The Inner Monologue

Ah, the good old days—when a loaf of bread cost a nickel, a house cost three chickens and a firm handshake, and people worked 16-hour shifts just to afford the luxury of not dying of dysentery.

Every time some nostalgic soul whines, “Back in my day, a movie ticket was only $1.50!” I want to ask: “Cool, how many hours did you have to sweep coal dust out of a factory to afford it?” Because here’s the fun part nobody mentions: Prices are meaningless without context. A dollar in 1950 isn’t a dollar today, and wages weren’t just lower—they were punishingly low for most people.

The Golden Age of Working Yourself to Death

Let’s play a game. Instead of staring at price tags like a deer in headlights, let’s measure cost in hours of your life spent earning the money to buy the thing.

• 1950: Minimum wage? $0.75/hour. A gallon of gas? $0.27. Sounds cheap! But that’s 22 minutes of work for a gallon.
• 2024: Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour (laughable, but stick with me). Gas is, say, $3.50/gallon. That’s 29 minutes of work.

Huh. So gas is marginally more expensive now… unless you live in a state where wages kept up, in which case it’s probably cheaper. But sure, tell me more about how everything was better when a typo in the factory ledger could cost you a finger.

The Real Scam: Convenience Fees on Your Life

The real tragedy isn’t that things cost more—it’s that we still think about money in absolute terms instead of time spent earning it.

• A $5 coffee is 40 minutes at federal minimum wage. Is it worth almost an hour of your life? Maybe, if it comes with a free therapy session.
• A $1,200 iPhone is 165 hours of minimum-wage work. In 1950, a color TV cost about 1,000 hours of labor for the average worker. So actually, your smartphone addiction is a steal compared to Grandpa’s I Love Lucy habit.

The Bottom Line

Yes, some things are more expensive now (looking at you, housing and healthcare). But most of the stuff we complain about? We’re paying in fewer hours of work than ever before. The problem isn’t prices—it’s that wages haven’t kept up where it matters, and we’re too busy yelling at avocado toast to notice.

So next time someone sighs, “They just don’t make things affordable like they used to,” hit them with this: “They also didn’t make weekends, labor laws, or Wi-Fi like they used to. Want to go back to that, too?”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go work for 12 minutes to afford my artisanal, fair-trade, gluten-free, emotionally supportive seltzer. Progress, baby.