Adjusting For Inflation
 

Why you'd pay more for a car with hand-crank windows | Marketplace.org

But first, let's take a ride...back to 1989.

Back then, the cheapest Accord sedan had just 98-horsepower, hand-crank windows, no AC, and retailed for $11,770.



More hp, more options . . . better mpg. :cool:

But without the extra wh*repower, pigfat for safety, electronic crapola, nanny crapola, etc, the car would be lighter and even more efficient. Take a late 80s car and put a drivetrain with modern electronic controls in and you'd end up with something more efficient than sold today.

Interestingly, I've been driving a car with crank windows (a rental Versa sedan) for the last two weeks, so they still exist.

Adjusted for inflation, cars cost about the same now as they did decades ago. All the objective measurements look better on the new cars. However, they're less fun to drive.

I wonder how much a new Model A Ford would cost today if they were mass produced in a low wage country like China.

As for getting rid of all the unnecessary garbage that goes into new cars, the easy way is to lose two wheels and get a motorcycle. The regulators haven't gone crazy on them (yet) so you can still buy a new vehicle for about five thousand dollars with peppy performance and 60+ mpg. Or you can get one for twenty grand that only gets 35 but will outrun anything short of an Enzo.

I'm hoping that car the Elio gets made.

The manual window in my toyota failed. I fixed it with a 2 dollar plastic gizmo. The power window in the wife's Element failed. Three hundred bucks. I was at a chevy dealership not long ago, asking about fleet pickup trucks. Said I wanted a base model 4wd half ton with air, crank windows, a stick and vinyl floormats. A work truck. According to the salesman, it can't be done. Uncarpeted floors and crank windows, never mind non-plush upholstery you savage, are things of the past. Maybe he just didn't want to find me one, but it sure sounded like he meant it. Makes restoring grandpa's F100 out in the barn seem like a worthwhile thing...

You may want to try asking that question in the last week of a month. If a sales person is short of a quota they may do some research to see if they can find some.

The vid link portion won't work for me.

1989 $ 11,770.00

run through this,

CPI Inflation Calculator

gives 2014 $22,576.76

I'll take the extra wh*repower, pigfat for safety, electronic crapola, nanny crapola and be safe, happy and entertained, thank you very much. Theres a few million dead people from the 1980s who would love to have a word with you, if they weren't dead.
Luddite
I'm sorry, were you saying something? I couldn't hear you over all the fun that isn't happening.
https://38.media.tumblr.com/ba102988...xn7co1_500.gif

Good tip. I see they can be configured, at least close on the chevy fleet website. Don't see a stick option at all though.

Risk of death is part of life. I find a NA Miata (light, simple, noisy) a lot more entertaining than any modern over computerized overweight rolling fat farm can ever hope to be. Oh, and f--k a modern Queefmaro. Sensory deprivation crapbox with no side windows to speak of.

Sensory deprivation crapbox. I have heard there are and would love to experience owning a vehicle in which one can hear one's own thoughts, or the radio for that matter.

BTDT, highly overrated. I found deleting the muffler and resonator on my old Lincoln Town Car made it considerably more enjoyable to drive. Same with going to duals and cheap glasspacks on my old Montego. Cutting off the entire exhaust system under the front passenger seat in my Buick was a bit much, but still better than stock. I can't believe I haven't shredded the exhaust system on my 300D yet.

The rate of inflation varies depending on the category. I expect that too much competition in the new car field has held prices down. It somewhat also suprises me that greater efforts where not taken to integrate a lot of car brands to lessen the competition. Maybe this is in the future.

Without excess competition I have no ideal what we would have to pay for new cars today. What is even worse consumers seem to have lost some judgement. Better cars can cost substantially less overall .

For example as the Honda accord was mentioned. We do not own one incidentally The much higher value on resale usually is large enough to well offset the additional initial purchase cost if any. This compared with the vast majority of brands. Compound this with a far less over the miles maintainence cost. It is actually a steal compared to the majority of brands. Same seems to apply to Toyota products to some extent.

As for many things I have to buy in the building field most have heavily inflated. As well inferior products added as substitutes to the market in the same period in the higher price catagories. Today I am using much inferior plywood at a lot more per sheet cost. The plywood market suppliers for here have shifted to south America and the Baltic states for much I use. Mind that constant regulatory changes substantially increase costs . Manipulation of almost everything is a reality or becoming so.

The wife says occasionally the groceries are way up . We do not in general track the cost of our food at all. Do we have twice as much money clear in overall income per month as back then? Funny I really cannot answer that as our income varied frequently a lot back them. I do seriously doubt it was anywhere near only half as much.

Utilities have jumped far more than double at our location since 89 though. Once a total incidental they are now a signifigant item. Property taxes based on heavily increased current property valuations are also up signifigantly. Phone and communication household costs where maybe seven dollars a month or so. Today in excess of two hundred with all the add ons we seem to need today.

The one item I think that has been well below the suggested to me at least flawed official inflation rate is insurance costs. Both property and automotive. They do not seem to have jumped that much.

Heating costs easily passed the official rate of inflation. About that time we burnt 500 gallons of fuel oil during the harder months of winter and it did not bother us. This was in a large house of two apartments we rented out. Today that amount of fuel oil would be over 2,500 a month here in eastern Canada.

At our advancing age not much of it is relavent anymore. Other than how this continuous trend may afflict our children, grandchildren, plus people in general after we are gone.

