There’s a sound older people make when they see a grocery receipt.
It’s not quite a groan, not quite a gasp — more like the sound you’d make if someone told you a gallon of milk now costs more than your first apartment.
It’s the sound of inflation-induced disbelief — the national anthem of anyone over seventy.
We don’t mean to complain. We simply remember when things were affordable — back before the Dow, the debt, and the avocado entered their current bull markets.
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When Everything Was a Quarter
In the late 1960s, a loaf of bread cost twenty-five cents.
Milk was eighty-nine.
A gallon of gas was thirty-six cents, and the guy pumping it cleaned your windshield without asking for a tip or your Wi-Fi password.
The subway in New York was twenty cents — the same price as a phone call or a cup of coffee, both of which involved more warmth than bandwidth.
Now the subway is $2.90, coffee is $7, and the phone call has been replaced by a “Zoom follow-up.”
Progress, apparently, has a subscription fee.
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The Egg Cream Index
But nothing, nothing, captures the moral collapse of American pricing like the Egg Cream.
In Queens, NY in 1968, an egg cream — that fizzy, chocolatey, seltzer miracle — cost 25 cents.
It was cheap, delicious, and, for reasons no one could explain, contained no egg and no cream.
Last month, I ordered one in West Palm Beach.
It was artisanal, hand-stirred, and served in a mason jar — because apparently all beverages must now resemble something from a farm wedding.
The price: $5.75.
For that, I expected at least a side of nostalgia and maybe a complimentary trip back to Queens.
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Tuition, Steak, and Other Crimes Against Memory
In 1972, you could attend a public university for about $400 a year.
Today, that might cover textbooks — and not even the digital kind.
A rib-eye steak, once $2.49 a pound, now costs $17.
Same cow. Different accountant.
I recently saw a dozen “pasture-raised, stress-free” eggs for $7.99.
At that price, they should hatch a trust fund.
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The Myth of Modern Improvement
We’re told things are better now: cars are safer, thermostats talk, and milk has 47 plant-based alternatives.
Yet somehow, the grocery cart has become a rolling cry for help.
In 1968, I bought a a used Oldsmobile Cutlass for $800.
It started with a key, not a retina scan.
Now it politely reminds me I’m late for a subscription oil change.
We used to own things.
Now we rent the illusion of ownership and call it “smart living.”
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The Economics of Outrage
Wages have risen too, but not nearly enough to prevent the occasional coronary event in the produce aisle.
The cashier asked if I’d like to “round up” for charity.
I told her, “At these prices, I am the charity.”
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Why We Complain (and Why We’re Right)
Younger people think we’re nostalgic.
We’re not.
We’re auditors of reality.
We complain not out of bitterness but because we remember a time when a splurge meant ordering dessert — not securing financing.
Our griping isn’t crankiness. It’s fiscal anthropology.
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Perspective, Adjusted for Inflation
Back in my day, a dollar was a dollar.
It could buy a newspaper, 4 cups of coffee, and the comforting illusion that adulthood came with change back.
Now, a dollar buys… anxiety.
Yes, we live longer, travel faster, and have refrigerators that snitch on us for running out of oat milk.
But deep down, I’d trade it all for one more twenty-cent subway ride, a twenty-five-cent egg cream, and the satisfying thunk of a TV turning off.
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The Moral (Priced to Sell)
So when you hear an older person sigh at the gas pump or glare at the eggs, don’t roll your eyes.
We’re not angry — we’re doing mental arithmetic in 1972 dollars.
And in 1972, math was free, too.
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