Modern Vespa

As the leader of a Scooter Club, I get alot of people asking me for help with their Scooters. Be it Tune-ups, Tire Changes or Upgrades
& the most common problem is... "It's too expensive" or "my shop wants too much money to do it".

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but...

EVERYTHING IS EXPENSIVE! In case any of you are either so rich that you have not noticed or you are living under a rock...

THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING HAS GONE UP. Please, please discard your 20th century notions about how much things should cost.

This is not my opinon either, it is the facts.

Please, please do not respond with Politics, because that is not the point here. The point is that soooo many people are stuck in the past. They also seem to think that because a Scooter is smaller than a motorcycle, it should cost less. It does not.

Get with the program, buy a Calendar and get used to the new normal, because it costs more than it did 25 years ago.

My rant is over, Carry On...

MV is still free though.

The price of hosting has even gone down a little bit over the years.

2004 GT 200 Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price: $4899.00 or $8261.00 after being run through an inflation calculator.

2024 GTS 300 MSRP: $7799.00

Calculated after approximately 3.862 minutes on Google, but inneresting nonetheless.

Damn right!

Oh, sorry, I'll take this back. I continued reading after the tittle.

I go by the price of beer...

I'm old enough to be caught in that "there's no way I'll pay that much" mindset, and I'll say I think that's been good for me. In the last ten years I've developed significant skill sets that I didn't have when I was younger, simply because I was not willing to pay inflationary prices for some services. Aside from the money I've saved, I've found satisfaction I didn't expect in maintaining my cars and motorcycles, and this winter finishing the work on the old Vespa I bought in January. I've learned some carpentry, plumbing and basic electrical work to renovate my home at significant savings. At the same time, I've been willing to acknowledge my limits, both in terms of my skills and the risks I'm willing to take to save a buck. Frame and wire the new rooms in my basement? Sure, but I still paid an electrician to inspect my work and attach it to the main board, just in case I'd made a mistake. New brakes on the bikes, easy. Valve clearance check, the shop can do that. All the money I save doing the routine and basic stuff myself makes the sting of today's prices hurt less when I do pay someone. And the satisfaction you get from hearing your guests say "Wow, I love the new rec room!" is much greater when you built it yourself.

Of course, that attitude doesn't help at all at the grocery store, because I really hate gardening.

I remember my dad, and a lot of other folks complaining when the price of gas went up to $1. Which, you know, when your LTD gets like 7 miles to the (leaded) gallon I can see why he felt that way.

Man, I must be old. My own father was a wonderful man. Generous with others, but…frugal.
He took my mother and me to DC to go to the Smithsonian and stay at a luxury hotel to watch the moon landing. So, July 69. I remember it was raining super hard before the sun came out. My old man pulls the VW into a gas station and sees that regular is FIFTY CENTS A GALLON! IIRC the local Phillips 66 charged 28 cents. "$&@! that!" says Dad. "I can make it back to PA."
That night we watched Neil and Buzz step off the LEM and onto the moon, incredulous.
Next day we're headed home and my Mom says "I saw it with my own two eyes and I still can't believe it" and Dad replies "Me either. Fifty cents a gallon!"

"$1 in 1969 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $8.51 today" according to CPI Inflation Calculator.

https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1969?amount=1

So that 50 cent gallon in 1969 is equivalent to a $4.25 gallon today.

Wow. Still trying to get my head around the fact that my $3/ hour wages in the early '70s would be $21/hour today. I remember hiring my kid to do some painting and wincing at whatever it was I paid them.

Well, when my dad was bitching about gas this coulda been 1978. $1 a gallon woulda equaled $4.79 today. But take the federal minimum wage into account - in '78 it was $2.65 an hour, adjusted to $12.69 in 2024. Pretty sure federal minimum wage right now is $7.25. Adjust that backwards to '78 and you get $1.51.Our federal minimum wage has diminished significantly by these standards.

I'm not so sure these "adjusted for inflation" tabulators account for the fact that our wages have not risen commensurately. I'm certain someone with a diploma will correct me, but this is what I'm thinking.

No, you're thinking correctly. Every study I've seen in the last decade says that the real wages of North American workers has dropped over the decades as wages failed to keep up with inflation. It's not just minimum wage earners either, it's pretty much all of us.

It's hard to see that on an individual basis. I know Darling Bride and I are both doing better now than we were 20 years ago, but we've also both been promoted several times, and she's changed jobs a few times to get the next step in her career. You really need to look at specific jobs to see it. The person who replaced Darling Bride in her last job got a starting salary 3% higher than Darling Bride got when she started. She had been in the job for almost 6 years, with inflation running at about 2% per year. In real numbers, her successor was making significantly less than she was.

