Ruminations on Inflation

[Briar Lee]

My father was born in 1919 and his parents owned a 1916 Model T.

Over the years, my father or his parents and later him and my mother bought a 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1950, 1955, 1960, and 1965 full sized Ford cars.

I can vividly remember my parents trading in the 1960 Ford for the 1965 Ford. The new Ford was about $2,500 and the 1960 was worth about $700 and the difference was $1,800.

My folks were proud their new 1965 Ford cost exactly the same $1,800 they paid for eighty acres of land (where their house was built) in 1948 but they weren’t so proud of the new 1965 Ford when the blue paint peeled off the hood.

Ford had it repainted, but it faded again.

In 1970 my mother didn’t want another Ford, so Daddy bought Mama a brand new 1970 Chevy Impala that cost $3,000, and the old Ford was only worth $500, because it was blue and the blue paint faded really bad on those, you know?

This was a $3,000 car in 1970.



My inflation calculator says $3,000 in 1970 is about $23,000 today.

$23,000 will buy a small new car today. Not a full sized Chevy, but a new car. But a new 2023 Chevy Camaro starts at $25,000.




Inflation really hasn’t been devastating for automobiles, or else we’d not see so many new ones.

Where inflation has been crippling is land prices.

I still own the 80 acres my folks paid $1,800 for in 1948.

That’s supposed to be about $22,000 today, according to the inflation calculator.

That won’t buy three acres to build a house.

The land around Bug Tussle sells for about $6,500 an acre and more.

Why, is land so expensive?

The Good Lord isn’t making any more land, but He made a bunch before he quit.

 

[didimauw]

My father was born in 1919 and his parents owned a 1916 Model T.

Over the years, my father or his parents and later him and my mother bought a 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1950, 1955, 1960, and 1965 full sized Ford cars.

I can vividly remember my parents trading in the 1960 Ford for the 1965 Ford. The new Ford was about $2,500 and the 1960 was worth about $700 and the difference was $1,800.

My folks were proud their new 1965 Ford cost exactly the same $1,800 they paid for eighty acres of land (where their house was built) in 1948 but they weren’t so proud of the new 1965 Ford when the blue paint peeled off the hood.

Ford had it repainted, but it faded again.

In 1970 my mother didn’t want another Ford, so Daddy bought Mama a brand new 1970 Chevy Impala that cost $3,000, and the old Ford was only worth $500, because it was blue and the blue paint faded really bad on those, you know?

This was a $3,000 car in 1970.

View attachment 206735

My inflation calculator says $3,000 in 1970 is about $23,000 today.

$23,000 will buy a small new car today. Not a full sized Chevy, but a new car. But a new 2023 Chevy Camaro starts at $25,000.

View attachment 206737


Inflation really hasn’t been devastating for automobiles, or else we’d not see so many new ones.

Where inflation has been crippling is land prices.

I still own the 80 acres my folks paid $1,800 for in 1948.

That’s supposed to be about $22,000 today, according to the inflation calculator.

That won’t buy three acres to build a house.

The land around Bug Tussle sells for about $6,500 an acre and more.

Why, is land so expensive?

The Good Lord isn’t making any more land, but He made a bunch before he quit.

This is probably why.

Cool cars though!

 

[sham]

Many land and home values have nearly doubled just in the past 2 years. I'm very fortunate that my grandfather, and his fathers, bought an abundance of land while they were working and growing their business. I would not get very far with the same aspirations. Beach lots that my grandfather procured in the 60s/70s were bought for less than $20,000. Some of those are worth nearly a million today. 1000's of acres of farmland was bought in our small town. Prices that the land was purchased for just astonishes me. I'll be able to work this land, build on it, and provide land for my kids some day.

 

[LeafErikson]

My father was born in 1919 and his parents owned a 1916 Model T.

Over the years, my father or his parents and later him and my mother bought a 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1950, 1955, 1960, and 1965 full sized Ford cars.

I can vividly remember my parents trading in the 1960 Ford for the 1965 Ford. The new Ford was about $2,500 and the 1960 was worth about $700 and the difference was $1,800.

