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How long did it take for the US per capita alcohol consumption to match that in 1910? (I know that Prohibition was enacted in 1920, but the movement was reacting to pre-1920 behaviors).

How about an article?
Or maybe a chart?

So, 1970?

I'm not arguing that the law didn't have other repercussions, but it seems to me that Prohibition did work in reducing the per capita consumption of alcohol.

The marketing forces (there were MANY business interests involved) that championed the repeal were effective enough to sway even future generations (us).

all the people that want to keep some money at home can do that witout the money value rising
 
First, you seem to think inflation only happens as a side effect of non-metallic currencies; this is not the case at all. A useful website is Economic History and on this page you can find historic inflation rates. Put in a year during the time after WWII and before the US went off the silver standard. Amazingly, there is inflation in every year. How is that possible when a metal standard magically waves away inflation? Because metal standards DO NOT wave away inflation. The US went off the gold standard because our major trading allies were begging for it; their economies were in desperate need of interest rates differing from the US's (see my prior post).
 
Second, you seem to think that inflation and/or the money supply is influenced heavily by the printing of paper notes. This is not the case in a modern economy. The money supply is much more influenced by interest rates, government spending and taxation rates, and even foreign trade balances a long time before the actual printed money has an effect.
 
And on that note, the money supply in terms of cash in circulation is miniscule compared to the amount of money at work in the ecomony. Look up 'the money multiplier' for more info. The amount printed or coined in a modern ecomomy isn't nearly as big a concern as you seem to think except in extreme cases. And since the Federal Reserve is a private bank, not a government agency, it has the luxury of not letting the cash run amok to the point of Bad Things happening. All the Fed notes would have to be recalled or disavowed and a new government-issued money created. Tell me you think that's realistic for any elected office holder to propose.
 
Money is created by the government printing up treasury bills. They then sell these to the Federal Reserve, who is a captive buyer and must buy them. But the Fed is then free to either hold or sell the things on the market. The Fed holds the staggering sums in TBills in reserve, to the tune of hundreds of billions of $$. The 'poison pill' that keeps the government in line is that if they dump excessive TBills, the Fed will then dump those same TBills on the open market, ruining the value of the dollars the government wants.

Wikipedia and http://eh.net/hmit/ppowerusd/dollar_answer.php suggest to me that the NPV of Carnegie's donations is about $7 Billion. The Gates Foundation endowment is in the neighborhood of $29 Billion.

Gates has already given 4x as much money in real terms as Carnegie did in his lifetime. In nominal terms, it is clser to 80x.

The price of games has hardly changed at all since 1987. For the past ~20 years, games have been sold for $50 apiece.

Meanwhile, the cost to make said games has gone up dramatically (the largest game I worked on had a development and marketting budget of $40M dollars, compared to development and marketting budgets of <500K in 1987). That's not even mentioning the fact that the $50 people paid for in 1987 is worth (conservatively) $74 in today's dollar.

It's foolish to think that the problem with the game industry is that the prices of games are too high.

Game prices have hardly changed since 1987, when the Nintendo was the first console back on the scene after the video game bust. In 1987, you paid $50 for a game. Today, you pay $50 (or less, sometimes) for a game. When you pay more, it's because you buy during the high season (you're unwilling to wait for titles to go on sale, you don't buy during the first few days, etc).

Meanwhile, the value of the dollar has plummetted in the same time frame. The conservative estimate is that $50 in 1987 should be worth $74 today.

The cost of developing games has gone up and up, but the profit made on each unit has remained constant (~$28 after box costs for console games, and ~$38 after box costs for PC games).

Interesting how people can just make shit up and be modded insightful. In reality alcohol use declined substantially during Prohition. See http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/article/miron.prohi bition.alcohol

That, and the fact DVORAK, for all its goodness, may be overrated. The article above notes how economists "Liebowitz and Margolis cited ergonomic studies that conclude that the Dvorak keyboard offers at most only a two to six percent efficiency advantage over QWERTY."

