23 November 2008

Dairy case from the 1950s


This was one of the featured photos at Shorpy today (you can always click Shorpy images to enlarge and examine).

What struck me was not how cheap the eggs were then, but how little they have changed. This image is from "the 1950s" so we'll say 55 years. At that time eggs were about 3c each. Today we buy our eggs in packs of 18 for 10c each. From those data I would guesstimate a compound rate of increase of 3%.

If you plug that 1950s egg price into the Consumer Price Index calculator to see what it would be in current dollars, it should be 23c per egg now. I presume today's relatively lower price reflects automation and corporate farming.

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