"Used to be, an out of work hippy could buy a van and travel to his hearts
content"?

  Well yah, maybe.  Not now, though.  In fact, even a working hippy has a
very difficult time buying or traveling in a van now, when gas is about  13
times as expensive as 20 years ago...(very late "Hippy-era")  Let's look a
it:  Gas will soon hit $4.00 yet a journeyman carpenter still makes what he
did 20 years ago.  Don't ask me how I know this for sure, but according to
an average wage search on Google, it IS true, and according to the money I
make, again, true.   I am still one of them working hippies, I guess.. $16
an hr back in the 80s and about $18 now, if you can find a house to work
on...
 Yet 20 years ago a gallon of gas was around $.30  Thirty...cents!  So you
could fill your van for about $4.80...or about the cost we'll soon be paying
for ONE gallon of fuel..  So now a days, they want about $3-4 hundred bucks
a month for health care.  That was my single guy rate with Blue Cross
recently....that is  ~ one week's wage.  Fill the van to drag your tools to
the job once a week..another weeks wage each month..Forget a car or a house
payment, because tools wear out, and of course, you gotta plan for when the
current job is done and you have to find another somewhere.  Now, if sumpin
goes wrong on the van, or you drop your skilsaw off the roof and it
breaks.....you better go get a night job..flipping burgers at Mickey D's or
something..Funny, the van I drive now is over 30 years old, but back in the
real "hippy days," I could afford one that was only 15 years old on a  very
very part time carpenters wage...Hmmm...And if I wanted a Go Westy van, at
my current wage it would take me about........8 years to earn enough to pay
for it...Shoot, If only I'd a known...I could have started saving back in
the 80s to buy an....80-sumpthin Westy 35 years later...
  You suppose, if there were still such a thing as journeyman tradesmen,
that some of the "new" middle class, like the Dot-com workers, or some
saving and loan officers, or...what other jobs have been 'created in the US
lately?.....would be willing to pay an equivalent wage to what we got back
when gas was cheaper and going to the doc cost about $50 a visit?...Let's
see, if I wanted to 'stay even' with the increase in costs for stuff like
gas, insurance, health care, etc I would need to up my rates about 13 times,
or charge a fair wage of ....oh, about $325 per hour.  I just read on the
web news where the two guys who started Google just made around 2 Billion
per hour a few days back..so I guess that would be reasonable...$325 per
hour for a carpenter who's been in the trade for 30 years...
  Hee hee, fat f---ing chance..We now have 'guest workers' who'll 'assemble'
a house for $7.20 an hour..
  Fryeday.. so excuse the joking post..
  Don Hanson