Absolutely true.
It gets even more disturbing, though, when you realize how far $5000 would get you in 1946 and how little it gets you now.
Context: when my dad was a teenager, he bought a brand new car for well below $1000. And my grandparents’ first suburban house cost about $7000, and that was in New York, near the city.
What would $5000 get you today?
A junker used car OR two months rent.
$5,000 in 1946 is worth $83,000 today, according to the first inflation calculator I found. Our dollar has ~6% of the purchasing power a 1946 dollar had.
What would $5000 get you today?
A mid-level dentist bicycle
What is a dentist bicycle?
Dentist’s notoriously ride 12k carbon bicycles, to the point thats its a meme. The type of bike that bike ships put in the display window to get most people to come in and buy the common 2k ones.
The running joke in biking circles is that when you see someone in full lycra on a very high end bike, its a dentist fresh from the tooth mines.
People buy 2k bikes? Those are pretty high end, common ones would be 150 or 800 if electric.
The above prices arent something you will see in a bike shop. Entry level bikes from large brands run around $800-1200 or so in my area. The common price for “good” bikes at my local shop range from 2-6k. Add 1-2k for electric versions.
$150 for a bike is walmart pricing. These are commonly called “BSOs” in cycling circles, i.e “bike shaped objects.” The components, from the frame to brakes to wheels/etc are all either no name or wildly shoddy, and arent assembled by bike mechanics, so they often aren’t put together correctly. They generally aren’t recommend for safeties sake.
the horn goes tooth tooth
