Inflation today is at a 40-year high.
From January 2021 to January 2022 consumer prices rose 7.5 percent. We have to go back to February 1982 to find a higher inflation rate.
One year of inflation won’t cripple us consumers. But high inflation sustained over several years will take its toll.
The longest period of sustained high inflation was the 1970s. Witness: 1974, 12.3 percent; 1978, 9.0 percent; 1979, 13.3 percent; 1980, 12.5 percent; and 1981, 8.9 percent.
I remember those days. Workers constantly sought higher wages to keep up. Companies would relent and pay the higher wages, then raise their prices to compensate. Which caused consumers to seek higher wages again. The cycle seemed endless.
What was inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s like?
Well, a pizzeria near the high school I attended offered a lunchtime special on weekdays. Two slices of pizza and a 12-ounce can of cold soda pop, all for one dollar. That was 1976.
Cut ahead ten years. In 1986, that pizzeria still offered the special, but those two slices and a can now cost two dollars. The price had doubled.
Hello, 1970s inflation.
In the fall of 1970 – when I weighed less than 50 pounds – I stayed home from school a couple days, ill and bedridden, and disappointed that I wasn’t in class learning long division. To cheer me up, my father bought me my first comic book ever – World’s Finest #198, with Superman racing the Flash to see who is faster.
It was priced at 15 cents.
Let’s look at inflation and standard-size (32-page) comic books. These observations are all from my collection of comics published by DC.
In 1969, after a decade of stable pricing, comic prices went up to 15 cents from 12 cents.
That sounds like just a 3-cent hike to us. But it was a 25 percent increase. And to put 3 cents in perspective, back then a single penny got you a gumball from the supermarket vending machine that today requires a quarter. (And a new Chevy Nova cost under $2,500.)
The comic book price went up to 20 cents in 1974. Sure, just a nickel’s increase. But a 33 percent increase from the previous price, and a 67 percent increase from the late-1960s price. And that 20-cent price lasted just a year.
The price went up to 25 cents in 1975. Another nickel. But a 25-percent hike.
In 1976 the price rose to 30 cents. Sure, just another nickel. But that was another 20 percent. Three straight years with price increases. Note that in the six years since the Superman-Flash race in the 15-cent issue, the price of each issue had doubled; it had gone up 100 percent.
But we hadn’t seen anything yet.
In 1977, the price was upped from 30 to 35 cents. In 1978, it went up to 40 cents. That was the fifth straight year with a 5-cent price hike.
But by now we were through with nickel increases. In 1980, it went up a full dime to 50 cents.
Then in 1981, the price went up to 60 cents. In other words, four times as expensive as ten years prior. And that was the last of the 10-cent increases.
In 1983 the price went up to 75 cents – five times as expensive as that first issue I had received thirteen years earlier.
In 1988, the price was raised a full quarter, to one dollar. The price climbed to $1.25 in 1992. In other words, the price had gone up eight-fold in the 22 years since World’s Finest #198.
And comics prices have continued upward in the 30 years since.
Every industry has unique factors at play. Maybe in comics, publishers switched to a higher-quality paper stock. Or a legal change enabled creators of characters to share in the profits generated by their characters. And so on. But mostly the increases were pure inflation.
It should be noted merchandise in the 1970s did not all increase in price at the same rate. Paper products – such as magazines and books – were hit harder than many other categories. Some products, such as milk and bananas, went up at a much milder inflationary rate.
Also, sometimes inflation hits without a price change. Instead, you receive less merchandise for the same price. The large size for ice cream in the supermarket frozen aisle used to be 64 ounces. Now the standard large size is 48 ounces. At some point, the package got smaller simply because the makers didn’t want to lose consumers by raising prices.
Some of the six-packs of fun-size candy bars have now become five-packs. That, too, is a form of inflation.
To some extent, pandemic-induced shortages are contributing to today’s high inflationary rate. A year or two of this will not be unbearable. But sustained high inflation can be frightening.
Oh, as for who won the Superman vs. Flash race? Turned out that issue was the first of a two-parter, so it took me decades to find out. But no spoilers here.
Arthur Vidro is one of the Eagle Times’ recurring financial columnists.
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