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Message:: [QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 4554514, member: 57463"]Old guys remember the old days. They just forget what it was really like. First, back in 1968 what kind of computer did you use to log in to your favorite coin chat board? Were you getting your Internet from your TV company or was it TV from your ISP? What was Disney charging compared to Time-Warner? Or were you just getting Time magazine once a week and watching Surfside Six, Maverick, and other Warner Brothers shows when they came on once a week? Actually, while you can cherrypick your selections, just about everything in the 1968 Red Book is either (a) exactly the same or (b) cheaper in terms of opportunity cost. Standard of living things you give up to buy the coin, like this for $251 right now, measure your opportunity cost. [ATTACH=full]1127713[/ATTACH] In the summer of 1966, I was a high school kid on my first summer job in a hospital laboratory for which this would have been science fiction. Well, OK, while the Covid recession has yet to be tallied, just before it hit, grocery stores here in Austin were bumping up to $12 per hour. So, again, relatively speaking, it has not changed much. Some things never change. We have good times and bad, for some people and for others. The strong interest on this board for ancient coins brings us article after article about history that sounds just like today. Fel Temp Reparatio: the return of good times = Make America Great Again. Rome celebrates its 1000th year and then a plague kills thousands. Historical advocacy is the examination and understanding of what makes good times. It's complicated. Way more car today. Did your classic have cameras side and back, a built-in movie screen, surround sound stereo from satellite radio that plays what you programmed it play for you, 18 cup holders? Seat belts, even? (And did you actually wear them?) We killed the same number of people on the roads then and now, but we have twice the number of Americans. So automobile deaths are down 50% mostly because cars are safer - and we know how to drive them. Also, did your '68 Camaro come with a standard 100,000 mile warranty? I get the house argument. We owned a home that was built in 1932 and we now rent in one now that was built in 1982. Everything about the little Cape Cod was quality, the materials, the workmanship. This place is "contractor grade" junk. But, there was the Pete Seeger song "Little Boxes" actually written by Malvina Reynolds about Levittown and other middle class tract housing ghettoes that blossomed after World War Two and into which many old guys here were born. Still, this ticky-tacky house is more house than the equivalents from the 1950s. We have central air, for one thing and storm windows (with screens) for another. Watch an old movie sometime, like The Thin Man from 1940, and his father-in-law the doctor in the suburbs did not have screens on the windows. Well, in 2017, I was working with young officers in the Texas National Guard who were born into a time that has never known peace. Now, at least, we do not have conscription. As a libertarian, I approve, but, if you look at the sociology, what we have now is an isolated military that few Americans actually know. My dad was drafted for Korea. His older brothers were drafted for WWII. So, when Vietnam happened that generation included many who had fought and were therefore against the involvement in Vietnam. Today's "Forever War" is far away and happening to other people. Current Afghan-Iraq Casualties here: <a href="http://icasualties.org/App/AfghanFatalities" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://icasualties.org/App/AfghanFatalities" rel="nofollow">http://icasualties.org/App/AfghanFatalities</a>[/QUOTE]

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