Cool website.

It calculates the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar from 1774 to 2007. Just key one year, a specific amount of money, and then the year you want to know how much that same amount would be worth and it figures it out for you.

I keyed in how many dollars it would take in 2007 to have the same purchasing power that $1000 had in 1960 and the answer was: $7000.07

Check it out:

Chris,

The problem with such calculations is that they fail to include a factor for technology. Your Web site shows a change in standard of living, but quality of life is a different matter.

In 1960, for example, a video tape machine cost $50,000. Today you can buy a higher quality VCR for $20. Everything from computer power to light bulbs is on the same curve: today even poor people have cars, air conditioning and satellite TV.

But that's an economic point, and now all the dinosaurs here will screech about how much better life was back in 1956. And blame it on Bush.

You are not looking at the whole picture Vern. In spite of decades or improvements in technology and productivity, prices still managed to climb. Or to say it another way, the dollar continued to lose purchasing power. There is a finite limit to how long a currency can lose purchasing power, and I don't think we are very far away from that limit.

Bush is only the last president in a chain of presidents that promised more than government can deliver. Welfare and warfare ate at the capital base of this country and now there is no base to support the standard of living Americans have been used to.