Then and now

[krw]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

But not the cola. ;-)

[krw]

^ Mexicans

You bet!

[krw]

Your room is too small.

I can manage one can, owned by the city, on wheels.

So do I, shudder.

[Ed Pawlowski]

?

And sucking down enough power to buy a new and bigger refrigerator every four years or so with the savings. I replace an old unit and save $10 a month. It paid for itself in under four years and that was 6 or 7 years ago so I'm well ahead.

[krw]

It must be noted that these are self-selected surveys.

We didn't buy a front-loader because of these reviews. The agitatorless top-loaders didn't seem to have equivalent problems and the benefits are similar.

We didn't buy an LG fridge (French door + two drawers), because of reviews. Rather we went with the Electrolux French door model. We did buy the extended warranty because of the electronics. Manufacturers often get electronics wrong. I never would have bought the warranty otherwise.

Yes, as with any self-selected survey, the negatives tend to outweigh the positives.

[krw]

You think bread and eggs are made the same way as they were 40 years ago? Coffee shops are serving more than just coffee, and yes, that has changed substantially, too.

[Jeff Thies]

No but they are still more labor intensive than many other things per cost. Granted much of that is shipping and stocking now.

I have bought quite a few Amish eggs though, and they haven't changed, maybe a bit cheaper per dozen.

I've got no complaints!

Jeff

>

[Steve B]

Except if you belong to some cults and sects where it is allowed, promoted, and required for sainthood. Gods of the household may do as a god wishes.

Steve

[krw]

The labor needed for either, I'm sure is a *lot* less than it was forty years ago. That said, eggs are still cheap as hell. Bread is, too, if you discount "specialty" bread (though it's all we eat - coffee is much the same).

A bit of a warped market. We have Amish furniture, which cost somewhat less than decent furniture but is heirloom quality. Again, a warp in the normal market.

I do. Starbucks tastes like crap! ;-)

[The Daring Dufas]

I thought the Road Runner and other Mopars with the high performance engines got it in 72 then it went to all the other lines in 73.

TDD

[Vic Smith]

I'm at the point where I automatically discount most of the product failures and mainly look at positives about useful features and such. Came to that pass about a year ago when I built a new PC. On Newegg the ASUS motherboard I wanted had an unusual amount of bad reviews. So I moved on to look at others, Gigabyte,etc. They also all had way too many bad reviews. Well then, I can't build the new computer I need? So I just bought the ASUS and have had no issues. My brother bought the same board and has also been happy with it. There were maybe a couple hundred reviews for the board. They probably sold tens of thousands.

Another problem is model changes. I just went back to leave a good review for the board, since I've had it for a year. Model is gone from Newegg. The washing machine I bought at Sears a couple years is gone from their site too. I did a so far so good review on that at 14 months. I'm no different than others. I sometimes don't get around to doing a positive review. But if I get screwed somehow you can bet your bippy I'll write that up.

--Vic

[clare]

In the late sixties in Ontario Canada I pumped hundreds of thousands of gallons at a mean price of about 46.9 cents a gallon - with short price wars being fairly common and prices occaisionally dropping below a dime. A 10 oz coke was a dime A good candy bar was a dime The average car was totally scrap in 6 to 8 years.(sure, it only cost $2000) You could buy a pretty nice house for $20,000 If I remember correctly a good bicycle tire was about $4.50, and tires for my Mini were $17 at Canadian Tire. A decent used (10 or 15 year old) bike could be had for $15, and as a teanager I could only dream of a new one. The grocery bill for our family of 8 kids was $20 to $25 per week, not counting a side of beef and a few chickens bought off the farm, and the veggies we grew in the garden.

And $5000 a year was a decent wage.

Today $30,000 is just scraping by, and $60,000 is not considered to be a lot.

A decent house is $200,000 A decent car is $20,000. A good used 6 year old car is about $6000, and 12 year old cars are very common on the roads, even in the rust belt. A decent bike tire is about $10.00 and a brand new dual suspension mountain bike can be bought for under $200. When it's 2 years old it's worth about $20.00 unless you pick it out of someone's trash because it needs $50 worth of parts to make it into a $20.00 bike. Tires for My Mystique are $100 each. A case of 12 pops (10 oz cans) can be bought for $4 if you shop around, or a 2 liter bottle for $.99 (unless you just run into the convenience store and pay $3.00). A candy bar is $.69 to $1.50 $20 won't fill a grocery bag today, and you pay a nickel for the bag.

So you earn, on average, something like 10 times as much today. The house costs about 10 times as much. The car costs about 10 times as much and lasts 2 or 3 times as long. At 6 years of age, the car is worth about 50 to 100 times what it was back then (my first 8 year old car cost me $60 - my last one $5000) Gas is roughly 10 times the price, and the average car goes almost twice as far on that gallon.

