Business: The Consumer: Behind the Nine Ball

INFLATION is no laughing matter, but the prices of so many products have risen in 1969 that some Pittsburgh newspapermen have concocted a new game based on inflationary psychology. According to them, it now takes three to tango, four’s a crowd, and that favorite song of a few years back has become Four Coins in a Fountain. Similarly, the number 14 is bad luck, and so is four on a match. A stitch in time saves ten, cats have ten lives, two birds in the hand are worth three in the bush, a bluffer is a fiveflusher, and that soft drink should really be called Eight-Up. Life, these days, begins at 41, girls are Sweet 17 and never been kissed, and inescapably, the American consumer is behind the nine ball.

The pastime is a wry reaction to a far more serious numbers game. As fast as incomes rose, the price of necessities seemed to rise even more steeply in 1969, and few wage-earners felt that they were better off than when the year began. An inflation sampler:

FOOD. The Department of Labor food-price index jumped 5% from January to October. In Pittsburgh, the price of eggs almost doubled overnight from 43¢ to 83¢ per dozen. The price of pork chops in Boston increased from 99¢ to $1.39. One shopper in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Mrs. Richard Davis, protested: “This can of soup had four prices on it when I bought it.” The final price was 11¢ more than the first. The nickel Hershey bar vanished, and practically nobody could find a 10¢ cup of coffee.

HOUSING. The average cost of a home reached $25,900 compared with $24,200 a year ago. In San Francisco, for example, the price of a home climbed 12% in twelve months. One survey of the Bay area disclosed that there was enough low-cost housing to provide shelter for all the area’s poor—but the comparatively well—off occupants refused to move out. Taxes took an ever deeper bite. In San Francisco, for example, property taxes jumped from $102.30 per $1,000 valuation to $122.90.

MANUFACTURED GOODS. Appliances cost more across the U.S. The price of a new car rose by an average $107. Clothes were more expensive almost everywhere, and rose an average 10% in Boston. Men’s neckties commonly went up by 50¢ or $1—or more.

MEDICAL CARE AND PHARMACEUTICALS. In the year’s first ten months, the price of medical care—doctors’ bills, hospital services and drugs—rose by 5%. In Boston, a hospital bed could cost $85 a day, $10 more than last year, and the price of dental care advanced from $6 or $7 per filling a year ago to $9 to $10 today. Even aspirins were up, from 89¢ to 98¢ per 100 tablets. A mouthwash named Binaca cost 29¢ when it was introduced by a Swiss company five years ago; it has since been taken over by a U.S. firm—and now sells for 79¢ in some places.

ENTERTAINMENT. Movies were more expensive, up 25¢ per ticket in Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall. The cost of watching a Pittsburgh Steelers home game rose from $6 to $7—plus a 15¢ surcharge to help pay for a now abuilding stadium, whose estimated price increased from $32 million last spring to $35 million at present. In the taverns of the steel city, the 15¢ beer could be found no more; it now costs 20¢.