I see paper bags are now available in the supermarket. Do you remember that in the 70s all of our shopping was packed into such bags and how awful they were -- no handles and the bottom dropped out as soon as one of two cans or bottles were put in them. I am not going to go back there if I can avoid it.
I have been digging through old letters recently and found this interesting snippet in one I wrote to my Mum and Dad from Canberra in August 1974 "The prices are ridiculous. You go to Woolies and find 3 and 4 price stickers on top of each other. Woolies in Brisbane had a policy of not putting up the price in old stock. They sure do down here as you search through for the one the tag has fallen off or they missed."
Of course today they are putting up prices all the time just at the touch of the computer and I am unaware other than noticing the total grocery bill is constantly growing (not too much since I have a productive veggie garden).
Here's another interesting snippet "In the last two pays there was a $5 week national wage increase and $16 week interim increase awaiting some 16% wage increase before the court or whatever now." I thought crikey such a high across the board wage increase. I checked and the rate of inflation in 1974 was 15.83%, we are currently 7.4%. Let's hope we don't go back to the 1970s!
We were talking about that to our financial adviser this morning. In the seventies inflation came down faster than it is now because people stopped spending because they were struggling to pay mortgages and the cot of living but today people are still spending because they have so many easy ways to find money on credit.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about the easy credit being a factor.
DeletePaper bags have returned here too.
ReplyDeleteI think they will be mandated soon, like single use plastic bags were banned.
DeleteIt is interesting thinking about the seventies. My hubby said last night our home interest rate went up to 12% and our weekly repayments were $30. Of course wages weren't like what they are now.
ReplyDelete1970s dollars are a little less than 10 times todays dollars. So you were paying the equivalent of $300 per week. We were paying 11 or 12% then.
DeleteI remember the paper bags. They were certainly awkward to use with no handles. I also remember our home mortgage interest rate went up to 17% and we were struggling to keep up our mortgage payments.
ReplyDeleteIn 1989 our interest rate for an apartment in Sydney reached 18%. Fortunately we were not heavily mortgaged.
DeletePaper bags for sale but still far too many unnecessarily prepackaged in plastic, items.
ReplyDeleteYou raise an interesting point so I thought I would make it the subject of this week's post.
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