"a burger and fries was $17"? That doesn't seem right.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/mcdonalds-old-photos/ shows a menu at McDonalds from the early 1970s. A hamburger and fries was $0.63 or (assuming 1970 and adjusting for inflation) $5.36 now. A quarter pounder and fries was $1.27, or $10.81 now. Add $0.15 or $0.20 for a soda ($1.28 or $1.70).

That's a lot less than $17. Add $1.28

To double check, in 1983 a hamburger and fries was $1.82 - https://archive.org/details/ucladailybruin92losa/page/n542/m... .

That corresponds to $6.03 now.

What sort of hamburger places were you thinking of that charged 3x the price of McDonald's, and do they only charge $17 now?

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eudamoniac 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Like at a diner, not at the cheapest possible place that existed.

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eesmith 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You'll need to give more details.

Diners like the one portrayed in The Olympia Restaurant sketches on SNL were cheap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puJePACBoIo

Others now are far more than $18.

My first >$20 burger dinner was in 1997. That's >$41.15 now.

EDIT: Ahh, here - price for a hamburger in the staffed dining car of a passenger train from Houston to Chicago, 1972, was $2, from https://archive.org/details/spacecity03spac_44/mode/2up?q=%2... while $3 gets you "grey sole with soup, salad, rolls, vegetables, and dessert." The author suggests the hamburger price is high, as an inducement "to observe formalities."

$2 then is $15.80 now. Fries not included.

At https://archive.org/details/neworleansunderg0000coll/mode/2u... we read that an excellent hamburger at Ruby Red's in New Orleans cost $1.25 in 1970, which is $10.64 now. While at Bud's Broiler hamburgers run from $0.40 to $0.60. https://archive.org/details/neworleansunderg0000coll/page/22...

So I find it hard to believe most people back in 1970 were paying the equivalent of $17 for a burger and fries.

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eudamoniac 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I could go back through my history to find the specific source I used, but it has absolutely no bearing on the point of the post, since even your McDonald's prices are higher than the current app+value menu prices, so I'm not going to and I struggle to understand why you wrote all that to not refute the central point.

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eesmith 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Since the McDonald's burger is now cheaper (after adjusting for inflation) then is it also worse than it was in 1970?

Because if it's the same or better than it sure sounds an example of why people may have acquired "some implicit feeling that everything ought to be getting better and cheaper than it used to be".

My original comment was to mention that one of your numbers seemed rather high. To keep from it being a you-said-I-said thing, I gave supporting evidence. You didn't like the research I did, so I gave more supporting evidence that you are likely off by a factor of 2-3 for the hamburger prices.

Perhaps that means things weren't as expensive back then as you thought they were?

Like, while I can certainly find dresses in the $47 or higher range (you wrote "typical dress was $350") in this 1974 catalog https://archive.org/details/tog-shop-clothing-1974/page/n105... , that's from the Tog Shop, founded by fashion designer Paula Stafford, and with brands like Lacoste and the more expensive clothes list the designer or design house by name, which hardly seems typical at a time when Sears was selling dresses for less than half those prices and people made their own clothes to save money.

There's some great looking clothes in there, by the way.

And there were some expensive shitty things back then, like American cars which were soon to be trounced by Japanese imports that were both cheaper and better.

	▲	eudamoniac an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Since the McDonald's burger is now cheaper (after adjusting for inflation) then is it also worse than it was in 1970? Probably? I'm not going to assert it but I would be unsurprised. > Because if it's the same or better than it sure sounds an example of why people may have acquired "some implicit feeling that everything ought to be getting better and cheaper than it used to be". Again, what is your point? I'm sure there exists more than a few examples of things getting cheaper and better, maybe even most things? That doesn't mean it is a universal phenomenon that should be expected and cause anger when it doesn't happen. Your multi-paragraphs about the dress... also doesn't refute the point that things were more expensive back then. There are many Temu dresses for <$10 which was $1.50 in 1970. The 1970 Sears catalog has most dresses around $10. Okay, great, the dress you prefer to compare is "only" 6.7x more expensive. You got me! Great work choosing cheaper examples than I did, for sheer pedantry! Muting you now as I don't find your post history otherwise valuable.