A ledger of economic history
When Money Broke
How ordinary households survived economic crises — decoded line by line through their real budgets: period ledgers, receipts, and prices.
The Ledger
11 entries$177 a Month: The 1970s Pension Promise That Couldn't Keep Up
In 1973 the average American drawing a private company pension received about $177 a month. Six years later that same group was drawing about $220. The companies…
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How 1970s Households Fought 12% Inflation — And Came Up $125 Short
In 1974 the Consumer Price Index rose about 11 percent, and by December the twelve-month rate had reached 12.3 percent - the sharpest inflation the United States…
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1971: The Decision That Broke the American Household Budget
In 1971 the median American household earned about $9,030 a year and the median new house sold for about $25,200. That is two and three-quarter years of a single…
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Whip Inflation Now: The 1974 Plan to Beat 12% Inflation with a Button
In the fall of 1974, the White House ordered buttons. Some twelve million of them went into production, small and round and red on white, stamped with one…
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1973: The Week America Boycotted Meat to Fight Inflation
In two years the price of a pound of ground beef in America rose by almost half, from around 60 cents in 1971 to nearly 90 by the spring of 1973. So in the first…
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The 1974 Grocery Ledger: What Food Cost the Year Sugar Quadrupled
In 1974, one American household kept a grocery ledger, and on the eleventh line a single word appears twice. Sugar. In February: five pounds, 69 cents. On the same…
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The 18% Mortgage: How 1970s Families Bought a Home Anyway
In October 1981, the average interest rate on a new 30-year mortgage in the United States reached about 18 percent — 18.63 percent at the peak, the highest reading…
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The 1970s Cost of Living, Measured in Hours — Not Dollars
Was the 1970s cost of living really cheaper than today? It depends entirely on the ruler you use. Measured in dollars, 1970s prices look like a bargain:…
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Why Nixon Ended the Gold Standard — What It Did to Your Savings 1971
A hundred dollars set aside in a passbook savings account in 1971 would buy about fifty dollars of the same groceries by 1980. Not stolen. Not spent. Cut roughly in…
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What Caused the 1970s Stagflation Crisis? (And Could It Happen Again?)
For a whole generation, economists taught one iron rule: an economy could have high inflation or high unemployment, but never both at once. Then came 1974, and both…
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The Complete Story of the 1970s Inflation Crisis — Told Through One Family's Budget Ledger
In 1972, a gallon of gasoline cost about 36 cents. By 1980 that same gallon cost about $1.22 — more than triple the money in eight years. Nothing about the gasoline…
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