The Klondike bar is 100 years old, and CNN is here to misinform us about it:
You don't hear about many products getting cheaper over time, but technically at least, people can pay less for a Klondike bar today than they did 100 years ago. When it first came out, in 1922, the Klondike bar cost just 10 cents, the equivalent of $1.75 in 2022 dollars. A six-pack of the original bars costs about $4 today — or 67 cents each.
Oh stop it. Practically everything has gotten cheaper over the past century. And the Klondike bar isn't "technically" cheaper, it's absolutely, concretely, totally for real cheaper. In 1922, the average worker's salary could buy 15,000 Klondike bars a year. Today, the average worker can buy 80,000 Klondike bars per year. That's progress, my friends.
Well, practically everything manufactured gets cheaper. Many services don’t, which is why the service sector has grown as a proportion of the economy. Increased productivity, almost all of which is from technological development, reduces the labor-cost content of manufactured goods. Advances in materials science and computer-aided engineering reduce materials costs, for example, easier-to-shape engineering plastics replacing metals. Improving productivity has been more challenging in many service industries (see ‘Baumol’s cost disease’).
Also why repair shops are almost non-existent.
"Practically everything" of course means mostly non-essential consumer goods made cheaper by the magic of modern manufacturing, distribution, economy of scale, and exploitation of cheap overseas labor.
Important stuff like rent and housing, healthcare, education and utilities are of course trending in the opposite direction.
Little irritates me more than conservative boomers decrying that supposedly POOR people are buying CEL PHONES and BIG SCREEN TVs, OH MY GOD. Of course they're conveniently forgetting that when they were young, something like a Magnavox tube television or a refrigerator could easily cost several month's salary, whereas today you can buy a celphone or flatscreen TV for less than a part-time paycheck. Meanwhile they were spending a fraction of their income on rent and healthcare and little or no student loans while today someone with a minimum wage job can't even begin to cover those things.
You realize you're walking right in to that trap, right?
If there is one lesson I wish liberals, progressives and anyone else who wants a non-authoritarian US would learn is:
Do not Feed The Trolls
If I had a Klondike bar for every argument wasted on some smirking jackass, I wouldn't have to work for the next several years. Or something.
Here’s some data, unfortunately only from 1984 to 2014: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/where_does_all_the_money_go.pdf
I wonder how different this would look if incomes had kept pace with productivity.
But what about Eskimo Pies?
Now called an Edy's Pie,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edy%27s_Pie
Because that's an obviously better name.
'Eskimo' was (uncertain) an Algonquin word meaning 'enemy' applied to their northern foes, and adopted by the Europeans.
Today they are called Inuit. The Edmonton Eskimoos football team has been changed to Edmonton Elks. Think of it as the equivalent of the name change by the formed Washington Redskins.
Enemy Pies does sound pretty dismal.
Uh totally NOT the equivalent because the owners of the Edmonton CFL franchise are obviously more function and less of a cheapskate than the owner of the Washington, DC area NFL franchise. Way better replacement name.
Well, when you put it like that . . .
A six-pack of Klondike bars is $3.74 at Walmart, so even more!
Do you have to shave an eyebrow to get that price?
15% off if you come in with one shaved eyebrow would be a hilarious promotion!
I want to know if it's the same size, or if like a "pint" of ice cream it's gotten smaller to keep the price comparable.
Uhh, wha? A pint is a US weight and measure and cannot shrink.
But anything can be colloquially a "pint." or anything else, meaning "This is the size we mean when we say 'pint,' even though we know it doesn't meet the US Weights and Measures standard."
Take two-by-fours, for example. Measured one lately?
I dunno. Firms reduce quantities, sure, but do they actually go ahead and literally false advertise quantities?
Seems unlikely.
If you ever buy a projector, look at the lumens rating, which tells the light output. Projector manufacturers lie all the time. The more reputable manufacturers will lie about 20%. But there are many on Amazon who will lie by 100x.
two-by-fours were never two inches by four inches as delivered to the customer, as they were two inches by four inches as cut by the mill *before being dried and planed*.
And no, a company can't advertise something as being a 2-liter bottle of soda or a gallon of milk or a pint of ice cream even though it's smaller by saying "well, we meant the colloquial sense of some other size that doesn't meet the US Weights and Measures standard." That's called false advertising, and is illegal under a whole variety of laws, not least the federal Lanham Act.