My folks were proud their new 1965 Ford cost exactly the same $1,800 they paid for eighty acres of land (where their house was built) in 1948 but they weren’t so proud of the new 1965 Ford when the blue paint peeled off the hood.

Ford had it repainted, but it faded again.

In 1970 my mother didn’t want another Ford, so Daddy bought Mama a brand new 1970 Chevy Impala that cost $3,000, and the old Ford was only worth $500, because it was blue and the blue paint faded really bad on those, you know?

This was a $3,000 car in 1970.

View attachment 206735

My inflation calculator says $3,000 in 1970 is about $23,000 today.

$23,000 will buy a small new car today. Not a full sized Chevy, but a new car. But a new 2023 Chevy Camaro starts at $25,000.

View attachment 206737


Inflation really hasn’t been devastating for automobiles, or else we’d not see so many new ones.

Where inflation has been crippling is land prices.

I still own the 80 acres my folks paid $1,800 for in 1948.

That’s supposed to be about $22,000 today, according to the inflation calculator.

That won’t buy three acres to build a house.

The land around Bug Tussle sells for about $6,500 an acre and more.

Why, is land so expensive?

The Good Lord isn’t making any more land, but He made a bunch before he quit.

I want to thank you for your posts. They’re almost always an entertaining read and you have a distinct writing style. It’s almost like reading a weekly newspaper column. Hope all is well with you Briar Lee!

Also yes land has become astronomically expensive. There is too much power in owning your own land. You can provide your own food, shelter, and be relatively self-reliant. The Chinese government is so desperate for some of their rural-dwelling farmers to move off of their lands and to the big cities that they have been offering exorbitant sums of money to them as well as free housing in the city. They can’t contribute to their country’s GDP if they’re raising their own pigs and chickens to eat instead of spending money at the grocery store.

 

[Grangerous]

file:///var/mobile/Library/SMS/Attachments/0e/14/F0FE1A2A-8351-4CF6-9E81-9337E39D7E9E/IMG_9132.jpg

 

[hoosierpipeguy]

Prices increase for reasons other than inflation. Supply and demand is one.

 

[cranseiron]

+1 supply/demand. I think the U.S. increases it's population to the tune of 100 million every 40 years, give or take. Supply-- static; demand-- ever increasing.

 

[bullet08]

I did ruminate about the current inflation. It still sucks.

 

[Briar Lee]

I did ruminate about the current inflation. It still sucks.

Inflation has always sucked, unless you are a farmer.

Not runaway, banana republic type inflation, but American style creeping inflation has been a benefit to farmers.

On the day my father was born in 1919, the land his grandfather paid $5 an acre for in 1876 was worth about a hundred dollars an acre.

What is much worse than creeping inflation is sudden deflation, like happened during the Great Depression.

My father helped his Uncle Elmer have a sale in 1936.

Except Elmer’s incredibly beautiful and wealthy sister Eva had bid $3.50 an acre for Elmer’s sixty acres it would not have sold.

Elmer and his wife Cora left for Bakersfield California to labor like slaves in the fields there, and Eva let my father share rent the sixty acres. She promised him if he ever had $225 she’d sell Elmer’s Sixty back.

When the war came land prices went so high Eva reneged and asked $15 an acre, which Daddy paid. My Grandmother took a .22 rifle and ran off towards Spout Spring Hollow to kill Eva for holding up her boy, but my father and his father caught her just before reached Eva’s mansion.

Then in 1948 my parents paid $22.50 an acre for 80 acres my father had previously share rented.

What matters to a farmer is being able to keep farming.

Increasing land prices, let him borrow if needs to in order to farm.

Deflation of land prices would threaten to destroy the farming sector, in the same way the Great Depression did for a decade, and the early eighties farm crisis did for about five years or so.

Farm crisis - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Briar Tuck]

 

[Servant King]

Rising prices are not the cause of inflation; that's just a symptom. The actual inflation is the dilution of the currency supply by way of the Federal Reserve's printing presses.

There's no better thing than inflation to prove that currency is NOT money. Money, amongst other things, is a storage of value. Currency hemorrhages value, by definition and by design. Knowing the difference is important.

