Slashdot Mirror

We don't need to work so hard, we choose to.

You also don't need a $500 smartphone, but people seem to want one anyway. We spend more on larger houses (except in a few heavily zoned cities who distort their local housing market to prop up home prices for existing residents) and get more house as a result. We buy safer, more fuel-efficient cars than we used to. We spend a lot on being trendy, following fashion, rather than on basic necessities.

If you wanted to live a typical 1950s existence with that level of technology and health care, etc... it's less expensive (inflation adjusted) to do so now than it was back then. But people don't want to live that way in the US any more because we have much more and much nicer stuff now.

If you want to go all the way back to 1790 (which is when better data starts), you could work a couple of weeks a year at minimum wage and pay for their average person's life style today, because it really sucked back then. Data from 1790 indicates wages for a skilled worker of about $0.02 / hour. With equivalent things available then costing 15X as much today, that's $0.30 / hour today. 30X if you include "modern" equivalents.

Most people seem to forget that for much of history, average people in the U.S. lived in little one to two room cabins with dirt floors and a big family. You know, how a big chunk of the world still lives today, although way less people than did even 20 years ago.

That's my hypothesis.
Based on people having less than they used to have, and most things being more expensive (with the exception of cheap Chinese crap).
I don't think they could spend more, in terms of the small share of wealth created with their work that they actually receive, even if they wanted.

All that's happening, is $100 being worth much less in several aspects of how worth is measured.
Which is equivalent to a salary cut!

That's what people don't realize: Whenever "the market" goes "up", e.g. by some stock being "worth" more money, their share of the actually available cake of wealth, that they get for their work, gets smaller! if you, as an employee, want more purchase power, "the market" must go "down"! (It's a bit more complicated, since you can also be part of "the market" or dependent on it, instead of "the market" being a leech on you. Then you'd go down with that "market", of course. But in that case, you're part of the problem, and the solution is not to make "the market" go "up", but to get out of there before the mind cancer consumed you and you start walking over dead bodies just to "make money".)

The largest one was British R101 that measured 223m . The cost of the program is comparable to the Brin's, so not much changed since 1929.

Even so.

$20 in 1913 was worth almost $500 today. But the nominal gdp per capita in 1913 was about $400, while in 2013 it was over $50000. So: $20 / $400 gdp per capita in 1913 = 0.05 or 5% of yearly income. $400 / $50000 = 0.008, or 0.8% of yearly income. Thus, purchasing power has increased since 1913. The equivalent of $20 today will buy you much more than you could get in 1913. That includes electronics that didn't exist in 1913: radios, wind-up LED lights, cell phones, etc.

Regarding your example of a good suit costing "in the thousands": 5% of $50000 is $2500. So your purchasing power has not decreased: you can spend the same percentage of yearly income on a suit, and get a very high quality one today, as you did in 1913. Also, there are so many electronic products that cost $infinity in 1913, such as computers, cellphones, TVs, and many other things we take for granted today.

The myth of inflation being such a destructive force is thus revealed to be hyperbole.

Cronies? More like citizens exercising their right to freely associate, pool resources, and petition government. You know, the same argument we use to defend corporations when people whine about the rich and "1%ers"

Getting stuff merely because you're better connected politically is the essence of cronyism. Hence, my use of the label.

Incorrect. A government that did nothing was pre-1861 US. That US was little more than an extension of its colonial days, with little demand and growth.

Let's take a look at your little history retcon. The US during that period of "little demand and growth" went from around 4 million people in the 1790 census to over 31 million people in the 1860 census. That's doubling the population in a bit over 20 years for more than two thirds of a century. Land area more than tripled from 860,000 square miles in 1790 to 2,970,000 square miles in 1860. In addition, the infrastructure to support that huge growth of people had to be built from scratch.

But let's suppose your assertion was somehow correct and that the economy of the time didn't actually grow very fast. You still have to explain why growing a measure of economic activity (GDP for example) at a certain rate is more important than providing food, shelter, clothing, etc for a country which doubled almost three times over the course of those 70 years with minimal government help.

I kept going and found educated guesses for GDP over that period. It went from 1,100 in 2009 USD per capita to 2,800 in 2009 USD per capita. That's more than 150% growth in per capita GDP after adjusting for inflation. Not bad for 70 years of low government though we currently trounce them with roughly 400% growth from the Great Depression era 1940 to 2010.

