For those of you who want to live in the past:

Comments made in the year 1955:

"I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, it's going
to be impossible to buy a week's groceries for $20."

"Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long before
$2000 will only buy a used one."

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

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

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

"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."

"Kids today are impossible. Those duck tail hair cuts make it impossible to
;stay groomed. Next thing you know, boys will be wearing their hair as long
as the girls."

"I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let
Clark Gable get by with saying 'damn' in 'Gone With The Wind,' it seems
every new movie has either "hell" or "damn" in it.

"I read the other day where some scientist thinks it's possible to put a
man on the moon by the end of the century. They even have some fellows
they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas ."

"Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $75,000
a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be
making more than the president."

"I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be
electric. They are even making electric typewriters now."

"It's too bad things are so tough nowadays. I s ee where a few married women
are having to work to make ends meet."

"It won't be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to
watch their kids so they can both work."

"Marriage doesn't mean a thing any more; those Hollywood stars seem to be
getting divorced at the drop of a hat."
"I'm just afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole
lot of foreign business."

"Thank goodness I won't live to see the day when the Government takes half
our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people
to congress."

"The drive-in restaurant is convenient in nice weather, but I seriously
doubt they will ever catch on."

"There is no sense going to Lincoln or Omaha anymore for a weekend. It
costs nearly $15 a night to stay in a hotel."

"No one can afford to be sick any more; $35 a day in the hospital is too
rich for my blood."

"If they think I'll pay 50 cents for a hair cut, forget it."

Things I remember from 1955, or about that time.

could buy a lot of candy at the store for 5C, could buy 2 used comic books for 5C, then after reading trade them for 1, so you got to read 3 comics for a nickle. Going to the saturday matinee movie 35C, but my family couldn't afford that, so me and my brother delivered flyers, and received about 10 free tickets for spending a weekend delivering flyers. I know my parents only made about a 75C per hour working at the cotton mill, but we lived in a mill house, that they paid about $35.00 per month in rent.

Doctor visits? who could afford to go to the doctor, we never did.

Everything today is improved and I don't like it. I hate it!

In my day we didn't have hair dryers.
If you wanted to blow dry your hair you stood outside during a hurricane. Your hair was dry but you had a sharp piece of wood driven clear through your skull and that's the way it was and you liked it! You loved it. Whoopee, I'm a human head-kabob.

We didn't have Manoxidol and Hair Wings, in my day if your hair started falling out when you were 16 by 19 you were a bald freak. There was nothing you could do about it. Children would spit at you and nobody would mate with you so you couldn't pass on your disgusting baldness genes. You were a public menace, a chrome dome by age 20 and that's the way it was and we liked it! We loved it. Hallelujiah look at me, I'm a bald freak oh happy day!

Not like today, everybody feeling good about themselves. I hate it! In my day we didn't have these thin latex condoms. So you could enjoy sexual pleasure. In my day there was only one kind of condom. You took a rabbit skin and wrapped around your privates and tied it off with a bungee cord and you couldn't feel nothing! And half the time you didn't even know your partner was there. And we used the same one over and over again! 'Cause we were ignorant morons! Just a bunch of hairless, head-kabobs standing around with rabbit skins on our dinks and that's the way we liked it!

-Dana Carvey (Grumpy Old Man) SNL

Those 1955 people were right on the money (pardon the pun)!! Does anyone know where I can get figures on the exchange rate between the 1955 dollar and that of today? Looking at the amounts in the quotes, it seems that some products--like cars--were much more expensive, while services--like haircuts--were much cheaper. For instance, if the exchange rate were 10:1, then 1955 cars started at 20,000 of our dollars, whereas haircuts cost $5, which I would consider a really good deal.

http://askville.amazon.com/equivalent-currency-2007-$5000-1950/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=5766852

This helps a little, in comparing prices between eras.

http://askville.amazon.com/equivalent-currency-2007-$5000-1950/AnswerViewer.do?r equestId=5766852

"it seems that some products--like cars--were much more expensive, while services--like haircuts--were much cheaper."

That's the key difference between 50 years ago and today. Over time, products have gotten cheaper and labor has gotten more expensive. Now it's cheaper to buy a new item than to repair it. Used to be the opposite. Notice how all the local repair shops have disappeared over the years?

That's why I'm such an anachronism with my cars - I'll buy fixable cars (pre-1985) and keep them running. New cars are pretty much throwaway items, though they do last quite a bit longer than cars made in the '60s and '70s. But I can rebuild my '67 Dodge numerous times and keep it on the road for hundreds of thousands of miles, whereas my wife's '99 minivan will go to maybe 200k miles max, then it's done.

Add to that, solid state circuits and in cars all the computer controlled equipment, its very difficult for most people to repair their own stuff.

I remember in early 60's my parents bought their first color tv, a console model with a radio and record player, mono, they spent $300.00 for it, and for a working couple each making about $1.40 an hour, it was a major investment.

Thanks! In the Askeville discussion, I found the following link:

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

According to this calculator, the ratio is 7.25:1. The consumer electronics of 1955 certainly were pricey! I had seen somewhere that a 5 tube table radio of that era cost approximately $35 new. That's $254 in our dollars! Or, a black-and-white TV cost about $200; that's $1450 to us! It is no wonder that people in the 1950s took these things to repair shops when they broke!

And you could repait them, replacing tubes was easy, heck usually you could just look, and see which one didn't glow. No soldering required.

I don't know from where these comments came or how much discussion the post office gave the subject but I clearly remember the price of a postage stamp going to 5 cents. It went up 1 cent at a time after that for many years before skipping price points altogether. I don't specifically remember the jump to a dime but it must have been at least the latter half of the 1960s. Before the nickle stamp, it cost 4 cents for a letter and 3 for a post card. I don't know how long that was in effect but 2-3 cents seems about right for 1955. I wasn't paying much attention beyond just trying to hold onto my bottle.

http://www.swivel.com/data_columns/spreadsheet/2045174

Actually the price of a stamp tended to be stable for several years, 3c from 1932 to 1957, then 4c for 5 years, then 5c until 66.

It looks like 2-3 cents was a pretty good "guess" since that's all it was! Thanks for clearing that up.