move the decimal points over two places to the right for 2011 pricing. what was the average pay back then?
1 dollar in 1928 is roughly equivalent to $40 dollars today.... it has nothing to do about average pay, it's all about inflation.
just trying to see what "cheap" is. if putting fenders on is the equal to a month's pay then it 's not cheap.
if you think about it and this is just a guess but for $1 to install a fender figure maybe .10 to .20 goes to the guy that installs it. if it were that case a fender would be around 2 weeks pay. but like I said that is a guess.
According to the C.P.I. inflation calculator it takes $13.27 today to equal what 1.00 would buy in 1928.
guys at the naval yards were mostly all making under a dollar an hour in 1928... most garages now charge around $70 hourly rate... I dont think it was cheap, it was acceptable to pay an hours pay for an hours work. Now you can see why most people go into debt just trying to pay car maintenance bills, so they can have a car to get to work to just keep the vicious cycle going.
Not sure where you found the numbers. I remember the increase being over x10 just since the 1950s. I addition to adjustment for the value of money, in general, skilled tradesmen/craftsmen/technicians are paid better today than in the distant past.
Also Keep in mind that the average salary was around 3 to 4 bucks a day, and that the start of the great depression was only a year away, those prices still comprised a good chunk of change from the hosehold coffers.
You need to account for the great depression- in 1922 a dollar was worth 13.27 - in '33 it was worth 17.45. According to CPI. I think things are worse now... I'm certainly feeling the pinch.
Another thing about the CPI; the way it is calculated was recently changed. I remember that happening another time in the '70s or '80s. I believe it was politically motivated both times, and both times the result was a lower percentage than the real costs everyday people pay.
It all comes down to how many minutes or hours someone in the same line of work had/has to work to buy the same thing. How many hours did a person have to work in 1929 to buy and have that 8.50 fender put on his car for 2.50 labor.
it still probably would have cost too much for my broke ass. still, really cool to see the rates from back then.
Grampa would keep telling us that his first car was a model t that they paid $17.00 for. He wanted the model a but they couldn't afford the $25.00 for that. They also had to make monthly payments on the model t.
Speaking of a car costing around 600. I have a 1929 Duesenburg advertisement for a v12 (maybe v16) roadster for $8500. Last I looked it up, it was about $300-$400K in todays money!
The late '30s Rolls-Royce Phantom III V-12 was sold only as a running chassis w/radiator, hood, and part of the cowl. You had the body builder of your choice construct a body to the design and specifications of your choice. Just the chassis cost around 20 years of the average man's yearly income at the time. An exceptional body could aproch the cost of the chassis.
So if a '27 model T could be had for 250 bucks, that works out to about 3500 dollars for a brand new car in today's money.
I agree that those CPI numbers are full of bs. They are wrong, plain and simple. It's poo, fed to the masses or is it asses?
Just read on the homepage about a person paying their mothers parking ticket 57 years later. she got a parking ticket in 1954 and it was just 10 cents.
The Jalopy Journal
