[Rex]

17. I guess it rubbed a few people the wrong way

so they had to point out the obvious to feel better about themselves.

[merrily]

20. +1

Forest. Trees. Twigs. Leaf.

[leftstreet]

18. DURec

[WillyT]

19. HUGE K & R !!! - THANK YOU !!!

[merrily]

21. Every worker deserves a living wage.

[Warpy]

24. Great graphic, but the timeline's wrong

I haven't been able to fill a cart with $20 since the 70s.

If they showed it as 1975, 1995, 2014 it would have been accurate and just as outrageous.

Companies should not be permitted to pay their workers so little they need Federal subsidies just to survive. It should be illegal. If they can't pay a living wage for a day's work, they should cease to exist.

But we know they can pay it. They just have to cut their platinum salaried executives loose and stop stashing money offshore in the hope that a GOP gets in again and they don't have to pay taxes on it when they "repatriate" their massive profits.

[SunSeeker]

29. +1

[politicat]

25. In 98, I was in my last year of grad school.

My uni blew my financial aid package for the first semester, so I was on a $20 a week food/toiletries/cleaning/TP/tampons budget for 20 weeks. That bought 2 rolls of cheapest tp, 1/5 of a box of tampons, 1 bar of soap, 2 dozen eggs, 14 apples or oranges, a 5 pound bag of flour, 1/4 of a jar of mayo, a box of butter and about 4 pounds of whatever vegetables were cheap and in season. I lived on egg salad and bread maker bread for months. $20 never bought a cart of groceries in my life.

[jobycom]

26. Similar story for me.

In the mid 90s I was grad student, and at times had only $20 a week to feed a spouse and child. So, yeah, eggs, white bread and margarine, a lot of dried beans and rice dishes, flour, cheap TP, washable diapers, Dreft, those cheap bags of potatoes, carrots, frozen spinach (generic) were all in my rotation. I'd make a pot of red beans (no meat) and rice, and that would be dinner three nights a week, then the fourth I'd do something different with the last of the beans. Eggs or biscuits for breakfast... Ah, good times, good times. Raise the Goddam wage!

[politicat]

35. Agreed on the minimum wage!

Also, unionize the grad students and stop treating them like slave labor. Some of those years, I was on stipend, and my hourly was under $2 an hour, and take home was under $1.

I'm glad I was feeding just me and my cat. Beans would have been nice, but I get migraines from a few varieties, and it wasn't worth trying to figure out which ones were safe.

Winter was all about everlasting soup -- whatever was cheap into the crockpot that never went off low. And more of the ever loving bread. I still can't face a loaf of plain, white bread, even if it is home-made.

I didn't have a stove, and wasn't allowed a hot plate. I was only allowed small electrics and a dorm fridge in a studio. At least I'd gotten the breadmaker from my deeply insensitive parent (Molly Homemaker I am not) as a gift and hadn't dumped it.

[daleanime]

40. Amen....

need a big increase in union activities in this country.

[SunSeeker]

28. At its current $7.25/hour, it is $3.61/hr less than what is was in 1968 in real dollars.

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html

And, if the 99% got their share of the productivity gains since 1968, the minimum wage would now be $21.72 per hour.

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage1-2012-03.pdf

[fxstc]

31. quantitative easing

cant we all stop pretending what the biggest culprit is? printing money and quantitative easing.

[blkmusclmachine]

36. Washington DC is a racket.

[PatrickforO]

37. In 1958, the year in which I was born, that first cart represents

what you could get for $20. In 1998 not so much. The second cart looks 1972ish.

The third is right on the money. Geez, I go in the grocery store and it sickens me how MUCH everything costs, and what REALLY gets to me is when companies decrease the size of the package and leave the price the same, or worse, increase it.

This is predatory, because you can bet some MBA in corporate headquarters is making decisions to maximize profits for shareholders and 'c-class' executives at the expense of customers and employees. It is sick - capitalism run amok. The pathological new privatized and deregulated America.

Do we love it or leave it?

Or do we love it enough to change it?

[Thespian2]

38. K & R

Those of us on fixed incomes are screwed. Thanks, American Administration.

[graegoyle]

41. Add a graph of CEO income and see the impact.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

44. Isn't that a spectacularly misleading and dishonest poster?

It overlooks that the minimum wage is higher than it was in 1998

Here's a graph of the minimum wage in both real and normal terms over time, which gives a more honest and accurate picture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States#mediaviewer/File:History_of_US_federal_minimum_wage_increases.svg

[intheflow]

47. In 1998, $20 filled my gas tank twice.

Now, it only gives me 3/4 of a tank in the same car.

[marym625]

48. Bravo!