There's only one appropriate response to "They charge too much for an oil change."

Do it yourself or stfu.


More complicated stuff? Well, that's another story. OP mentioned tune-ups though so I'm thinking about the basics.

IMO, you should either be able to perform a basic tune up yourself, or accept paying someone to do it for you.

People losing touch with how expensive things are is not a new phenomenon. I had a friend who was a bartender back in 1986. I was sitting at the bar one night when a little old lady (she was about the age I am today 😂) ordered a drink. She paid and then made a point to place a quarter ($0.25) on the bar and say "This is for you, sweetie." My friend graciously took the tip and thanked the woman. We both looked at each other and suppressed the laughter. Even in 1986 a $0.25 tip for a drink was way under the norm.

Ever since witnessing that exchange, I've made it a point to not lose track of the appropriate amount to tip. Not too difficult since it's typically a percentage of the total bill.

But yeah... Everything is a lot more expensive today than it was just a few years ago. Gas is back at $5.15/gal here in Reno, NV. Eating out is expensive. Labor is expensive. We eat out less and do as much for ourselves as we can. I was at the auto parts store today. 5qts of Mobile 1 oil and 3 oil filters cost me $95. Even doing your own oil changes is expensive, although a lot cheaper than paying someone to change it for me.

As others have pointed out prices have risen on everything, and it is hard to compare prices without compensating for inflation.

For some time now I have used the concept of "high school dollars." What I do is to discount the price of an item by the rate of inflation to what the price would have been when I was in high school. This puts the price-value balance into perspective as I was in high school when I developed the price-value concept.

It's my understanding that the cost of things is MEANT to increase over time, just at a more gradual pace. Once costs go up they never really come back down. Consider rent. DEflation is supposed to be an indicator of larger economic troubles that wind up resulting in labor market issues. The main problem is not that prices are going up, or that jobs are scarce, it's that wages across the lower and middle-class spectrum have not gone up enough to compensate. All the $ gets to the top percentile and more significantly, it just STAYS there. These are the same wealth distribution issues we had in the US in 1929. Need I say more?

This reminded me about when our Southern neighbour country, Estonia took Euros into use in 2004.

Before this, they had Estonian Kroons as the currency.

In 2004, 1 Euro was over 15 Kroons.

When I visited their capital city at the time, there were cafes that had made an easy correction to their price lists - they had kept the numbers, crossed Kroons over and drawn there Euros instead!

That's correct. The target inflation rate according to the US Fed is 2%.

Citation.

I am a master of bogos at Publix. Today I went to the Dollar Tree and spent $15 to fix a few problems around my house. I paid a Peruvian to guard my house for the month for $50. I'm good.

nope

nope

nope

I was born in '72, and to have a middle-class life both parents worked. A shift from the WWII vets coming home that could get a GI loan to open shop.

Now? The American dream is over. You can't buy a decent place unless you are solidly upper-middle. They give us our phones, TVs, all that shit, to placate us and keep us passive while huge conglomerates buy up half a neighborhood and rent it out.

There needs to be gov't intervention on housing. It's at a boiling point. I'm 51 and ok. My nephew, who just got married at 29, wants to buy a house now with a kid on the way. I weep for these kids.............

Preach. As soon as "they" know they can charge an amount for a service/item/etc., they are not going back. It's made me more of a recluse as far as going out to a place that has pool tables to have fun. After splitting some wings, 6 beers or so, and whatever makes my companion happy, I'm in over $100. Before tip. I'm all-in on the European model of baking the tip in the price of the item. That won't happen in the U.S., because companies lobby for it not to happen. They like minimum wage people busting their asses for tips that THEY have to pay a heavy tax hit on if declared. And things get shady with servers, hostesses, bar keeps...gotta tip them out, right?

This isn't a brag. I worked in a Charlotte nightclub as a barback (not bareback you pervs), and we all had a hustle. Worked it out with certain bartenders. I'd bring a case over the allotted, and I would put them in a bucket on ice at the end, behind the bar. She kept the $5 a beer(this was '96ish) and gave me $2. That's almost $50 a case. Plus I took out a bottle of Crown and Courvoisier every night. So, after working Friday and Saturday night for 5 hrs each night, I would bank $300 in tips and $200 straight pay. Each night. $500 in your pocket at 3am when we got off in downtown Charotte was not a good mix. Met some great people, though. Famous cats for the area. Nice sex workers. I always talked with anyone I played around with on those nights. Get their story, you know? 50% of the time I didn't even have sex, and just paid them to lay their head on my shoulder and watch TV and get high. Share some time. Relax. Most girls then didn't have pimps, but when they did they were usually squirrely guys or huffy women. It always pissed them off when I took my "date" to the closest pancake house and chilled the next morning. Bought a nice chicken sammy plate to go for them always.

