What America was like in 1975
You were born in…
1975
This is where your story begins.
You’ve been here for
51
years
That’s about 18,600 days of history.
A first-class stamp in 1975 cost
10¢
Today the same stamp costs 82¢.
A dollar from 1975 would be worth
$6.26
today
Measured by the government’s Consumer Price Index.
The federal minimum wage in 1975 was
$2.10
an hour
Today it’s $7.25.
The president in 1975
Gerald Ford
Since then you’ve lived under 9 presidents.
The 1970 census counted
203 million
Americans
By 2020 there were 331 million of us.
You’ve been around for
51
Super Bowls
From Super Bowl X in 1976 to Super Bowl LX in 2026.
You’re older than…
- Star Wars opened in theaters1977. You were 2.
- The Sony Walkman went on sale in Japan1979. You were 4.
- MTV started playing music videos1981. You were 6.
- Compact discs reached American stores1983. You were 8.
- Apple introduced the Macintosh1984. You were 9.
- The World Wide Web opened to the public1991. You were 16.
…and 5 more on our list.
So yes,
you’ve seen the worldchange a lot.
And you remember it.
Your 1975 story
That was 1975.
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Where these numbers come from
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), U.S. city average, all items, 1982-84=100
- U.S. Postal Service, Rates for Domestic Letters Since 1863
- U.S. Department of Labor, history of federal minimum wage rates
- U.S. Census Bureau, decennial census resident population
- Presidents and milestones: widely documented public records.