Caveat lector

…or “Reader, beware”. Today I’m reading a lengthy piece on why major appliances seem to break down so much (yes, really), which was posted on a popular buying guide website (rhymes with Spire Sputter). It’s an interesting article up until I read this to support a statement about appliances being “even cheaper than they were 50 years ago”:

In 1972, Sears sold a clothes washer for $220 and a dryer for $90, per 2022 research by AARP Magazine. That’s about $2,389 in 2025, adjusted for inflation. Today you can get a washer-and-dryer pair on sale from Sears for around $1,200.

And suddenly my BS meter started pinging. Okay, I’ve got a near-degree in economics and a head for rudimentary statistics. I also was 18 years old in 1972, so I’ve got a feel for that end of the timeline cited. But still….this just seems to be wrong on so many levels. Let’s assume the poorly worded second sentence means that the washer/dryer combo cost $310 (220+90) and in 2025 it would be $2,389. That’s almost exactly 7.7 times more. In 1973 (close enough) I took a fringe job at a hospital which paid $2.65/hour including the shift differential I got for working swing shift. There were a few down-on-their-luck old bachelors who managed to survive on that in scuzzy little apartments where they drank the cheapest beer they could find while eating the cheapest pizza you could buy at a grocery store. Doing the math, that’s $106 for a 40-hour week, and $5,512 for a 52-week year. And 7.7 times that is…$42,442.40!! I sincerely doubt that I could find a menial job which pays $20.41/hour.

Just to add some more perspective, during the almost four years I worked as a reporter from 1977-1981, I earned from $200/week to $250/week. I actually was looking at another job in the $10K range when I said, “this is nuts, I can barely live on this after four years? And now a daily wants to pay me the same thing?” After an indiscriminate raise to $250/week I agreed with the new publisher that $225 was more reasonable, so let’s use $11,700/year. That was the beginning of 1979. I think this is ridiculously conservative, but let’s halve that inflation factor to 3.85 and see what it gets us…whoa! $45,045? For a beginning reporter? I doubt it. Unfortunately I can’t compare this to weekly newspapers because that industry has gone through a complete upheaval over the past 20 years and I don’t think many exist in 2025.

I could rant on and on about any number of indicators you could look at. My only point here is to think about the numbers you see. You don’t have to be adept at mental arithmetic as I guess I am. (It’s what my family and friends say.) It’s nearly a no-brainer, though, to look at $220 and $2389 to see you’ve gone from a 3-digit number to a 4-digit number and they both start with 2. That suggests a factor of ten; add a zero to the $220 figure to see and yup, $2200 is getting pretty close to $2389. Then you might figure out like I did that the author means for you to add in the dryer, but by then you’re in the ballpark. You’ve only performed rudimentary arithmetic, nothing strenuous, and nothing you need to haul out your phone’s calculator app for. (Of course, if you really like the ever-listening digital assistant and haven’t turned off its spying, you could just say, “Hey [insert name], what’s two-thousand-eighty-nine divided by two-hundred-and-twenty?”)

Figures never lie, but liars figure, salespeople figure you won’t check, well-meaning but not overly ambitious reporters won’t, and they’re okay with that because they don’t think their readers will check either. And I’m leaning into that: I considered a different measure which actually supports what was reported—but I didn’t include it because it doesn’t support me!