At 12:03 PM 1/17/2010, Glen Zook wrote:
... Based on the consumer price index, the $50 that I spent for my life membership back around 1970 is today the equivalent of right at $3300! That is 66 times in "absolute dollars". Compare that to the present life membership fee of $880. That means that we who obtained our life memberships back in the early 1970s paid 3.75 times what new life members are paying.
If you don't believe these figures then do the calculations on the following website:
...
Hi Glen,
I appreciate your sentiment about the fact that AMSAT needed the money back then but I don't think your math is correct. $1 in 1970 is equivalent to around $5.50 - $6.00 in todays dollars depending on how you compare it.
Using the "Measuring Worth" web site, the CPI equivalent value of $50 in 1970 is $277.17 in 2009 dollars.
73, Tony AA2TX AMSAT VP Engineering