So there might be a case for economic growth there, but there was a lot of growth even in the absence of an extensive government for a country which grew its population almost a factor of eight over that time. Having looked at these sorts of historical estimates before, I believe it is difficult to grow the economy per capita in a time of high population growth (for example, in Eurasia between 800 BC and 500AD). And I certainly don't buy that there actually was low economic growth during this period of time.

The rapid industrialization and growth known as the Gilded Age happened after the Civil War, after the government began expanding its influence and taking action. From federal government backing the railroads to state government discriminating against the Chinese so their wages are kept low, the US since 1861 has not been the original union the Founding Fathers would have wanted.

Given that a number of the Founding Fathers didn't actually want what they had in the first place (for example, the well known disagreement on the strength and size of the federal government), this shouldn't be a surprise.

As to the actual federal spending (see figure 2 which includes off budget expenditures for programs like Social Security) over that period relative to GDP, it's worth noting that it remained pretty steady aside from during the 1812 war and the Civil war through to 1910. And after the First World War, federal spending went down to 3% of GDP in 1930. That's 140 years of decent economic growth coupled with extremely low government spending except during major wars.

As that graph in the last link shows, after the Second World War is when things got crazy with the budget sneaking over 20% of GDP for a good part of the time even in times where there wasn't much in the way of warfare.

The norm is for people working hard all their life, but most will never reach within a few orders of magnitude of the truly wealthy.

So why should I

Yes, forget about everything else he might have said. Let's focus on gun price alone because that's the only point that matters here.

Let's find another source here that says "Whitney got a contract for $134,000 to produce 10,000 muskets in 1798. That's $13.40 per musket." Let's attempt to convert that to today's dollar.

Briefly, it says "In 2011, the relative value of $13.00 from 1798 ranges from $236.00 to $480,000.00. In detail it is revealed that $236 is calculated using GDP deflator which is similar to CPI, which assumes that gun costs are scaled the same as commodity goods such as bread and butter, but it is not. The figure $480,000 is based on share of total GDP which is akin to saying if the whole nation dedicated the same percentage of economy power to making guns, that would be the price the government pays today per gun. Bellesiles could have argued that $480,000 is the best estimate, and surely that's in the ballpark of the price of a Lamborghini. My personal choice of a fair estimate would be $7,680 based on nominal GDP per capita, which is more indicative of the financial burden to an average individual (both unskilled and skilled labor) for purchasing a gun.

And to be fair, the critics of Bellesiles are unreasonably harsh, not in the counter-evidence they presented, but on the interpretation of the evidences. Basically they show A as an evidence, and assert that A implies B where B typically falls along the line to discredit Bellesiles. I don't disagree with A, but I disagree with almost every count of A implies B they asserted. Nonetheless, the collection of evidences A is still valuable, just that the critics do not appear to understand the evidences themselves.

Yes, forget about everything else he might have said. Let's focus on gun price alone because that's the only point that matters here.

Let's find another source here that says "Whitney got a contract for $134,000 to produce 10,000 muskets in 1798. That's $13.40 per musket." Let's attempt to convert that to today's dollar.

Briefly, it says "In 2011, the relative value of $13.00 from 1798 ranges from $236.00 to $480,000.00. In detail it is revealed that $236 is calculated using GDP deflator which is similar to CPI, which assumes that gun costs are scaled the same as commodity goods such as bread and butter, but it is not. The figure $480,000 is based on share of total GDP which is akin to saying if the whole nation dedicated the same percentage of economy power to making guns, that would be the price the government pays today per gun. Bellesiles could have argued that $480,000 is the best estimate, and surely that's in the ballpark of the price of a Lamborghini. My personal choice of a fair estimate would be $7,680 based on nominal GDP per capita, which is more indicative of the financial burden to an average individual (both unskilled and skilled labor) for purchasing a gun.

And to be fair, the critics of Bellesiles are unreasonably harsh, not in the counter-evidence they presented, but on the interpretation of the evidences. Basically they show A as an evidence, and assert that A implies B where B typically falls along the line to discredit Bellesiles. I don't disagree with A, but I disagree with almost every count of A implies B they asserted. Nonetheless, the collection of evidences A is still valuable, just that the critics do not appear to understand the evidences themselves.

