What Did Things Cost in 1963?
In the United States in 1963, the average cost of a new home was $19,300. A gallon of milk cost $0.49, and a gallon of gasoline was only $0.30. The tuition to attend one year of classes at the University of Texas as a resident was only $100.00.
In 1963, the federal minimum wage was $1.25 per hour, compared to a 2014 federal minimum wage of $7.25. Unemployment was at 5.5 percent, and prices were increasing at a rate of 1.7 percent. The cost to mail a letter increased from $0.04 to $0.05 on Jan. 7, 1963. The consumer price index for 1963 was 30.6. At the beginning of 2014, the consumer price index was 236.2. In 1963, John F. Kennedy was the President of the United States until his assassination on November 22nd, at which time Lyndon Johnson took over. The federal debt was at $310.3 billion and federal government spent $111.32 billion annually. As of October 2014, the federal debt was $17.871 trillion. This figure does not include any state or municipal debt or any debt caused by paying Social Security or Medicare allotments because this money is supposed to be funded by employment taxes. The 2015 debt for all forms of government in the U.S. is expected to exceed $21.9 trillion.
