Illustration: Irene Suosalo for Bloomberg
How to Think About the Price of Food
According to consumer price index calculators, a beer that cost 20 cents in 1913 should cost $6.40 now. But such calculations ignore the changing value of money.
On a recent Friday evening, I paid more than $10 for a Bud Light for the first time in my life. The venue was nothing special — one of several gay bars squeezed into narrow spaces in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, not a place I’d expect beer-flavored water to cost $12 with tax and tip.
You can tell yourself not to get hung up on such things. A cynic, Oscar Wilde said, “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” The value of that extravagant beer was the first of a few enjoyable hours with lovely friends. We soon left that bar (and some very loud drag queens) for a chiller, reliably cheaper place a block away. By that point, I didn’t even notice how much the beers cost.