In the US, blame WWII economic mobilization. The job market was tight, and employers had strict wage and price controls to deal with. Generous medical benefits were a payment in kind for employers to attract bodies. Postwar management/labor court cases reinforced the employment-based system. Tax benefits accrued. [1]

Individual insurance costs more, because the underwriter is pretty much stuck with assessing your individual risk. You may think you're a big, healthy buck, but they may not. With a group plan, the sort you often can't get your hands on without a big-ass employer, the underwriter can make the stats work such that he can charge less and still get a warm fuzzy.

what's it all aboot, eh?

Hmmm... sounds like a challenge to me. Let's see what we can dig up.

Step 1: Let's look at his user page

Ahh! He put in a website with his profile. Let's all go and check out http://fennec.homedns.org/

Hmm... looks like a personal page. Not too sure what to make of the comic. Anyway, let's move on to..

Step 2: Let's look at his author page. Some interesting stuff here, including three separate e-mail addresses (which I won't post here. You're welcome :)

A-ha! There is a link to his employer! It's Economic History Services. And what do you know... there are a significant number of pages (especially under abstracts and book reviews) that seem to come straight out of a word processor, only with extensive cleaning. A quick look at the source reveals something interesting. It's clean. Very clean. We're talking on the level of I-use-vim-for-my-webpage-editor clean. Nice job.

Anyway, it looks like it was done by hand. I'm not saying its not good work (quite to the contrary), but I can see your need for an automated solution.

Outsourcing is a good thing for everyone in the long run. However, in the long run, we are all dead.

Don't forget, 250 1994 dollars is equivalent to $300-$400 at today's prices due to inflation.

Here's a calculator: http://eh.net/hmit/compare/

Profitability is not the purpose of government (contrary to what some will tell you). The purpose of government is to do the unprofitable things that private industry will not do because of the lack of profit.

The best we can hope for is that the government only spend what it takes in or (more realistically) the debt doesn't grow at an obseen rate (like it has during my lifetime).

That's a lot

They were £100 new in 1980. This says in 2002, £100.00 from 1980 is worth: £263.54 using the retail price index. Hmmmm... better investments somewhere else? I wonder.

National government revenue is up over the last 10/20/30 years. As I stated earlier, percent of GDP is irrelevent. If the national government is getting more wealth transferred to it than before, measured in the same terms (and it is), then revenue is up.

You don't say that your rent is down because it's gone up less than your production has. Why do you persist in the same error about the total national production?

I know why the GDP grows. Do you know what a catalaxy is? If not, then you don't know as much about economics as you think you do, because that's integral to why the GDP goes up.

Don't attempt to patronize me. I've probably forgotten more knowledge about economics than you even know exists. I can suggest a few dozen books for you to read to educate yourself, if you like.

Are you familiar with the Armey curve? The research behind that is more than sufficient to refute your premise about percent of GDP and economic growth.

As for the effect of tax cuts on revenue, that's been clearly documented. Perhaps you could be bothered to educate yourself about it?

Oh yeah, and stop crediting Clinton or Bush with outlay levels. We both know that Congress has the biggest say and responsibility for exactly how much actually gets spent, regardless of what any president proposes.

Are you aware that for the majority of the nation's history, government spending was more like 3% of GDP, and that most of the growth occured during that time period? Does that shock you?

Are you familiar with the huge body of evidence from all over the world that shows government spending levels much lower than ours lead to much higher national economic growth? It's been true for a very long time.

The average annual GDP growth rate for 1945 to 1969 was 3.06%. Hardly spectacular growth, when you consider that from 1789 to 2003 it averaged 4.14% and 1789 to 1944, it averaged 3.84%. That by itself refutes your claim of "Our nation's biggest economic boom in history was the period from the end of World War II to the end of the 1960s".

Where did you get your economic knowledge? Some U.S public school, perhaps?

If you brought an Apple 1 in 1977, would it have been expensive?