The Congress shall have Power [...] To establish Post Offices and Post Roads; [...]

Note, of course, that there is no requirement that Congress establish Post Offices and Post Roads or continue to support/maintain them - they are merely allowed to do so. (Just as they have no requirement to "declare war" which is another power granted to Congress.)

However, I'm not aware that the founders, in general, thought that "minimal fees" should be charged for postal services (presumably, meaning that a subsidy would be required if actual costs were above "minimal").

Indeed, postal rates in 1792 for a letter consisting of a single sheet of paper ranged from 6 cents (if being sent less than 30 miles) to 25 cents (if being sent over 450 miles) and a letter consisting of two sheets of paper (still under one ounce in today's scheme) cost twice as much. Therefore, a two sheet letter cost twice as much in non inflation adjusted currency, as it does today. I'm pretty sure that 50 cents was not considered minimal in 1792 - esp. given that inflation makes 50 cents in 1792 dollars equivalent to over 12 dollars in 2011 dollars.

BTW, for the curious, I used this site for my inflation estimates. The range is wide because there are so many different ways to calculate the relative value of the dollar over time.

.. or for that matter, if we look at a chart of per capita GDP growth from 1790 to 2010, we see that 1875-1913 shows no larger growth than the rest of the graph. To see this, go here ( http://www.measuringworth.com/usgdp/ ) select "Real GDP per capita" and type in 1790 and 2010. Then select "Plot log of series".

I didn't believe that, but it seems you are telling the truth! From http://www.measuringworth.com/ using various indexes:

$2,990.00 using the Consumer Price Index

$2,490.00 using the GDP deflator

$9,960.00 using the unskilled wage

$12,600.00 using the Production Worker Compensation

$14,400.00 using the nominal GDP per capita

$38,500.00 using the relative share of GDP

$35 (1968) is roughly equivalent to $73.80 to $107.00 (1980) using various indices

or, going the other way:

$850 (1980) is roughly equivalent to $277 to $403 (1968).

The value of gold was not allowed to inflate for several years (fixed at $35/oz. in 1934). John Seabrook wrote an article in 1989, Invisible Gold that briefly touched on the value of gold from the Gold Standard through the 1980s.

This is true. But it doesn't cost a fortune to make a good film; see Fassbinder's Marta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_(1974_film), or really any of his - they were made on a budget, but the acting was phenomenal). In today's dollars (according to some perhaps shaky assumptions re the equivalence of DM and USD inflation rates between 1974-2009, and these sites: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi and http://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/exchangeglobal/result.php), Marta cost ~$833076 2009 USD. I can't find any information about Zenith's cost, but even ~$900,000 USD is not out of reach for an ambitious (and talented) (outsider) director.

The funny thing is that, until approximately the Civil War the entire Federal budget was funded primarily by postal fees (sorry, couldn't find a citation with a quick search.) I'd like to see something like that again - heck, I'd pay $10 to mail a letter to reduce the Federal Budget by $1 trillion or so. And that included having a Navy, etc.

In 1863 the rate was 3c per 1/2 ounce, which with inflation was worth something like the following in 2009 dollars (consumer price data doesn't go back that far):

$4.25 using the unskilled wage
        $8.17 using the Production Worker Compensation
        $6.07 using the nominal GDP per capita
        $55.60 using the relative share of GDP

(IMHO the Production Worker Compensation figure is most useful - in other studies I've seen, a carpenter's wages are a remarkably useful measure across the last several hundred years, for the midrange (eventually middle class) family.)

A typical letter is likely to be more than 1/2 ounce, so that price should be doubled. So in today's prices, mailing a letter should cost over $10.

Also, with exceptions for wartime, that price remained the same through 1932!

We certainly had booms and busts well before we had a central bank (i.e. the Fed, which was established in 1913). As time has gone by, they've generally gotten better at central banking; the period from 1982 to 2007 is often called the "Great Moderation" for this quarter century of stable growth: two mild recessions and stable and low inflation; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Moderation . Also, take a look at the real GDP data from http://measuringworth.com/usgdp/ (put together by economic historians) and note the falling volatility over the last century (easiest seen in the log view). Finally check out http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html (from the people who officially date recessions) and note the increasing length of expansions and shorter recessions.

From http://www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/result.php

$0.67 in the year 1900 has the same "purchase power" as $1 in the year 1800.