You may be able to get away with labeling a toy or something weighing a couple pounds as being "a TON of fun!", but if you tried selling somebody a "ton" of bricks weighing 500 pounds, saying "Oh, I meant the colloquial sense of it being a large amount of bricks, not a specific weight" isn't a viable defense.
This is the kind of snark that keeps me coming banks. And Monty's references.
I'm reminded of "Write on brothers, write on, with the 19 cent Write Bros. Pen" from 50 years ago* ... they can now be had for less (nominally) than that.
*I guess I'm not surprised that the TV commercial (featuring Johnny Brown, who died a few months ago) can be found on YouTube.
If I ate 80,000 Klondike bars, I would have the behind the size of Texas.
Speaking of Texas, the enlighten Texas AG stated that with respect to Supreme Court of Gilead potentially reviewing Lawrence vs Texas, Paxton stated that he would be comfortable supporting a law outlawing intimate same-sex relationships. This is going to be a wonderful decade or two coming up.
+1
And I'd be happy to hear that those legal cases against Paxton finally resulted in removing him from office.
Karma would suggest that Paxton deserves to have some really bad thing happen to him. If he is removed though, it is likely that Abbott would simply appoint another major league shit head in his place. I would love to see Beto win in November, but it is Texas, and it didn't really help that Beto went all in on confiscating all the assault rifles during the 2020 primary.
I hope that all those Texan fathers, boyfriends and husbands will enjoy paying up to send their daughters, girlfriends or wives to Mexico or CA for abortions. Again, the drug cartels will likely step up providing bootleg abortion meds in those Red states.
My family & I know that there are
One space over. Accidentally hit the "send" arrow - but while my family & I know that there are probably enough bad Texans to populate hell, I thought that there couldn't be that many evil ones in the AG pipeline! The likelihood of contaminated or fake pills is a threat, too. But wait! Aren't those Texans deciding for real this time? Might wind up as Mexicans this time.
Missed the obvious "speaking of Texas and behinds".
I have added "Klondike bars" to my grocery list, and thanks a lot.
What do you do for your Klondike Bars? …
They also make 'em cheaper than they used to. The quality of ice cream used to be better and the chocolate coating used to be a lot thicker.
Today's Klondike bars are made of:
Nonfat Milk, Sugar, Coconut Oil, Corn Syrup, Cream, Corn Syrup Solids, Whey, Chocolate Liquor Processed With Alkali, Milk, Soybean Oil, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Mono And Diglycerides, Locust Bean Gum, Guar Gum, Natural And Artificial Flavor, Soy Lecithin, Carrageenan, Salt, Caramel Color, Vitamin A Palmitate
How many of those do you think were in the original bar? (Coconut oil, really?) How many do you think are in there today because they're cheaper? They may be cheaper today, but they're also trash today.
"They may be cheaper today, but they're also trash today."
Mass-market ice cream candy was ALWAYS trash. And while there are probably more corn syrups and coconut oils in today's Klondike bars, there are probably also fewer rats and bits of missing union organizer than in the 1920s vintage product, so pick your poison, I suppose.
"trash today"
Yes, everything tasted better, was bigger, cost less, was made from much finer ingredients, etc back when you were young.
When it first came out in 1922, could one buy Klondike bars in six-packs? I would think the correct comparison would be with the price of an individual bar today…
I would think the correct comparison would be with the price of an individual bar today…
Which Kevin provides: a buck seventy-five vs. sixty-seven cents. So the real price per bar has more than doubled. And wages, of course, have far more than doubled.
Yes, Klondike bars are no longer made individually by hand, they have been made for a long by what are essentially robots (or anyway the robots are better than they were in 1922). This reduced cost and freed up the capital and workers to make other new stuff (you can only eat so many Klondike bars). This is what has been going on since the start of the industrial revolution, and having more sophisticated robots will not itself change things. This increase in automation has not reduced employment. The employment rate is actually much higher now than in 1922 and formal unemployment has not gone up. What has changed since about 1970 is the way that workers have not been getting an equal share of the productivity increase compared to capitalists and managers, and this is largely a result of political changes.
Good summary. Completing the virtuous cycle, the lower prices of manufactured goods (in terms of minutes worked) means people have more money to buy video games and smartphone apps, which didn’t even exist when Klondike bars were introduced. We can purchase newly-invented nice things because the old nice things don’t take as large a percentage of our income as they did before.
The question remains, though -- what wouldn't you do for a Klondike Bar?
(Still my favorite Quizmaster Trivia team name, even if Miltown Junks had the local brownie points.)