Town Hall Meeting
Wednesday, May 15th at 7PM
Holiday Inn Express
Town Center, El Dorado Hills
“How you can make a difference in the 2014 elections”.
Norman Gonzales, Community Outreach Director for Tom McClintock, will speak on Wednesday, May 15th at 7PM at the Holiday Inn Express in El Dorado Hills.
Local elections matter in the United States. We are inundated by the news each day about every move made by politicians in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. However, many of the decisions local politicians make have a more immediate impact on our lives.
Whether it’s the latest increase in water rates or land use near our homes we are more likely to feel the effects faster and with greater intensity than much of the legislation debated in Washington, D. C. or Sacramento. Politicians that make these local decisions often move on to state and federal political positions. Local politics is an effective place to focus our energies to change the direction of our country.
Norm will explain how “we the people” can greatly impact our government through local political activism. There are programs in neighboring counties that are working well. We can adapt these programs to make productive changes in El Dorado County.
As the Community Outreach Director for Congressman Tom McClintock Norm oversees outreach activities. He created and manages the Congressman’s Internship and Service Academy Nomination programs.
Norm holds a Degree in Government from California State University, Sacramento. During his time at CSUS, he was Vice-Chairman of the College Republicans Club. As Vice-Chairman of that group he organized on campus speaking appearances including the high profile appearance of Ambassador Alan Keyes, during his presidential bid. Dr. Keyes is an economist that strongly agrees with our conservative principles.
Sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots of El Dorado Hills.









Were the 1950s really the good old days?
The following commentary by Professor Donald Boudreaux dramatically demonstrates the benefits of globalization and the dynamics of the US economy. These are the things that both Democrats and most Republican politicians want to shackle in the name of fairness and economic ignorance.
The Future: Back to the Past
Posted: 26 Nov 2012 04:50 PM PST
To be precise, back to 1956.
Lately, I’ve encountered with unusual frequency claims that the 1950s were a glorious economic time for America’s middle-class – a time so glorious, what with strong labor unions and high (above 90%!) marginal income-tax rates and all, that we middle-class Americans of today should look back with longing and envy on those marvelous years of six decades ago.
So on Saturday I bought on eBay this Fall/Winter 1956 Sears catalog. I spent an extra $8-and-change to have it shipped to me overnight – a service that I could not have purchased in 1956. My catalog arrived on my doorstep today. Â I’m eager to explore it and to report my findings with some thoroughness.
But to give you a taste now, below is a sample of what I plan to do.
Having on hand information on the nominal average hourly earnings of non-supervisory non-farm private production workers in the U.S. in 2012 – that figure being $19.79 (as of October 2012) – I searched for the same earnings figure for 1956. Thus far I’ve had no luck finding that number. (Please feel free, I beg of you, to help me find this figure, if you so desire.) So, for 1956 I instead use average hourly manufacturing earnings of production workers, as reported in Table 1 here. That figure is $1.89.
This nominal wage figure for 1956 isn’t exactly comparable to the nominal wage figure that I use for 2012, but it’s close enough, at least for this first-pass analysis. If the claim of many “Progressives” is true that manufacturing is the most princely sort of work that middle-class Americans can do, then presumably this figure of $1.89 is higher than the hourly earnings of all private, non-farm non-supervisory workers in 1956. Anyway….
So let’s ask: how long did a typical American worker have to toil in 1956 to buy a particular sort of good compared to how long a similarly typical American worker today must toil to buy that same (or similar) sort of good? Here are four familiar items: refrigerator-freezers; kitchen ranges; televisions; and automatic washers.
Refrigerator-freezers
Sears’s lowest-priced no-frost refrigerator-freezer in 1956 had 9.6 cubic feet, in total, of space. It sold for $219.95 (in 1956-dollar prices). (You can find a lovely black-and-white photograph of this mid-’50s fridge on page 1036 of the 1956 Sears catalog.) Home Depot today sells a 10 cubic-foot no-frost refrigerator-freezer for $298.00 (in 2012-dollar prices). (You can find it in color on line here.)
Therefore, the typical American worker in 1956 had to work a total of 219.95/1.89 hours to buy that 9.6 cubic-foot fridge – or a total of 116 hours. (I round to the nearest whole number.) Today, to buy a similar no-frost refrigerator-freezer, the typical American worker must work a total of 298.00/19.79 hours – or 15 hours. That is, to buy basic household refrigeration and freezing, today’s worker must spend only 13 percent of the time that his counterpart in 1956 had to spend.
Kitchen ranges
Sears’s lowest-priced 30″ four-burner electric range, with bottom oven, was priced, in 1956, at $129.95. (You can find this range on page 1049 of the 1956 Sears catalog.) Home Depot sells a 30″ four-burner electric range, with bottom oven, today for $348.00.
The typical American manufacturing worker in 1956, therefore, had to work 129.95/1.89 – or 69 hours – to buy an ordinary kitchen range. His or her counterpart today must work 348.00/19.79 – or 18 – hours to buy the same sized ordinary range.
Television sets
Sears’s lowest-priced television in 1956 was a black-and-white (of course) 17″ model. (You can find it on page 1018 of the 1956 catalog.) That t.v. set was priced at $114.95. Sears today sells no 17″ t.v. sets. The closest set I could find at Sears was this 19″ color (of course) model, which is priced at $194.00.
The typical American manufacturing worker in 1956, therefore, had to work 114.95/1.89 – or 61 hours – to buy this tiny black-and-white (with no remote!) television set. His or her counterpart today must work 194.00/19.79 – or 10 – hours to buy a slightly larger, high-def, color (with remote!) television set.
Automatic Washing Machines
Sears’s lowest-priced automatic washer – it could handle loads up to a maximum of 8 lbs. – sold in 1956 for $149.95. (You can find it on page 1029 of Sears’s 1956 catalog.) Today, Sears’s lowest-priced washer sells for $299.99. (It’s got 3.4 cubic feet of wash-bin space; I can’t find a maximum “pound-load” for it. Presumably, this 2012 washer isn’t significantly smaller than – and might well be significantly larger than – the low-priced 1956 model.)
The typical American manufacturing worker in 1956, therefore, had to work 149.95/1.89 – or 79 hours – to buy an ‘inexpensive’ new washing machine. His or her counterpart today must work 299.99/19.79 – or 15 – hours to buy an inexpensive new washing machine.
(Bonus point: Because the lowest marginal personal-income-tax rate imposed by Uncle Sam in the 1950s was significantly higher than it is today, hourly middle-class earnings today go even farther, for individual earners, than they did six decades ago.)
In the above I don’t adjust for quality – yet it is certainly true what they say: “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.” They make ‘em better. So the real-price reductions for these above four items are even larger than indicated above.
….
In follow-up posts I’ll go into more detail, using my lovely Fall/Winter 1956 Sears catalog, to gain further insight to how middle-class Americans’ economic fortunes today compare to what those fortunes were in 1956. I am well-aware that no such ‘catalog’ analysis covers all fronts or can possibly tell a complete picture. Yet I also firmly believe that such analysis does convey very useful information.
Professor Donald Boudreaux
George Mason University