It also helps to know the difference between inflation and price-gouging. There's a lot of the latter going on, and it gets blamed on the former. When people get fed up with price gouging, they restrict their spending, one of the main causes of deflation. I always laugh when the Einsteinian Fed chair (whoever it happens to be, they're all cyborgs) talks about "fighting inflation." The exact opposite is true, they're actually causing inflation deliberately! What they are fighting is deflation. Governments hate deflation, because it screws up their theft taxation. How else can they steal the little bit of whatever purchasing power the dollar has left, and direct it to whichever sector of the economy they want to form a bubble? (I'm lookin' at you, real estate!)

Funny, I just started my new book, The Great Gold & Silver Rush of the 21st Century by Mike Maloney. Best $40 I ever spent, second of course to SP.com's IPSD sale last month.

 

[brian64]

Rising prices are not the cause of inflation; that's just a symptom. The actual inflation is the dilution of the currency supply by way of the Federal Reserve's printing presses.

There's no better thing than inflation to prove that currency is NOT money. Money, amongst other things, is a storage of value. Currency hemorrhages value, by definition and by design. Knowing the difference is important.

It also helps to know the difference between inflation and price-gouging. There's a lot of the latter going on, and it gets blamed on the former. When people get fed up with price gouging, they restrict their spending, one of the main causes of deflation. I always laugh when the Einsteinian Fed chair (whoever it happens to be, they're all cyborgs) talks about "fighting inflation." The exact opposite is true, they're actually causing inflation deliberately! What they are fighting is deflation. Governments hate deflation, because it screws up their theft taxation. How else can they steal the little bit of whatever purchasing power the dollar has left, and direct it to whichever sector of the economy they want to form a bubble? (I'm lookin' at you, real estate!)

Funny, I just started my new book, The Great Gold & Silver Rush of the 21st Century by Mike Maloney. Best $40 I ever spent, second of course to SP.com's IPSD sale last month.

 

[Alejo R.]

Rising prices are not the cause of inflation; that's just a symptom. The actual inflation is the dilution of the currency supply by way of the Federal Reserve's printing presses.

There's no better thing than inflation to prove that currency is NOT money. Money, amongst other things, is a storage of value. Currency hemorrhages value, by definition and by design. Knowing the difference is important.

It also helps to know the difference between inflation and price-gouging. There's a lot of the latter going on, and it gets blamed on the former. When people get fed up with price gouging, they restrict their spending, one of the main causes of deflation. I always laugh when the Einsteinian Fed chair (whoever it happens to be, they're all cyborgs) talks about "fighting inflation." The exact opposite is true, they're actually causing inflation deliberately! What they are fighting is deflation. Governments hate deflation, because it screws up their theft taxation. How else can they steal the little bit of whatever purchasing power the dollar has left, and direct it to whichever sector of the economy they want to form a bubble? (I'm lookin' at you, real estate!)

Funny, I just started my new book, The Great Gold & Silver Rush of the 21st Century by Mike Maloney. Best $40 I ever spent, second of course to SP.com's IPSD sale last month.

You are right. Money is a store of value that represents the wealth created with economic activity. Since you can't create value out of nothing, every time the government prints a dollar, it takes an infinitesimal portion of value out of every dollar in circulation.

 

[Alejo R.]

My father was born in 1919 and his parents owned a 1916 Model T.

Over the years, my father or his parents and later him and my mother bought a 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1950, 1955, 1960, and 1965 full sized Ford cars.

I can vividly remember my parents trading in the 1960 Ford for the 1965 Ford. The new Ford was about $2,500 and the 1960 was worth about $700 and the difference was $1,800.

My folks were proud their new 1965 Ford cost exactly the same $1,800 they paid for eighty acres of land (where their house was built) in 1948 but they weren’t so proud of the new 1965 Ford when the blue paint peeled off the hood.

Ford had it repainted, but it faded again.

In 1970 my mother didn’t want another Ford, so Daddy bought Mama a brand new 1970 Chevy Impala that cost $3,000, and the old Ford was only worth $500, because it was blue and the blue paint faded really bad on those, you know?