All in all the wife and myself had an easier ride than the younger generations seem to be having. Maybe we had lesser expectations. Still the wives in general stayed home with the kids and one salary was enough Today that seems to be pretty much history. Most women we know work out as well . For quite some time actually. Yet the average families today seem little better off if any overall than we were.

Try to remember my generation did not need to carry debt basically. Even if there was a mortgage it was usually small and easily serviced. I feel the easy credit today has a lot to do with excess inflation. It may be about the only component that keeps things going in general today at the same time. Perhaps even is hiding some of the more serious realities of the current times.

Other than a manual all of the big three make trucks like that, currently their are probably about 100k+ listed on Autotrader.

$18k for 2wd, 4wd starts in the low $20k range.

IMHO crank windows suck on a truck, they are to wide, I cannot wait until I get power windows again.

Right now the best deals can be had on the outgoing F150. A dealer in PA is selling 14's with V8, 4x4, power locks and windows, rubber floor, and vinyl seats for $23k. Can't beat that.

http://gomotors.net/pics/Bugatti/bug...pe-37-a-03.jpg

A Miata is a boat for wusses, nothing like open wheel pre war cars with brakes only on the back, straight cut gears, and bonus points for chain drive!

None of those fancy 12v electrical systems and electrical starters to fail, real men hand crank their engines!:D

The wife was reading an article about the cost of inflation in specific areas. The article claimed an operation needing a stay of four days in the hospital and all the additional charges including an in home visit after departure from the hospital.

Total bill for all was 171.00. This was in 1953. The absolute certainty is with what I think the bill would be today has to be many magnatudes higher. A thirty fold increase would only make it less than 6,000.00. My understanding it is around 7 to 8k to deliver a baby today. At least that is the price in Canada if for some reason like being a foreign national you are not covered by the health care system.

Although medicine is much advanced today if it was say an appendix operation back then. The only differance I can think of is the hospital stay would be much less today on average. Also the operation may be done with even a much less invasive cut.

My guess wages have not risen that high by some margin even yet. So in general health care may have seriously outstripped the inflation index since 1953. Incidentally the operation was 17.00 and was included in the 171.00.

These costs almost seem insane today. I was not working in 1953 so I have no ideal what the wages were. I know the family home was purchased just before then for 6,000 dollars and today it would have a market value of around 500k. The interm 60 years have been very expensive inflationary wise ones in many important sectors.

A comparison today is our cable, phone and internet service cost more per month. I paid less than half this for our first homes mortgage payment amortized over ten years. When I was making around two hundred a week.

We Canadians did not have universal health care then. So if I remember it was payments of 60.00 every three months for hospitalization and about the same amount to cover doctors. There where no co pays either. This was for the wife and two kids and myself at the time. It also was 100 percent coverage for everything.

Probably it is the compounding effect of constant otherwise seemingly light inflationary rises in prices that fools us over time.

For this to have any meaning, it needs to be converted to 2014 money. Being this is Canada money, my posted inflation calculator won't work. CA has to have something similar somewhere.


A good chunk of that cost is to cover jackpot (malpractice) insurance.

There is a lot of less visible technology that allows for shorter stays and less invasive surgery. This comes at a cost not related to inflation.

Property does not always track inflation so that is a poor comparison.

This isn't a direct comparason since cable didn't exist / was rare in 53 and Al Gore had not yet inverted the internet. The cost of long distance phone calls has dropped dramatically however.

I'm thinking it was 100% of not a lot of medical technology so costs were lower allowing for everything to be covered. In the old days there was a lot of " we've done all we can" that limited costs because the tech just didn't exist. This also self limited future insurance claims.

Many of your points are very valid..

Doctors in Canada do not pay malpractice insurance since the universal health care system came. The individual province they practice in covers them. At no direct charge to them.

Doctors are tracked in this regard though. Probably claims for negligence if more than average for whatever specialty they are in. Their billing number or ability to charge the system is pulled.

My guess is then they might go to another country as full or partial direct billing to a patient has not been allowed in Canada.

You probably have an ideal of where they may land up with high malpractice rates basically working for the insurance industry. Or at least a lot of their income flowing in that direction.

I need a cat scan every six months to make sure the stainless steel mesh inside me has not moved. What surprised me is the hospital I use is 150 miles for all practical purposes from the American border. Normally the system has a few methods to make sure they have the right individual.

All of a sudden it seems security has been beefed up. This time there where very specific questions in only areas I would know the answers to. Normally there are just a few fairly common questions to identify a patient. Might have been a fluke but I wondered.

Some of the questions the last time went way beyond that. I have a suspicion that our pictures may become mandatory on the health services cards all too soon. For the first time in memory I saw in the news that two people where reciently billed for services they received. Neither was a Canadian or landed immigrant. One woman had married a Canadian. I do not know the story on the other one.

My guess is it has become too costly to provide non billed care for people that should not get it here has finally been recognized. I always had a suspicion perhaps some Americans close to the border might be getting their hands on Canadian health cards and coming over for treatment. Especially at the border towns. Was pretty easy to get a health card.

Kerry on our site has received medical care here when traveling as a tourist. I never thought to ask him if he was charged. Or his insurance company back home was billed. Or it was just free. His daughter is an American at a Canadian university and she is covered but has to pay a small monthly fee for it.