It would appear there was deflation over that period. Also, paper money was disconnected from precious metals several times throughout U.S. history. Typically around wartime. I tend to think the purpose of money is to provide liquidity and a floating currency provides more liquidity than a fixed one. Besides I never saw any intrinsic value in rocks. Can't eat or drink them. I think if we were going to tie it to anything, energy would be a much more rational valuation of the wealth of a country.

Inflation since then runs close to 1000-1500% (depending on initial year) than 60,000%, actually. Please check out this inflation calculator if you would like to see for yourself.

Inflation adjustment is not as simple as what the westegg calculator makes it out to be.

Look at the results at measuringworth.com. I would agree that I over estimated off the top of my head, as I over estimated inflation in the 1800's. Personally, I would say that the $70k number is probably the more relevant number as it puts the punishment about the twice the cost of hiring someone at minimum wage for the year.

We can debate the relative merits of the real value of the minimum wage at another time but, in the interim, in the interests of accuracy, for a slightly less anecdotal analysis of the relative value of the US dollar, see MeasuringWorth.com (which suggests $8.48/hr as an equivalent minimum wage, not $17.50, based on the consumer price index). That's a lot closer to par.

I believe most economists suggest that the CPI slightly-overstates inflation by failing to make any adjustment for increases in product quality (things squeezable ketchup bottles instead of glass, or music on an iPod instead of a Walkman, or safer cars less likely to kill you in an accident).

"Food isn't free."

Agreed.

"Just because a few people produce something doesn't mean it's abundant."

Put that way, you're correct. As it happens, food is abundant. What's more, a small increase in workforce applied to food would produce a much larger increase in food production, so in this case the small number is important.

"All the usual market forces still apply,..."

All the recent ones. But things like frozen food technology did intervene over a longer time span.

"...and it is just as costly to eat well as it's always been."

Using the Hershey bar Index:

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq5.html#candybar

and measuring Worth to adjust dollar values:

http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators.html

In [1908] 9/16 oz.....2 cents and in [2008] 1.55 oz Hershey Bar purchased at Super FoodTown (regional grocery chain), East Hanover NJ...59 cents gives us the raw data. For 1908 its 0.035556 cents per ounce and for 2008 its 38.064516 cents per ounce.

Using the Purchasing power of the US dollar:

"$0.02 in the year 1908 has the same "purchase power" as $0.38064516 in the year 2008."

So the candy bar cost nearly twice as much per ounce in 1908 as in 2008.

But at:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/CPIFoodAndExpenditures/Data/Expenditures_tables/table11.htm

we can see something else--a clue to the production cost. Look in the 3rd column and see that production costs as a fraction of retail prices dropped. Now look at column 1 and see how restaurant prices increased as a fraction of retail price. Look at that divergence.

Roam through the statistics as you will, the same story emerges for wheat and bread--bread prices soar, wheat doesn't. Similar stories show up in manufacturing.

So if its not cheaper to eat well--why not? Shouldn't it be?

Except that we're not. Seriously off-topic, but inflation isn't unpredictable. Right now, the double-digit unemployment and positive savings rate we have suggests people are hording their cash, not shopping with abandon.

  As soon as any of the indicators go up (these are pretty reliable predictors of activity), the FED simply filters the money out of the banks, rates go up for daily business paper and money is more scarce.

  It's been managed this way for 3 decades, and fairly stable since 1983. Check for yourself.

You are absolutely right that it is possible to make excellent movies for cheap. Statistically though, you are wrong.

Believe me, there are many *very* ingenious people out there trying to make good movies for as cheap as they can. The fact that they don't succeed as well as big studio movies is not because studios shut them down. Of course from time to time sometimes it is because the studios don't have the proper vision. But on average, statistically, it is because the movies that are independently produced generally aren't good, and once you've made a couple of narrative movies you will understand money has often a lot to do with it. It won't buy talent, but talent without the means won't work.

I'm not even talking big VFX stuff. People want entertainment that doesn't make them wince because sound is bad. Or a picture that is hard to get into because you keep being distracted by lighting discontinuities.

As to the "classics" that you emphasize, which supposedly cost less money back then, you are so wrong. In spite of all the hardships I mentioned, it is still a heck of a lot cheaper today to make an independent movie than it was back then.

