It would be cool to see how many hours of work it took to buy something compared to now. I remember seeing something like that in my Econ book, and the chart showed it takes less time worked to buy groceries today.
Yup! Thanks to industrialism, we are *far* ahead of where we were on the ability to buy groceries and minor luxuries. God help you, though, trying to buy a house now - imagine being able to afford a house on three years' wages. Granted, my perspective may be a bit weird cause I live in a city in the middle of a housing bubble. At my current, slightly above average rate of pay, a house would cost me around six to seven years' wages at one go.
EDIT: $1 in 1924 = $14.04