So I guess you win some and you loose some.

The big difference comes in technology goods. There we are winning hands down, even though the product replacement cycle has sped up something awfull

Things that were a luxury in the late sixties can be bought for less today than then - and they are so much "better" feature-wise, but their average lifespan is significantly lower.

Radios, TVs, Stereo equipment etc can often be bought for less today than in the late sixties. Instead of being made by your buddy's dad or uncle in the plant across town or in the next city, it's made half way around the world, and if and when it breaks 2, or 5, or 12 years down the road there is no repair-shop locally to repair it,and repair parts are generally not available even when they are a year old - and if there is, it is cheaper to replace it. Generally it is discarded before it is 5 years old.

My first electronic calculator in the early seventies was over $35 and all it could do was add, multiply, subtract and devide - if you could keep batteries in it.

Today a $2 calculator will run for a couple years on a battery, do square roots, metric conversions, etc and has 2 or 3 memories. A $30 calculator is a full programmable scientific calculator with a solar cell and a battery you never need to replace.

And computers, and televisions, and mobile telephones, and power tools, and cameras - you name it.

Where we are losing - and will loose even more in the near future is the cost of things like water, and many essential services, as well as health care (when not covered by government insurance) Pharmaceuticals, etc.

[clare]

Sadly, the new drier will, in all likelihood, not last 29 years, and nor will the new range last another 25.

Depends entirely what you buy, I guess. They (appliances in general) are better than 5-10 years ago, likely - but in many cases not as good as 25 or 35 years ago - but they use a lot less power

[clare]

Late 1971, actually.

[clare]

Being the standard (only available) 390 engine used the same starter as the 352 and many other engines across the ford line, I'd suspect it is still pretty reasonable. The starter for the later 429 would be a bit pricier. The Bird's Nest has quality reman starters for $49 for the '65 PartsTrain lists the (new) starter for the later 429 at about $126 and about the same for a '69 Dart six. Parts-train lists the starter for the '65 for from $32 for a rebuilt to $89 for a brand new one.

[clare]

All 1972 Canadian Mopars had it. Saw a few 1971 sixes with it. Put it on my '69

[Steve B]

IIRC, I paid about $2 for a plastic slide rule in high school, from 62 to

1. A Pickett, which I still have, with the leather case was about . How much would a slide rule cost today adjusted for all the things it needs to be adjusted for?

Far more than graphing calculator that would do calculus, if my guess is right.

Steve

[Steve B]

"The Daring Dufas" wrote

I get spurts, but no longer want to do it either. I once could pull and reinstall a 283 or 327 by myself in two days, and not rushing it. I could have the heads off in an hour and a half. Now, I'm working on trolley systems, davits, and any lifting devices to help me just keep from hoisting stuff, which is the major part of the problem. And with all this new stuff that's shoehorned into a small compartment, it is tricky. And then there's the computer, and readout screen$.

But, still, it's nice to revive an old lawnmower here and there, or just some simple machinery, and keep some semblance of worth.

When we are all scrambling around, scrounging old parts and eating roaming lhasso apsos, we will again return to our position of power. But we'll be too old to remember what to do about it.

Life sucks.

Steve ;-)

[The Daring Dufas]

In 73, I met a guy at the university who owned one of the newfangled HP calculators. I think it was the HP-45 and it cost him upwards of $400.00 at the time. It's amazing that you can buy something for ten bucks today that will blow it away. :-)

TDD

[Steve B]

Found it, and a $12 item would cost $78 today. Still, with a slide rule, you had to have an idea of what the answer would be, as they did not provide decimal places in most cases, unless the value was less than one on the scale. Interpolation was key.

For other uses, see Interpolation (disambiguation). In the mathematical subfield of numerical analysis, interpolation is a method of constructing new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points.

In engineering and science one often has a number of data points, as obtained by sampling or experimentation, and tries to construct a function which closely fits those data points. This is called curve fitting or regression analysis. Interpolation is a specific case of curve fitting, in which the function must go exactly through the data points.

A different problem which is closely related to interpolation is the approximation of a complicated function by a simple function. Suppose we know the function but it is too complex to evaluate efficiently. Then we could pick a few known data points from the complicated function, creating a lookup table, and try to interpolate those data points to construct a simpler function. Of course, when using the simple function to calculate new data points we usually do not receive the same result as when using the original function, but depending on the problem domain and the interpolation method used the gain in simplicity might offset the error.

It should be mentioned that there is another very different kind of interpolation in mathematics, namely the "interpolation of operators". The classical results about interpolation of operators are the Riesz-Thorin theorem and the Marcinkiewicz theorem. There are also many other subsequent results.

Steve