I was watching a video about the Ruger 10/22 rifle and the price was mentioned, and how it was priced now, as well as what people have paid for it. That got my wheel turning, and I thought I would do some calculations.

Using the current 10/22-RB model, which I understand is the closest to the original (although no expert) and working backwards from today with the official US inflation data (not the Cost of Living Index) we get some interesting numbers.

Working backwards
2009 $269
2004 $234.68
1994 $184.12
1984 $129.08
1974 $61.25
1964 $38.51

Working forward (using the original MSRP)
1964 $54.50
1974 $86.67
1984 $182.99
1994 $260.55
2004 $332.10
2009 $373.59

That’s a 39% more than you’d pay now! Or you could look at it as paying 28% less than you might expect.

That’s very interesting, however official inflation data is seldom realistic (in my opinion). That’s probably because it comes from governments with a vested interest in making it seem lower than it really is. So on to something more realistic.

In 1964 50% of American households had an income of $6,957 or greater (median*), a 10/22 was 0.78% of that.
In 2008 the median household income was $52,163, and currently a a 10/22-RB is $269 or 0.51%

Thus (by my calculations,) it’s now 35% more affordable than when it was new.

If you wanted to do a better comparison of what the actual economic experience would be like, comparing CLI adjusted percentage of disposable income in the target demographic would probably be better, but I just don’t have the data.

* I’m going to make another simple post explaining why I use median incomes when I do this sort of thing rather than mean incomes.

As a side note, I’ve also switched to using a brush to apply my shaving cream, I tried shaving soap with it but it was a lot of work and the results weren’t great. So now I spray foam into the brush and work it in. This has two advantages, one the brush is excellent at helping the little hairs to stand up in the foam, rather than be smoothed down by the hand, and two it means I don’t have to get shaving cream on my hands.

I’ve also tried a number of foams, gels, soaps and creams and have found Barbasol’s Beard Buster is an excellent product at half the price of some of the others. Although I’ve not been able to find a quality English soap to try, just the cheap $3/bar type. I have had the “freshly stropped straight razor with expensive soap preformed by a barber” shave before, and it’s spectacular. However that route is time consuming and expensive.

If you know me well you may say “But Noah, you’re not a well shaved man, and you have red bumps and pimple!”, and that’s true, but you should see what happened before I got this under control, now I get maybe 4 ingrown hairs when I shave, I used to get 50 or more when using an electric razor and when just using a 5 blade razor with foam I’d get 10 or so.

No we need to fight it like we fought the World Wars because of what it will do for us. That kind of human effort results in new technologies, new ideas, improvements in all areas of life. No the wars were bad, don’t get me wrong; but look at all of the fantastic technology that came from them and what they did for the human spirit.

“War bad, passionate effort good.”

So what if all of our efforts don’t change the climate? Can you really argue that it’s going to hurt for us to “green up”?

I want hydrogen powered electric cars that don’t need major service.

I want homes that only require a fraction of the energy to maintain a temperature and are safer. Fiberglass insulation has as much to do with not burning to the ground as it does with keeping you warm, think of what we might develop in the future! I’m sure glad we aren’t filling our walls with pop-corn anymore (no really, people used to do that).

I want a replacement for concrete that doesn’t require nearly as much energy to produce. Not so much because of the use of the energy is bad in and of itself, but because it would be cheaper, how do I know it would be cheaper? Because even if it was more energy efficient it wouldn’t catch on if it wasn’t cheaper. That, and because energy is expensive. The same way that stone went out when fired bricks came in and fired bricks went out when cement blocks came in. Better, safer more efficient homes for more people.

I want there to be oil left in 2108 so my grand children can have quality plastics and lubricants and “just in-case” they need it.

I want energy efficient bio-degradable cellphones and computers, not because I want to use less energy but because less energy means lower EMR and less EMR means less cancer, and biodegradability means I don’t have to pay someone to handle it’s toxic carcass.

We need to pursue this “green thing” because it’ll make our lives better, not because it’ll make it worse if we don’t, loafing around as a people will make our lives a lot worse.