That old Creedence Clearwater Revival song: “Down on the Corner” has been running through my head recently, and in the song, they sing: “You don’t need a penny just to hang around, but if you’ve got a nickel won’t you lay your money down?” Even when I first heard that song in the 1970s, it seemed like inflation had really made it sound anachronistic, what with it singing about pennies and nickels, like it has been written in the 1800s or something. And since then, our currency has become worth so much less than it even was then, that those lyrics sound positively ridiculous now! Pretty soon it will sound like some kind of science-fiction song about a time-warp, I’m telling you.
So the fact that they’re talking about wanting pennies and nickels, even back in the 1970s, it made them seem like they were the Little Rascals, because who but a pre-schooler during the depression would actually make an effort for that kind of cash? And that was back in the 1970s, when parents used to treat their kids with “a shiny penny”! By the time I was just a teenager, I saw a parent try that shiny penny gag on their kid, and he looked like his dad was trying to gyp him or something, even though it was a gift! So I can’t even imagine how a kid today would respond to such a thing. I have literally seen little kids look at a dime on the sidewalk, and when asked if they want to pick it up, they say: “Why? It’s only a dime.” (!) And they’re little kids!
So they’re going to have to change the words if they want to play that song today, or people will just not accept it as plausible, and they’ll tune it out. Even if they sang: “You don’t need a dollar just to hang around, but if you’ve got a fiver won’t you lay your money down?”, most unemployed people would probably say it doesn’t sound like a good enough deal to schlep a whole band’s-worth of equipment out into the street and play out in the hot sun for. But maybe that’s because we’re a spoiled, prosperous nation. In any case, with all of the money we’re printing, it won’t be long before even singing about hundreds and thousand-dollar-bills will sound like a waste of time. But I hope not anytime soon!