Put those budgets in today's dollars: Casablanca, $15.2m in 1942 dollars = at least $162m of today's dollar according to http://www.measuringworth.com/. Citizen Kane (a 1941 release) would cost more than $100m in today's dollars.

"The Wizard of Oz" cost more than $500 million in today's dollars. That is more than 3x as much as "Transformers" which you apparently despise but which a lot of people--and not just children--have actually enjoyed paying a ticket for (I am not one of them).

The amount of work put in those masterpieces required huge amounts of resources, because technology wasn't as good as it is now. Without studios willing to bet such huge amounts at the time you would most certainly not get to have enjoyed any of the classics.

Go make a movie, face an audience with it, and then we'll talk. Till then, show some respect to the people who work their asses off, and pay for your content.

We're not really comparing the cost of goods, but the devaluation of the dollar. i.e. A dollar in 1910 is equivalent to just 4 cents today.

Ah, yes, but it's not that simple.

4 cents placed in a plain-old savings account would actually also equal a dollar today. If you don't want your money to lose value, put it in the bank, and forget about it -- savings rates appear to have kept up with dollar's declining purchasing power.

Invested in bonds or an index fund, that $0.04 would now be worth $9. A 9x return on any investment (adjusted for inflation) is considered to be phenomenal.

Inflation drives the economy forward. There are numerous safeguards in place to prevent it from biting you in the ass. Stagflation can still be a problem, although there are numerous theories about how to deal with this, should it appear again to the extent that it did in the 1970s.

You can get the official consumer price index, from 1913 up to now here. $6 in 1969 would translate to approximately $36 today.

For older historical data, plus many other interesting historical data about prices and economic indicators, this site is very interesting.

What are you talking about? The international banking system collapsed just a few months ago.

That's wrong. The US federal government has not allowed banks to collapse since 1933

In America, pre-depression economics was a vicious cycle of boom and bust.

[citation needed]. Have you tried getting some hard data to back this claim?

I recently gave a course on Python programming to some coworkers and used data from that site in my examples. It's weird how you can plot data of wages vs. cost of living for centuries and see a slow but constant progress, interrupted only by wars, until 1914. The silver and gold standard caused the economy to be *very* stable.

Then, after WWI, the UK eliminated the gold standard. A big market bubble arose, followed by collapse in 1929 and regulation in the 1930s. Afterwards it's very difficult to plot anything due to inflation, you cannot determine accurately what should be the worth of things. So, that "vicious cycle of boom and bust" that you mention actually was one boom from 1919 to 1929 and one bust from 1930 to mid-30s and was the result of a government trying to regulate away the economic consequences of war.

You can try every combination of factors you want, plot wages, cost of living, stock prices against GDP, price index, gold prices, whatever. Government intervention in the economy only makes things worse. An interesting plot is wages vs. cost of living in the UK from the 14th to the 19th century. You can see every time when a king changed the amount of silver in a penny in that graph. Do you want an efficient economy? Take away the power of the government to print money. The only regulation needed is a standard defining the mass of one gram, let the market define how much a gram of silver or gold is worth and the rest is consequence.

I think the only reason why people defend government intervention in the economy is because no one today remembers the age when the market was free. And, unfortunately, when you allow intervention in the economy, intervention in other areas is inevitable. There has never existed a communist government, one that does not allow a free market to exist, that didn't end up as a dictatorship. Allow the government to take over the economy and no one will have the means to start an opposition movement.

$800 billion is ~$420 billion in 1982 dollars (using the GDP deflator; the other metrics give much smaller numbers). You have to account for inflation whenever you're talking about very large amounts of money since even a few years can make a 5-10% difference. Measuring Worth has a good calculator.

A marriage in Canada is recognised in the US, why would that change for marriages between states?

Because Ron Paul supports the "Defense of Marriage Act" which would exempt states from having to recognize gay marriage.

Putting that money into the high interest savings account would result in a loss of 600 million dollars to inflation

That's only true if: (a) a high-interest savings account were a good investment and (b) rates did not fluctuate. Neither of these things is true.

Fact is, $200 million invested in 1948 would have yielded:
# $3,099.40 if saved in a short-term asset.
# $9,822.43 if saved in a long-term asset at a term of 1 years.
# $14,658.83 if saved in a DJA portfolio.
source: this page

Inflation effectively didn't exist for 200 years under the gold standard.