That was just a small sample size of stuff I went through when I was puffing on that stem. The sunrise on those mornings either made me cry in joy or cry in pain. Either way, I cried.

And now, being 51, I'm losing people. My buddies that rolled with me during that time are dead. No prison. Just dead. Not bad people, just addicts. Yet, I am still here. Survivor guilt? Nope. I just miss them. It could have been so much better. All those times acting like idiots on a boat and buying Wendy's triple cheeseburgers on the way to the house. We had it all in our hands.

I truly hate that I emoted like this. If just 1 person gets something from this, I will be vindicated. Not for my actions, but for this diatribe.

nope

If major expenses—housing, transportation, health care and insurance ( all types)— were proportionally accounted for, official inflation figures would be far higher.

skids

"One must choose in life between boredom and suffering".

The government intervention idea will come to nothing. I worked in construction (plastering) for 47 years. I made more money by the hour back in 1991 than I did when I retired at the end of 2023. I was a sixth generation plasterer, but I did not want my son going into it even when he expressed an interest. So believe me, it isn't the wages that is driving the prices up and government sure as hell won't be able to control it anymore than it can control the price of gas. Every generation views the generation afterwards as having it easy and being spoiled. The newer generation thinks the same of the older generation. Either way is still comes down to how hard you want to work. I could not buy a house in my day as I could not get a loan. I had a decent job, was single but had no credit history. At the time the interest rate was 12% and it climbed to 18% within a year or two. So I bought some land and built my own. I lived in trailer on the property and spent the next 5 years building it nights and weekends. When I moved in and I had a bed, a dresser and a couple of bean bags chairs. Most of my friends at the time could not get a house either, but over time, most did when they got married and had 2 incomes. So some stuff hasn't changed. If you want it bad enough, are willing to work for it and accept something less than your perfect home, you can get it. I raised my kids to think this way and 2 out of the 4 own their own house and my third is buying soon. None of them were fancy but in good neighbor hoods. All needed work, but we all got together and fixed them up. Interest rates have risen, but anything under 8% is still great, better than in my day. From the way I see it, money was so cheap to borrow for so long, and at first you could get more house for the same monthly payment. Then when the money stayed cheap, the house prices rose to balance that out. Eventually that low interest rate went away and the prices stayed up. In high demand areas like where I live it takes a little longer to sell, but usually under a month.

Deep autobiographical dives in unexpected directions here. I mentioned my father's 1978 complaints about the economy but then framed it in current economic terms without giving you micro details about his passing a kidney stone. I probably COULD have used the passing of said stone as a metaphor for the pain experienced by the working classes at the hands of the 1%, but that just seemed kinda crass. I know there are contributors here from diverse walks of life, but I don't always understand the way people discuss these things.

Good ol' trickle down economics at work. Speaking of which, we haven't had a tax cut for the rich in a while, isn't it about time for another one?

I remember my mother buying gas for our '56 Dodge Coronet. She would hold a dollar bill out the window when the attendant came out and say "a dollar's worth of regular please." That was almost 5 gallons which was enough for her daily miles.

My first "real job" in 1964 was at the Chrysler Electrical Plant in Indianapolis. I was paid $2.83 an hour, including COL and shift premium. Blue Cross was about $5/wk. Union dues were deducted monthly.

I bought a new car @ $89.44 for 36 months, a 3 year old $10,500 house for $104/mo. and got married. Sears Roebuck was our choice for range, refrigerator, washer and dryer, all on Sears low payment plans. In those days, gas credit cards just showed up in the mail. Our new Hoover vacuum cleaner was $70, financed for a year through GE Credit. Groceries ran about $10/wk and we ate well.

I remember after a couple weeks of wedded bliss when my wife asked if we had any extra money and I said no but we will have some next week. Here 60 years later and that next week surplus still hasn't arrived.

nope

While it's true it may still be possible, I think it's a lot harder. When Darling Bride and I bought our home in 1990, we had a combined annual income of about $50,000, each of us in an entry level position, and our somewhat smaller than average but comfortable suburban home cost $200,000. That same home is now worth five times that (had it appraised last year as I'm nearing retirement and might sell it), but the entry level positions our children are finding pay less than two times what they paid us back in 1990. That's a huge increase in the chasm between incomes and housing costs, and I would say belies your argument that housing wasn't less expensive in prior decades. At least in my area, it was much less expensive as a proportion of income 35 years ago.

