How to Kvetch A Dollar

I’m so tired of people complaining about inflation. Hell, I’m tired of them complaining about everything, but this in particular. The highest-ranking tunes on their hit parade these days are eggs and gasoline. Sure, I get it. No one wants to pay more for their purchases, but as with anything there should be a limit to how much they can yap about it before the rest of us have the right to put up the stop sign and say, “Enough.” I’m at that point.

In the 70’s and early 80’s, inflation was a big story and a constant one. Making ends meet was truly difficult for many people, and unlike today most working-class folk didn’t have the option of charging stuff on a credit card and figuring out how to pay for it later. Just to give you a couple of reference points, in 1983 I bought a color television. It was all of thirteen inches in diameter and contained nothing smart. It had no apps. It was not high def. In today’s dollars, it cost me close to $1,000.

Home computers were not exactly affordable either. They also had few if any of the features that we’ve come to expect of our desktops and laptops. Even in 1997, when inflation wasn’t a major factor anymore, my first home PC cost me the equivalent of $4,500 today. Meanwhile, I could now get a “fully loaded” PC for roughly 20% of that, and a smart TV four times the size of the one I procured forty years ago would likely cost me no more than $400, less than half of that tiny one cost me then, adjusted for inflation.

Growing up, we often didn’t have air conditioners because my mom simply couldn’t afford them, nor the electricity it took to run them. Instead, we had dehumidifiers, which are as effective at cooling as the “close door” button on the elevator is at closing the damn door. We also had only black and white television for a good portion of my childhood. My point is not to complain, because I had a great childhood. But until I was in my mid-teens, I almost never ate at restaurants, went to movie theaters, or went on a vacation of any sort. I also didn’t miss having those luxuries, nor did I envy my friends who did. I liked my home and being there. I still do. Many of my friends’ families did without what today are considered must haves, including cable TV and a video recording device. It was rare to be in a car that had power windows or seats that weren’t made of cheap cloth. Kids often wore hand-me-down clothes from their older siblings. My point is that today I see people with $90,000 pickup trucks having conniption fits over gasoline being too expensive or rupturing a blood vessel because craft beer is a little overpriced. Where I come from, if you can afford to buy really expensive items, you don’t bitch about inflation. Maybe if some of these yahoos bought a more reasonably priced vehicle, they’d have more money for gas. Oh, and they might also consider not having a truck that guzzles gas in the first place.

Social media is overrun with dopes whining about how much they must spend to eat at fast food joints and what a bottle of soda costs. What I rarely see is someone talking about paying their rent or maintaining their 1998 Toyota because the transmission has been acting up again. It seems to me that the people who have more than enough are the first to stamp their feet and scream, “It’s not fair.” As has nearly always been true, working people and poor people are usually a lot more grateful for what little they have. If you can’t afford eggs, but you can afford a Sony PlayStation 3, I’m going to go ahead and say that the problem really isn’t inflation. The problem is your absurdly twisted sense of priorities.