Barry Ritholz posts a humorous email of quotes about inflation and other things from 1957. Here are the first six:

(1) "I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, its going to be impossible to buy a weeks groceries for $20.00."

(2) "Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long when $5,000 will only buy a used one."

(3) "If cigarettes keep going up in price, I'm going to quit. A quarter a pack is ridiculous."

(4) "Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging a dime just to mail a letter?"

(5) "If they raise the minimum wage to $1, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store."

(6) "When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 29 cents a gallon? Guess we'd be better off leaving the car in the garage."

Speaking of that last one, while writing the report I needed to write over the weekend I ran across this data. (Click for the larger graph.) It argues that we really are not spending as much on gas as we did around the second OPEC shock in 1979. We are down to 3% of household expenditures on gasoline versus 4.6% in 1980-81. Who knew?

Labels: economics