Comments

Wow! I guess I won't be buying one on retirement income. When I first got interested in flying new c-172s were selling for a base price of about $21,000 (Not a typo!) plus avionics, averaging about $32K. Just out of reach for a newly-hired, country schoolteacher, but affordable to most working Americans. The old, red 80/87 avgas and the new, blue 100LL avgas were going for 42 cents a gallon, too. Flight schools and flying clubs would buy a new, IFR-equipped 172, and keep it for an average of 5,000 airframe hours, so factoring in the costs of amortization, maintenance, fuel, insurance, hangaring, and all the other costs, a typical rental price was $17.00/hour, wet, and they were probably just breaking even or even losing a bit. By comparison, you could drive home in a new Chevrolet for less than $3,000, and your nice, new house with a garage for your new Chevrolet set you back about $36,000. If you stopped off at the grocery store on the way home from the airport, you probably picked up a week's worth of food for a family of four, and paid around $35. So what happened? Politicians, reluctant to admit their addiction to spending sprees (to buy votes), paid for their extravagance by printing more currency, with nothing but hot air to back it. The resulting devaluation has reduced the buying power of the 2010 US Dollar to about 10 cents by 1970 standards. That is roughly 1000% inflation over a period of 40 years, which works out to an average inflation rate of 5.9% annually. How can a piddling 5.9% add up to 1000%? Do the math: 1.059^40 = 10.02 or 1002%. Wages have also gone up, but far more slowly. In 1970, the minimum wage was $1.60, compared to the 2010 minimum of $7.25 per hour. That works out to a 453% increase, which is less than half of the inflation rate. It is literally two steps forward and one step back. To get back on topic, if you took a minimum wage job in 1970 to buy a new Skyhawk, and used all the proceeds (no taxes or deductions) you would have had to work 20,000 hours (1o years full-time) to pay for it. In 2012, you would have to flip those burgers for 42,714 hours which is over 21 years of full-time burger-flipping before you could climb aboard and roll down the runway. Flying is a rich man's enterprise. If government-caused inflation continues to erode the value of the US Dollar, activities like eating may soon become the exclusive domain of the wealthy, too. Please don't shoot the messenger...