That's another thing that simply isn't true. Here's a chart showing inflation in the US since the 1600s. See how spiky it is? Now I'll grant you that there are also periods of deflation that tend to balance out the long-term trend. But moderate, sustained inflation is far easier to deal with than spiky, unpredictable inflation. Can you imagine trying to live during those spikes into the 20-40% range? Upward would be horrible for the working people and downward would be horrible for businesses. Pre-WW2 history is full of panics, bank failures, and depressions. And wars. Lots of poverty. In short, all of the things promised by a return to the gold standard already existed before the gold standard was abandoned.

and in the '70s when Nixon completely broke the final ties to the gold standard to help finance the war, it began to increase at an incredible rate. [inflationdata.com]

Could be, but I think it's related to government borrowing and the price of oil. Specifically, the huge spike in oil prices during the 70s drove inflation then (as it is doing now). Then, the Regan-era spending drove inflation through massive government accumulation of debt.

they've gone from being the most progressive, liberal, advanced nation in the middle east

Iraq? Under Saddam? No. Maybe you are thinking of Israel? Had we done what we should have in '91, Iraq would fine right now. The mess in Iraq was prolonged by a dysfunctional UN.

It's time we just pull out and let the Iraqis handle themselves

On this we agree, but it has to be orderly. We started the shooting and we need to end it.

We spend more on the federal army, navy, and air force than the next 20 countries combined, we should be able to defend our own borders.

LOL. We like the cheap labor. We don't really want to secure our borders. Groceries are already expensive enough as it is. You want to end illegal immigration? Stop employing illegal immigrants. We have no one to blame but ourselves. I hire them all the time every time I order take out. You hire them whenever you buy a sack of fruit. My in-laws hired them outside the 7/11 to help them move. They are just normal people trying to earn a buck, and we willingly give them bucks. Arming the border would probably be effective, but is just about the biggest waste of money in terms of potential solutions.

A family member of a dissident was put in mortal danger by the whitehouse for purely political reasons.

While I agree that incident is disturbing, and I hope that the person responsible is caught and punished - you cannot compare a leak to the press, no matter how damning, to the systematic arrest and incarceration of every political opponent.

We could be h

LOL, yes, but $12 an hour of 1968 money, when you plug it into this calculator... http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ can be as much as $15.

So, the thing is, that's $180 an hour in today's money, not bad for some kind of "sharpening" business. Don't know what the hell you'd be sharpening though.

Six Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1790 to Present

In 2006, $2,375.00 from 1917 is worth:
$37,347.89 using the Consumer Price Index
$25,943.55 using the GDP deflator
$76,732.48 using the value of consumer bundle

$136,013.44 using the unskilled wage
$181,424.03 using the nominal GDP per capita
$524,899.79 using the relative share of GDP

If you need help determining which result is most appropriate for you, see Measures of Worth.

For construction of the Indicators, go to CPI | GDP | Consumer Bundle | Unskilled Wage series.

Citation
Samuel H. Williamson, "Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1790 to Present," MeasuringWorth.Com, 2008.
Please read our Note on Data Revisions.\</p>

If it's the "proletariat" working man you're worried about, you want an unskilled wage inflation. According to MeasuringWorth.com $2375 is about $136,013.44 in 2006 dollars (the latest data available). It's of little use to compare the consumer prices using the average consumer's bundle of goods, since we just consume so much more.

Eh. I don't know what your experience is, but since 2001, my cable modem w/ time warner has been about $42.

However, in that time, the downstream bandwidth cap went from 5Mbps to 7Mbps to 10Mbps (albiet upstream only went from 384Kbps to 512)

However, $42 dollars in 2001, is only about $36-$37 today, that's not a steep fall. (per http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/)

So I would say the average NY'er experience have been the exact opposite of yours (more bandwidth, while prices haven't fallen (in "real" dollars) steeply.

What is even more amazing is that the Model T cost $850 in 1908 (in 1908 dollars) but the price had *fallen* to $290 by 1925 (in 1925 dollars).

Cars then were acting like computers now. Too bad that the automotive Moore's law quickly failed :( You *ought* to be able to buy a new car for a couple of hundred bucks!

[My source is http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/%5D

Do you just pull facts out of your ass and hope no one will notice?

Lot's of people don't hold much faith in the GDP measurements. In terms of actual industrial and agricultural output, those numbers are bullshit.

