I got an email from 5 different people over the last 3 days talking about the price of things in 1909. Of course being the number geek that I am I went exploring and found a website that showed average salaries over the years. In 1909 the average salary for all workers was $022 per hour. In 2007 it was about $13.73 per hour. Based on those salaries a dozen eggs should be $8.70, sugar $2.29 per pound and coffee at $9.38 per pound. I seldom shop but I believe today's prices, across the board, are much lower in terms of hours of average labor per unit of item. As I suspected and have preached to all I meet our gasoline is too cheap. The true cost has to be hidden somewhere inside the national economy. Gasoline in 1909 was approximately $0.10 per gallon. Again based on hours of labor required to buy it in 1909 (0.455 hours) gasoline should be 0.455 X $13.73 or 9.38 per gallon. Economy of scale and massive production values have drastically reduced the real cost but not all of the difference between $9 and the $3 real cost now.

THE MIDNIGHT RIDE
In fact according to the web site all commodities are cheaper now than in deep past.

The web site http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ presented some eye opening information about George Washington. I knew that he was highly appreciated and adored in his days as General of the Revolutionary army and then as president. Knowing his equivalent salary in current dollars makes very clear just how much the country valued him.

"George Washington was paid a salary of $25,000 a year from 1789 to 1797 as the first president of the United States. The current salary of the president has recently been doubled to $400,000, to go with a $50,000 expense account, a generous pension and several other benefits. Has the remuneration improved?

Making a comparison using the CPI for 1790 shows that $25,000 corresponds to over $585,000 today, so the recent raise means current presidents have an equal command over consumer goods as the Father of the Country.

When comparing Washington's salary to an unskilled worker, or the measure of average income, GDP per capita, then the comparable numbers are $11 and $24 million. Granted that would not put him in the ranks of the top 25 executives today that make over $200 million. It would, however, be many times more than any elected official in this country is paid today. Finally, to show the "economic power" of his wage, we see that his salary as a share of GDP would rank him equivalent to $1.8 billion."
The website also compare the cost of the Civil War with the War in Iraq. I was stunned by the, in current dollars, monetary cost of the Civil War. We would surrender before we spend that much on any war now.

OF PAUL FOR BEER

Below is a test of your musical memory. I will post the answer in the next blog

.Friday morning my regular physical therapist was off. He had gone fishing down the coast near where we grew up. The young woman who filled in for him had her own patients to handle so her attention was somewhat divided. I talked to her, thank God women know how to listen, about my problem with one exercise. No matter what I try I cannot determine if I am activating the muscle that will help strengthen my core. And I have no clue what core means but I am going with their words. David told me I should be pulling my navel back to my spine. I strain and choke and fart but I don't feel any muscle tighten. After talking to Katy I think I could do that exercise better standing up.
LED TO A WARMER
What she wants is what all guys, regardless of age or beer belly, do at the beach when they see a pretty girl. They suck in their gut. My tub is so large and lardy that the muscles are buried and I cannot feel them with my hand. I hurried home because my wife needed the car to ferry the grandsons from activity to activity. Baseball, swimming and now football taxi service is putting about 200 miles on the van each week.

I put in so much effort at the therapy session that I was ravenous. Yes RAVENOUS! Imagine a ravenous lower middle class American! So I stopped at Whataburger and bought two breakfast on a bun sandwiches, 2 whole jalapenos, and a large coffee

HEMISPHERE
I quietly sat at the dinning room table to eat breakfast and solve the word puzzles in the Chronicle. The Sudoku puzzles have become almost trivial so I have started on the Word Jumble. Sometimes a jumbled word is so close to a real word that I cannot rearrange the letters to make the target word. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night with the word properly arranged. The subconscious mind works constantly.

Last night I got an email from an Emmaus buddy informing us that our date to serve at "House of Amos" is not June 13 but instead June 20. This is the third time our date for service there has been changed. Somebody is very unorganized and I think the problem lies with a member who seldom makes our 4th day meetings. I don't know if I can make the 20 th because of baseball tournaments. It really pisses me off when people cannot adhere to a schedule nor get the facts straight about a schedule. Burma Shave

The Robertsons of Cement Book is on-line at http://lyn1937.tripod.com/cement/index.html.




My Wind Chime store is not selling so I am cutting the prices in half. Buy now! Help CAMERON!

Click the picture for comic strips on-line.

Thank you TIRE MAN!

 

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

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