According to here this can be translated (into 2003 dollars) as follows;

In 2003, $666.66 from 1977 is worth:
$2,023.56 using the Consumer Price Index
$1,647.39 using the GDP deflator
$1,947.17 using the unskilled wage
$2,733.51 using the GDP per capita
$3,605.56 using the relative share of GDP

Which I guess means that the relativelty the Apple 1 was expensive compared to a mini at $500 USD, but about the same as a top line G5 dual 2.5G at $3,000 USD

But I doubt I'll be whacking together a dual G5 in 23 years for only 100 bucks

Economic History Services (EH.net) review

Seems a much fairer review to me, though the author states at the outset that he may be biased since he's a Linux user.

Check those assumptions! Fee.org is a regular contributor to the WSJ, and we know how unbiased THAT rag is... [snort]

Speaking of which, here's an interesting tidbit:

But whether the gift was a dime or in the millions, he had to be persuaded that his charity would do some good. He wanted results, not just to give handouts, and he sought the best counsel he could obtain on giving money from Frederick Taylor Gates, a former Baptist minister who became a member of his staff. Gates had to convince him in detail of the advisability of what would come to be called "scientific philanthropy." And what sold John D. was that this systematic approach to giving would accomplish a nationwide and even worldwide reordering of mankind's current status.

In economics, "search models suggest that all employers enjoy some monopsony power because workers require time to find better jobs." This article from the Economic History Network encyclopedia goes into more detail, including how the rate of exploitation will be the reciprocal of the elasticity of the labor supply. If the labor supply is elastic (and highly sensitive to wages) there won't be as much exploitation of workers, but if it's largely inelastic (as one might expect from the "naieve young programmer" demographic) then exploitation will be significant.

So, I will cede the point that there is no historical evidence that a rise in minimum wage has an impact on national unemployment or real GDP per capita growth. I decided to look at real income per capita as well (the data I found only went to 1967-2001) and there is a very loose correlation between unemployment and per-capita income growth (R-squared .4) but, again, there was no correlation between minimum wage growth and real income growth.

I guess what we have learned here is that minimum wage doesn't really have any correlation with unemployment, personal income growth, or GDP growth - on a national scale. However, if I'm a pizza shop owner and I can afford $100 worth of salary per day, if minimum wage goes up that means I can a)hire fewer workers or b)keep the same number of workers for fewer hours each. The latter scenario basically keeps unemployment and income rates the same - the difference is that folks have more free time to possibly have more than one job. Hrm. There's an interesting idea that I'll have to pursue a little further I think...

CPI: $342
GDP Deflator: $286
Unskilled Wage: $494
GDP Per Capita: $810
GDP: $1440

Still, at least I didn't think it was Antonin Dvorak...

$20 in 1789 (when the Constitution was ratified) would translate to $415.22 in 2003.

Here's the nifty calculator that I used: http://eh.net/hmit/ppowerusd/

Well, according to this article from the EH.Net Encyclopedia of Economic History, In the 1800s, many Americans worked seventy hours or more per week and the length of the workweek became an important political issue. Since then the workweek's length has decreased considerably. Now, this isn't the 1960s, but I still have reason to doubt your raw productivity increase figures.

History repeats itself, look at the correlation between national debt and inflation during the Reagan years.

Jeez. It's pretty apparent that you didn't bother to actually look anything up before making this claim. Inflation went down from the double digit mess that Carter caused to a low of 1.86% in 1986 during the Reagan years.

Besides, if the Fed were worried that THIS economy is growing so fast, they must have been terrified during the dot-com boom of a few years ago. Oh, that's right, they weren't worried then, either.

Again, you were not paying attention. Between 1999 and 2000, the Fed raised short term rates a total of 1.75% to cool the unsustainable growth. You can read just how concerned they were during 1999 and 2000, with every statement expressing concern that financial conditions may no longer be consistent with containing inflation.

Sorry, but I look at things beyond how they just affect me.

How about the 99.9999% of us (who are not terrorists) who are also unaffected?

John Kerry voted for the Patriot Act as a temporary means of handing a tough situation. John Ashcroft is trying to make the changes permanent.

Maybe that is because this "tough situation" is not a temoprary one either?

It's a shame you can't base your opinions on what's actually happening, rather than what you've been told is happening. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Turn off the TV and do your own research. It's not difficult.

One could say the same about you, being that you seem to have a hard time grasping basic historical facts. If doing your own research is not difficult, why is it that you are blatantly wrong on obvious facts?

