Using your example to get the same ratio of payout you would need league fees of $25 a week.

I’m willing to be half the bowlers in the league are complaining that it cost too much to bowl today at $11. I know I hear that complaint all the time.

Minimum wage in 1975 was around $1.30 and I would say around here the average wage was $5. Today minimum is about 4 times higher with the average wage around $20 as well.

I don’t see why fees couldn’t go up to $20. That would give you about 4 times the old payout. But you’ll hear complaints about fixed incomes, times are tough, etc, etc…. While they are sucking down 3 - $3 beers and eating a $5 hamburger.

Actual bowling fees haven’t outpaced inflation. I don’t believe there is any gouging there. In fact because I believe there is decreased lineage the houses are making less than ever.

You mention the waiting lists. I remember keeping 7 man team rosters because they didn’t allow roving subs. You almost always had to be a sub on team for a while before breaking in as a regular. They had morning coffee leagues, afternoon senior leagues, thirds shift leagues, second shift leagues that started at 1 AM,  leagues on Saturday night, basically they ran leagues from 9 AM to 12 midnight 7 days a week.

Bones,

In a true capitalistic economy (which we are far from having), the magic hand of capitalism fixes everything and technology should flourish.  Unfortunately, we'll never know if that is true because our government is always getting in the way of true capitalism.  Remember, pure capitalism requires NO goverment interference.

In other words, those people without jobs would be able to find jobs in another market that would arise.  Robots doing our jobs should lower the cost to build products which raises the profits of the corporate owners, who in turn re-invest the profits in new business ventures, bla bla bla.

We know now that things do not work that way.

Looking at the bowling world as an example...

I think most of us agree that competitive bowling would have been better off with a limit to the technology that started with polyester and has accelerated to the point which we are at today.  If we could have stopped everything once the first polyester ball came out, then there would probably be much more integrity in today's game.  No off set cores, no off-label drilling, none of that stuff.  Pretend we put an end to it all with polyester.

Now pretend that we try to return to that point today, since things didn't really end with polyester.  Pretend that we say in all tournaments and all competitive leagues, only polyester or rubber bowling balls may be used.  Why won't it happen?  Because we're sooooooo worried about our precious ball companies.  People would no longer need 8 ball arsenals, or even 4 for that matter.  A few of the ball manufacturers would close, and people would lose jobs.  But perhaps the bowling industry would begin to boom again shortly thereafter, so then new centers would start popping up again.  So new jobs return in the area of center management, capital equipment manufacturing and sales, and bla bla bla.

Again, this is all ideally how things would happen according to Capitalism 101.  But there seems to be too many people (like maybe 5% of our bowling industry which includes bowlers) that would lose if this were to happen.  Yes, that was sarcasm.  95% of us would benefit with a better sport of bowling, but the powers that be (the rich 5%) are the ones that everybody says will never allow such a change to happen.
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Brian
MichiganBowling.com
http://www.MichiganBowling.com

Famous Last Words of a Pot Bowler--"Ok, but this is my last game!"