cost of living

COST OF LIVING


A minion remarked that my article on inflation, then and now, from the late seventies and 1980, didn’t address the cost of living. Well, there was a very good reason for that- my personal experiences are from 1985 on. I have partial information from my household growing up, but nothing concrete. My father inherited a house about the time I started screaming for a tit and soiling myself ( not too different than now ). This was in L.A., so one imagines that if he had held on to it he would be dead already from boredom after selling the thing on top of a bubble, rather than alive and still working full time even with two generous pensions, his house upside down and paying hideous medical bills to stay alive to keep working. As it was, my folks had a rather nomadic lifestyle. They would sell one home, buy another one for cash slightly better but a fix-er-upper, and both follow his jobs and keep trading up debt free in houses. Then they got divorced and mom got a house and child support. She didn’t get his California pension, that belongs to his current wife. Anyway, there was never rent, or a mortgage. The only debt was a car loan and that was never more than a few years and then they kept it forever. Kind of like that damn black and white TV I must have watched for a good dozen years or more. By the time the seventies inflation hit my dad had already agitated to form a civil service Union so there was even half way decent income. But I always remember food being a huge problem, other than produce. Mom grew huge gardens and we shopped at farmers roadside stands for produce. I never wanted for fruits ( and mom was forever stuffing more veggies down my gullet ). No car payment ( I think. But even if there was it was low, for a used car ), no mortgage. Produce free to super cheap. Homemade ground and baked bread. And yet, there was always a struggle to afford groceries. Secondary income was always needed, and I remember the talk about the food bill. So, obviously, the food bill in the seventies was a huge deal.

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By the time I got out of the service ( as much as the food sucked there, at least it was virtually unlimited fat and protein, very different than my teenage years ), food was dirt cheap. So I’m guessing that the centralization process was complete by then. And food stayed dirt cheap for about twenty years. Obviously, that era is over and we ain’t seen nothing yet. Which is why I’m so adamant about the rent/mortgage issue. As we see seventies inflation in fuel and food again, you are going to have a hard enough time of it even without being in debt. In debt, food truly does become unaffordable. And, as good as the eighties were compared to a decade previous, I’ll now illustrate the clear trend towards inflation ( no matter what caused it, your bottom line is still hurt ). The cost of living hasn’t been too severely impacted, but beware that this comparison is based on the minimum wage which is a political, artificial wage. This is 1986 compared to twenty five years later. Take home pay was $500 then, $1,000 now. A lot in a trailer park rented for $100, with utilities at $25 ( the rent was $125 and you weren’t charged for utilities if under $25- even with electric heat in the winter I never went over ). Today, almost anywhere with jobs lot rent is about $300, utilities extra ( my average was $10 in summer, $70 in the winter, so call it about $30 a month ). So, back in the day rent with utilities was 25%. Today, a similar rent is 33%. My food used to run 20%, and was produce and beef heavy. My lunch and breakfast was protein rich in one and just carbs for the other. Today, you still spend 20% of your income for food. But forget too much meat, let alone beef, and very little produce. I’d guess that to duplicate that you’d probably double the cost to 40%.

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Back in the day, name brand cigarettes were around a buck a pack. Today, generics are $3, brand name $4. So that cost has quadrupled. And that was about it for my bills, half of my take home pay. The rest was beer and books. 25% went to rent, 20% to food and 5% to cigarettes. Today it is 33% rent, 40% food and 17% cigs. If I was to duplicate all consumer items. 80% verses 50% of your monkey spanker wage for a very basic life. Living in a tin box, trying to kill yourself early to save the embarrassment of hanging on past your prime, and trying to enjoy what you ate. Living off grid, and only smoking one butt a day rather than a pack, and eating crap, I’m still spending 50% of my wages on basic expenses. Clearly, you must accept a drastic change in lifestyle to keep your bills to the percentage of income as you did 25 years ago. And yet, the shrinking availability of cheap and abundant petroleum couldn’t have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with our economy, right??? To keep my food bill at twenty percent, I’m eating whole wheat homemade bread for two meals a day. The only meat I can afford is pork ( chicken is no longer cheap everyday ). And there is no produce other than potatoes. And the weird weather, with droughts effecting grain world-wide, along with the idiots turning corn into ethanol, has just now started to seriously screw with your food budget. When your food bill becomes 50% of your income, what do you give up? The car, or the house? Traditionally, without petroleum inputs, food for urbanites was 50-75% of their budget. Plan and prepare for that now, because it most likely will happen before you know it. And, please, keep in mind that mortgaging farmland is a food cost. As is its property tax bill. Don’t buy into the illusion of food security if that cost is higher than half your income.

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