The real numbers are "per capita debt"

For those interested the following is per capita debt adjusted into 2003 dollars (picked decade boundaries for the hell of it and to make math easier).

1940 - $502.65
1950 - $1,288.72 (15.64% annual rate of change)
1960 - $1,000.20 (-2.24%)
1970 - $880.54 (-1.20%)
1980 - $892.14 (0.13%)
1990 - $1,812.23 (10.31%)
2000 - $2,188.92 (2.08%)
2003 - $2,372.25 (2.79%)

Based on population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau (with 2000 and 2003 estimated from 1999 numbers using 0.9 annual growth). Also I used numbers from here to scale dollar values to 2003 levels. I also used the total gross federal debt not the total debit held by the public... Gross Federal debt is composed both of Federal debt held (owned) by the public and Federal debt held by Federal Government accounts, which is mostly held by trust funds. Federal debt held by the public consists of all Federal debt held outside the Federal Government accounts.

For example in 2003 the gross federal debit was 6,760,014 and total owned by the public was 3,913,607 and in 1970 (scaled to 2003 dollars) it was 1,805,565.54 and 1,342,358.52 (all in millions of dollars). Feel free to work with the total public debt instead if you want. In general the ratio of public debt to that in trust funds has been reducing, in other words more and more of the federal debt is in the form of trust funds (social security, medicare, civil service, military retirement, etc.).

Walmart is what's called a monopsonistic buyer. Maybe you outta look up that term and find out why its bad. If you're lazy here's one of the first results google returned.

US Unemployment Rate since 1948

US Inflation Rate History

US Per Capita Income History Since 1950

The short term effects, plainly put, are a drop in the standard of living for most of the population;

This is simply not true.

http://www.eh.net/hmit/gdp/

consider the effects of:
1. inflation

Ok. Under Reagan, inflation recovered from the Jimmy Carter mess very quickly, and remained very low for the rest of the 80's bottoming out at 1.86% in 1986, so inflation didn't play a very big roll in that (source).

2. a growing worldwide economy

I contend that the Reagan supply side economics helped the economy grow.

3. emergence/growth of industries like hi-tech

Yes- that helped a lot. See #5.

4. deficit spending (it generates some tax revenue)

Actually, public debt as a % of the GDP was higher under Clinton than under Reagan (source).

5. shifts is gov't spending (i.e. major increases in defense).

The defense spending invested heavily in technology, and that helped the hi tech industries grow.

Also note from the Cato article I linked above, all income groups saw an increase in real income under Reagan, but minorities and the poorest quintile saw the biggest increase.

Economic History Resources says, "$1250.93 in the year 2002 has the same "purchase power" as $100 in the year 1937." I think 1200 bucks would be kind of nice right now.

What the hell are you talking about?

First of all, inflation is not out of control. On the contrary, many economists are worried about deflation now.

And what on earth makes you think that people making money on the stock market leads to high inflation? Even during the height of the .com boom, inflation was very much under control. Inflation topped out at a very reasonable 3.38% in 2000 (compare that with the Jimmy Carter administration's 13.48% in 1980).

in the mid eighties, there was about 12% inflation a year

That is so full of crap. Inflation bottomed out at 1.86% in 1986, and aside from the mess that Carter left, inflation was very much under control throughout all of the Reagan years (mostly around 3-4%).

http://eh.net/ehresources/howmuch/inflationq.php

You lost to the friggen Haitians! Were saved twice from Germany by in no small part the US (btw the second time we saved France we were also fighting a war against Japan). Yes we lost Vietnam (formerly know as French indo-china (with Kampuchea and Laos) who also booted out the French. You lost Quebec to the English, you won the 100 years war but burned alive the woman who led you to victory. Hmm Napoleon won a few but he was Corsican.