In your last two points we're in complete agreement. There will not be a quick answer on this, and we would need the political will to improve public education to make long term improvements to our social structures.

Sometimes it comes down to choices. I made a lot of choices after my kids were born. This was 1996. Two years in and I was living in a 1970 12x60 mobile home. I wanted better, of course, but it took the ATM declining my card for $10 in gas money two days before payday to make me take a hard look at what I needed vs what I wanted.

I consolidated my student loans and my car payment so I could pay them both off and traded the car I "wanted" for the car I "needed". I stopped paying for TV and adjusted a whole bunch of other expenses.

In 2004 my wife and I got married and bought our house. She made zilch on the sale of hers and my trailer went for $1k. We had no inherited wealth. Signing a 30 year mortgage was the scariest thing I have ever done.

In 2007 when things started to take a downturn, the company we both worked for gave us an option of a 10% pay cut or closing the doors. We all happily accepted the pay cut. Eight years later we still not made up for those losses.

In 2014, after 28 years, they eliminated my wife's position. She was a roving quality inspector, final auditor and level 1 x-ray technician. At the time she made just barely over $15/hr. I was making closer to $20/hr after 23 years as a CMM Programmer.

THIS ISN'T THAT LONG AGO, FOLKS.

My wife did not go back to work, and we made it work. In 2015 I took a new job that paid more and I'm doing better than I was at the old shop. Significantly.

The point is, we lived within our means. We didn't survive on oatmeal and government cheese, either. But we both enjoy cooking at home. We rarely ate out, drove old cars and paid extra on our mortgage to pay our house off after 17 years (and a couple of refinances). We put our money where it was most important. If we wanted to buy furniture or something we saved and paid cash. We didn't pay for tv. I've never had the latest phone (my current phone is an iPhone XR) and my best clothes have come from Goodwill. Nobody would know except I tell them.

Things are hard, but they've always been hard. Minimum wage is not a "living wage" and if you are trying to support a family of four at those wages you have done something wrong.

nope

Something else I rarely see mentioned is interest rates. Sure, prices may have been lower on many things in my parent's era, but this is what rates have done over the last 40 years.

We have been spoiled by historically low rates for many years. Even my student loans were 8%.

Along the same vein as the first post in this thread, I spent an hour trying to convince my youngest that, "No, you are not wasting your life". The kid is 25 and has a solid job, the first rung on a career ladder. He's more than 30 years younger than the people he works with, and they love to regale him with stories about the amazing things they had already accomplished "when I was your age".

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you find yourself starting a story with "When I was your age" you should remember that your opening line means you grew up in a different time, and give some thought to what you're going to accomplish by telling the story.

Sorry for the tangent. Maybe this belonged in the what's pissing me off thread. It seems to fit here though, since this started with a conversation about people who don't realize times have changed.

There was a movie - a Woody Allen movie - called "Midnight in Paris". Fantastic film. Translation : I liked it a lot. Apparently a lot of other people did, too.

It had to do with people wanting for a golden age, and the lesson was there really is no golden age. Enjoy the age you live in and don't compare it to the past.

Worth a watch.

It's funny, I grew up in the age of bicycles and records, saw the advent of the digital age and the internet and all that good stuff. But I try very hard not to wear it as a badge of honor. There were things then that I think were advantages, but there are also things now that are awesome. For instance, I played saxophone all through school. I now own a Roland MIDI saxophone that I can use to play pipe organ through GarageBand. That is super cool. Not better, not worse. Just amazing.

There's so much generational competition ... it doesn't make sense. I grew up at the end of the Cold War, terrified of Russians and nuclear bombs and could have spent all my time wishing it was the '50s, but it wasn't. Do I get nostalgic when I hear Thompson Twins on the radio? Hell yeah. But there's a lot of good music now, too. Always has been. It's just different.

Everyone likes to compartmentalize things into decades when it's really just stream of time. Like where you are. You only get one today and tomorrow isn't guaranteed.

Thanx for all the understanding posts. Me, personally, I do not make a lot of money and I live in a very poor area (Brentwood) on NY's wealthy Long Island. We have high crime, homeless and all the trimmings of a depressed neighboorhood.It was not always this way for me, but the years and experiences have made me very keen to be able to deal with the subjects of inflation, poverty and economics. It was a very lucky & compicated thing for me to even buy my Vespa. I was hoping for a cross section of responces from a cross section of people. That is why I posted my rant here. Thank you again for reading!