If you had a dime in 1900, you could buy a 1-ounce Hershey chocolate bar and a 6.5-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola. It sounds like those were happy days indeed. That is until you look at wages, which were around 14 cents an hour for blue-collar workers.

At Walmart today, a 1.55-ounce Hershey bar costs $1.17 and a 1.25-liter bottle (42.27 ounces) of Coke is $1.52. Blue-collar workers earn closer to $36.15 an hour in compensation.

We buy things with money but pay for them with our time. Money prices are expressed in dollars and cents, while time prices are expressed in hours and minutes. A time price is simply the money price divided by hourly income.

In 1900, it took more than 21.4 minutes to earn an ounce of chocolate and 3.3 minutes for an ounce of Coca-Cola. By 2023, the chocolate time price had fallen to 1.25 minutes, and sodas were down to 0.06 minutes (3.58 seconds).

Chocolate cost fell 94.2 percent while cola cost fell 98.2 percent. For the time required to earn 1 ounce of chocolate in 1900, you get 17.1 ounces today, and for the time required to earn 1 ounce of Coca-Cola in 1900, you get 55.2 ounces today. Chocolate is 1,611 percent more abundant while cola is 5,425 percent more abundant.

Things can get more expensive and more affordable at the same time. This is why you must always compare prices to wages to see the true price, which is how much time things cost you.

This article was published at Gale Winds on 3/19/2024.