This was a $3,000 car in 1970.

View attachment 206735

My inflation calculator says $3,000 in 1970 is about $23,000 today.

$23,000 will buy a small new car today. Not a full sized Chevy, but a new car. But a new 2023 Chevy Camaro starts at $25,000.

View attachment 206737


Inflation really hasn’t been devastating for automobiles, or else we’d not see so many new ones.

Where inflation has been crippling is land prices.

I still own the 80 acres my folks paid $1,800 for in 1948.

That’s supposed to be about $22,000 today, according to the inflation calculator.

That won’t buy three acres to build a house.

The land around Bug Tussle sells for about $6,500 an acre and more.

Why, is land so expensive?

The Good Lord isn’t making any more land, but He made a bunch before he quit.

I think that the globalization of banking has made it happen in many parts of the world. Inflation is the general increase (of all goods) and sustained over time in retail prices paid by the final consumer. Although it can have many reasons, it is mainly due to monetary printing. The increase in the price of real estate, I think, has more to do with the fact that mortgage loans are a great business and the banks inject obscene amounts of money into the market, causing a lot of demand. A bubble.

 

[Servant King]

You are right. Money is a store of value that represents the wealth created with economic activity. Since you can't create value out of nothing, every time the government prints a dollar, it takes an infinitesimal portion of value out of every dollar in circulation.

Correct! And compound this "strategy" (for lack of a better word) over a period of 110 years as demonstrated by @brian64 and voila, you have a recipe for economic indentured servitude.

 

[brian64]

you have a recipe for economic indentured servitude

Which was always the plan and intent to begin with.

And it's actually much worse than just the government printing money. The "fed" is only a quasi-government entity...it really amounts to a private banking cartel given legal authority to create money out of thin air...otherwise known as counterfeiting. And then "loan" it to the government at interest...quite a scam imo. That's why it's called a federal reserve "note". It's not money, it's a debt instrument.

And the worst part is, what is coming soon to replace it is infinitely worse...central bank digital currency...which will mean absolute total control over literally everything by aforementioned crime syndicate banking cartel.

 

[Servant King]

...create money out of thin air...otherwise known as counterfeiting. And then "loan" it to the government at interest...

And since "the government" is all of the people as one (e pluribus unum), guess who has to pick up the tab?



No, not that kind! Gosh, how much Tab would a dollar buy back then?

 

[Briar Lee]

My mother’s mother was Myrtle “Ma” Cahow Agee, who had an eight grade education, learned how to be a mule skinner on her father’s drayage line, had waist length locks of curly, raven black hair, was over six feet tall in high heels, and lived 83 years able to have men come fetch her and drive her any place she pleased to go, any time she pleased.

Her husband and my grandfather was a little bald headed man who probably became the richest bachelor in Hickory County, Missouri when his first wife died when he was 38 in 1918. He was a college graduate and had lots of money in the postal savings, a couple of thousand acres of river bottom farms he rented out, and lived 92 years and my mother said he never worked up a sweat, and had his gorgeous wife and two beautiful daughters who adored him and lit all his pipes, cigarettes and cigars he smoked constantly.

Ma Agee wrote a successful column in the Index published in Hermatige Missouri for about sixty years. It inspired the Beverly Hillbillies television series.

I grew up, seeing Bug Tussle every morning from my house.

Ma Agee roasted, lampooned and ridiculed the Gubbermint and that Dad Blasted Ole Roosevelt every week in the Index with a skill that the current writers for Saturday Night Live would envy.

What Ma Agee taught me about inflation was I had no say about it, whatsoever.

You cannot live life worried about the “gubbermint”.

But writing columns mirroring popular fears in the barber and beauty shops, and entertaining the dickens out of people who know it’s beyond our control is a good way to earn a very good living on the river banks of Dooley Bend, Missouri.

 

[bullet08]

Damn. Almost made a political post. I need my medicine.

 

[JOHN72]

Robotization, sustainable balance in birth rates, curb the brutal consumption of raw materials and other strategic resources of the planet. This planet has become too small, or we have grown too much.