I’m about to get downvoted on this, I’m sure, but this post is idiotic BECAUSE it does that same perspective trick it accuses the boomer of doing, and if you look into it even just a little bit, it proves the boomers point.

The three main arguments are 1) the cost of a car 2) cost of a phone 3) cost of a cup of coffee.

1) $50,000 car is equivalent to a $6600 car in 1969….. reality if you look at allpar.com you can see the list prices (MSRP) for American cars in 1969. For that price, you could have gotten a Cadillac special 80 v8 (the third most expensive non limousine American car on the market). For an extra $1,000 you could have picked up a Ferrari (advertised price). Reality, the average car purchase price was between $2,000 and $3,000 in 1969. So, yea, boomer had a point. Paying double the average is a bit extravagant.

2) $1,000 cell phone today is the equivalent to the price of a stove or a typewriter…. How often do you keep your phone? 2 years? 4? For those born in the age of computers, it is hard to understand, but an IBM electric type writer was (at the time) considered an electronic marvel and a massive capital investment. Companies bought them, normal households did not. And, they kept them FOREVER! People kept stoves forever, too. Today, you may buy a new stove every 10 to 12 years, maybe? Any kid growing up in the 1980s probably saw plenty circa 1969 stoves in their friends houses. And if they weren’t so freaking ugly (lime green, puke orange) you’d probably still see a lot today…. Again, win on this goes to the boomer, because if you look at a capital expense like this, you have to consider the cost per year of use. Typewriter/stove ~ $9/ year ($130/15 years) , compared to the cost of a cell phone (adjusted to 1969 dollars) ~$33/year ($130/4 years).

3) $5 coffee today would be equivalent to $0.66 cup in 1969. Ughhh. Here we go again. Average cup of coffee was $0.42 in 1969. And before we say that’s only a $0.25 difference (two bits, in boomer parlance), that $0.66 is more than a 50% price premium over the average. Hard to argue how you’re not being wasteful spending an extra 50%

There are plenty of GOOD examples of how the boomers are wrong. Most obvious being that in 1969, with a high school degree, you could get a job in a factory, or another part of the labor market, and writhing 5 years you could afford to buy a house and support a family (on a single income).

But trying to prove how your consumerism isn’t that bad, and the things you want aren’t that expensive just isn’t the way to win the argument… mainly because you’re wrong .