The US defeated England in our revolution (I will grant the French were there but we did most of the fighting) and the war of 1812, we defeated Mexico (another nation that kicked the crap out of France), Beat Spain in the late 1800's, helped save you in WW1, then again in WW2 (while fighting at the same time two very powerful nations), we fought to a stalemate soviet plans and Chinese troops in Korea, lost Vietnam because we did not play to win, then won a few minor wars with Panama, and Iraq (again France cant beat Haiti so it relevant), and most recently helped the NA removed the Taliban from Afghanistan (umm Karzai is still president of that nation and the taliban is shrinking more and more every day).

Now on to what you are not trying to hide from is France Socially superior to the US??

Literacy: both France and the US have over 90% literacy
Here . The french are a whopping 2% higher than the us here . When you take into account that nearly 4% of the US population are illegal immigrants (people who want to come to this land of misery as you call it)
here and documented imigrants are around 10% of our population
here we have a much harder task in front of us than the French. There are schools in our cities with kids who speak more than 30 languages doubt France has to deal with that.

Now onto "misery, insecurity and unhappiness are more present in the USA than in France." I would like to see how you quantified that? As it's not something you can measure but Ill give it a try.

Lets start with lenght of life
People in France live one year longer than Americansas a % that is 1.3% longer (that can probably be written off to a large immigrant population who may come from a nation with a poor health care system, but even if not that's statistically insignificant as the US and Germany are tied so they must be miserable too.

Now lets look at standard of living the US GDP per capita is nearly 30% higher in the US, same source as above and also here

The US has a higher quality of life according to UN data here .

We are also a Cleaner Nation here

Now while none of this prooves the US is a more happy, and secure place than the zoo between Germany and Spain it goes allot further than your post. If you care to get into a war of wits (again be careful about being French and in a war) at least come armed next time.

Finally about most of our genius coming from abroad if you speaking to our roots as a nation (being we are 70% of European decent) than I would put it to you that you have no point as they are educated and nurtured in America. If you are referring to the # of foreign students in our universities I would ask you why are they coming here rather than going to France? I would also put it to you that your culture was started when you lost a War to the Romans and had their culture put on you, Western Culture owes more to the Italians and Greeks than the French, English, and Americans put together. There is nothing to argue we are not perfect but we are better in most ways than the French.

Note: I consider an Immigrant who comes to this nation and becomes a citizen to be the most loyal and important kind of American one who made the choice

I heard a song the other day by someone named Norah Jones which I very much liked. I decided to stop by Best Buy and buy it. The CD cost me $11.99.

Then I was looking at the list of upcoming releases, and thought I'd stop back next week and buy the new Tori Amos album. It too is only $11.99.

Then I thought of a couple of other albums I didn't yet have I wanted. For instance "Heart Shaped World" by Chris Isaak, I checked and it is $9.99. Also "Warning:" by Green Day, I checked and it is $15.99.(Wow that's the first one I've seen close to your price range)

Then I thought... You know, I really need to broaden my horizons and stop listening to off beat music and pick up some top-40. So I looked up the latest album from Eminem. I found it for $12.99. Then I decided to find Pink, her album is $13.99.

I've been buying music since 1987 when I purchased my first CD player. Back then the first CD I bought was the Top Gun Soundtrack, and I paid $16.99 for it. Now if you go look at the historical value of the dollar, you'd find that $16.99 in 1987 is worth $26.48 today. But I'm not paying $26 for my music, I'm paying an average $12-14 for it, or about half the price. You should also note that in 1987 I could buy a Cassette for about $6-7, today they are $10.

Basically it seems like you have two problems.

First, you don't understand what the value of money really means. In 1987 I was working as a student and receiving $4/hour. Want to take a guess as to how much students receive now for working on campus?(Try $8-10/hour) It's called inflation, go look it up.

Second, if you are paying $16-20 for your CDs, then you are a really really stupid consumer and PT Barnum was correct. There are many places to buy music cheaper than that.

And as far as DVDs go... You know what, just quit yer whining and go back to playing Nintendo. (BTW, want to take a guess as to what I paid for Atari 2600 video cartridges?)

Following a link from the westegg.com inflation calculator, I found http://www.eh.net/ehresources/howmuch/poundq.php, which calculates that 1/6 in 1905 is the equivalent of £6.61 in the year 2000. That is $9.77 at the current exchange rate.