It seems as if never a day goes by that we don’t hear someone complaining, including me, about how inflation has affected all of us. Gasoline, food, clothes — all the essentials of our lives — seem to have risen to a cost that we would never have imagined.
I grew up in the fifties and sixties when a loaf of bread cost 29 cents, a head of lettuce 29 cents, a gallon of milk 83 cents, a single roll of toilet paper was 25 cents, eggs were 60 cents a dozen, ground beef was 30 cents a pound, and a can of corn was 14 cents. This is just a few of the foods I buy weekly.
Fast food was also much cheaper in the fifties. McDonald’s had a dollar menu which included a hamburger, fries, and a Coke for less than a dollar. A large pizza was $1.50.
This reminiscing is not due to my knowledge of eating out at fast food places, because the only fast food we ate when I was growing up was a hastily thrown together mayonnaise and tomato sandwich. Back then, even paying a dollar for fast food was not in our budget. It cost lots less for my mama to fry five hamburgers at 30 cents a pound for ground beef than to buy the five of us a dollar meal.
Nowadays, a quarter pounder meal will cost you $14.81, plus if you want extra mayo or mustard you must pay for that at some places. That’s a price increase of $13.81 since the fifties and sixties. Wow! Now that’s inflation!
What has caused these price increases? The money supply grows too big for the size of the economy, so the unit value of our dollar diminishes. In other words, its purchasing power fails. Hourly wages of the worker have increased so much since we were hit with COVID. It costs more to make the product, so the price of the product has been raised.
Prices of so many things have skyrocketed, but this increase has brought on some good things, not all bad.
People have decided to stay home more, spend more time with family, cook more homemade meals, visit close friends instead of traveling miles to see “the wonders of the world” and spending money for high gas prices, planting home gardens, and, most of all, show empathy for those who have suffered more from this upsurge and trying to be more aware of the needs of others.
As I ponder this conundrum, it makes my heart happy to see those more fortunate helping those less blessed in so many ways.
Here is one of my cheaper meals:
4 chicken leg quarters
1 pound of red potatoes cut into chunks
½ pound of carrots cut up
Salt
Pepper
2 T. oil
2 T. minced garlic
Onion powder
Red pepper flakes or not
Rub the leg quarters with oil, salt, pepper garlic, onion powder and red pepper flakes. Pour remainder over vegetables. Place in a 9x13 baking dish and bake for 45 minutes at 425 degrees.
