What happened to prices between 1942 and 1982
Between 1942 and 1982, the Consumer Price Index went from 16.3 to 96.5. Cumulatively, prices increased 492.0%, which works out to an average of 4.55% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1942 bought what $0.17 buys in 1982.
Consumer prices rose 10.9% in 1942, up from 1941’s already rapid 5.0% and the fastest increase since 1920, as the economy’s crash conversion to war production collided with shrinking supplies of civilian goods. The government tried to contain it: the General Maximum Price Regulation, effective May 18 and known as “General Max,” froze most retail prices at their highest March level, the broadest price control Washington had ever attempted. Rationing followed close behind. Sugar rationing began that May and gasoline rationing went nationwide in December, the leading edge of a system that would eventually cover meat, coffee, shoes, tires, and dozens of other goods before the war ended. The year’s other defining wartime measure had nothing to do with prices. Executive Order 9066, signed February 19, authorized the military to remove more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, most of them U.S. citizens, from the West Coast and hold them in inland internment camps for the war’s duration, one of the era’s starkest violations of civil liberties. Even with price controls in place, consumer prices climbed more than 10% for the first time since 1920, leaving the CPI 64.6% above its 1913 level. First-class postage held at 3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 30 cents an hour.