Also, there was virtually no unemployment in the United States in the 19th century. More bullshit.

And this of course, is the most comical piece of bullshit in your post. You can find the exact opposite information regarding the value of money in the government's own publications! Read Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census; U.S. G.P.O., 1975. I even found a nice online calculator for you to show how prices declined by 50% during the 19th century.

I'd love to know what "conclusion" was reached that is not supported by fact.

• The Rothschilds were the richest and most powerful family in the world during the 19th century, and we have "no evidence" that this has changed, so they are still the richest and most powerful family in the world.
  
• The evil bankers did not like President Lincoln's plans for the national currency, so John Wilkes Booth was obviously a mercenary hired by them to assassinate the President.

You really need to keep inflation in mind when quoting old dollars.

http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompar e/result.php

In 2006, $100.00 from 1850 is worth:

  $2,663.14 using the Consumer Price Index
  $2,002.92 using the GDP deflator
                    using the value of consumer bundle *
  $19,367.27 using the unskilled wage
  $40,044.15 using the nominal GDP per capita
$515,417.97 using the relative share of GDP

---
A trivial search for 1860 to 1880 salaries reveals annual salaries of $150.
So $100 was not too bad for one song. He was paid 4 to 6 month's income for it.

---

Regardless, when I say "filthy rich" I mean earning more money that the average person earns in a lifetime for writing one song. And in many cases, several people earn that level of income, and many more make a year's income ($41,000) off of the song. It's irrationally high.

Of course, back then, that was quite a bit of money for a teenage boy.

Equivalent to about GBP250 US$500 in today's economy, according to this calculator.

I realize that the $60 price point seems like a lot, but expressed in real value, I think we were paying more for NES games back in the day. According to this calculator, 60 dollars in 2005 is worth 33 dollars in 1985 as measured by CPI. I think NES games were $35-45 at the time, so it's really no different. Publishers have been making up for spiraling game asset development costs by volume more than price increases, though the end result (market consolidation & reduced diversity of product) is still the same.

That said, my frugality circuit kicks in every time I'm looking at the wall at Gamestop, and I balk at paying even $40 most of the time (the Wii is the only modern console I have currently, so I deal with those price points mostly). I think I need to let go a little bit.

According to this inflation calculator, £175 in 1982 was worth between £413 (based on RPI) and £773 (based on GDP) in 2005 (the figure based upon average earnings is about halfway between those numbers), £125 was between £295 and £552. In 1983, £129.99 was between £293-£525 and £99.99 was between £226-£404. For the C64 and BBC B fans out there, their 1983 price (without any accessories, like C2N, 1541, RGB monitor) of £399 was £901-£1612 in 2005 prices.

Sorry I have to disagree with the inflation claim. If you lookup inflation on Wikipedia and follow some inflation calculators you will see that we have been in the ~3% range for the last 6-years.

3% / year X 6 years = 18%

That's very good. As a comparison, Venezuela's annual inflation rose to 18.4% last month.

JOhn

http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/inflatio n/result.php Annualized British inflation 1812-1912: -0.39

Of course, annual rates swung up and down over the period; that is related to business cycles, weather (drought years tend to make food more expensive, etc.), inventions, improvements in manufacturing, transport, and trade, etc. But my point that there was relative price stability over a sustained period is in fact correct, despite your protestations to the contrary. In fact, because of the slight general deflation, anyone living off 5,000 pounds in 1850 was actually richer in 1900, assuming he lived off the interest.

Also, the car example: you seem to be OK with 5% inflation. At that rate, your money in 14 years buys half of what it does today. May be fine by you, but I did the taxes of a lot of pensioners who suffered through rates even higher than that in the late 1960's-1970's. People who had a comfortable fixed income in 1960 ($5,000 Cdn) were dead broke by 1974. My father supported a family with three kids on $7,000 Cdn a year in 1962, when we bought our first house, and we were comfortably middle class. So I have lived through inflation; you apparently haven't.

Finally, you say "In NA and Europe, inflation barely exists". Please go visit some people living on fixed incomes and ask them if they have as much spending power as they did last year. Get your head out of the sand - the government statistics are fixed with "substitutions" and "hedonic improvements" to provide a number that they feel will be palatable to people. If my Internet service goes from $35 to $50 a month, but the line speed doubles, government stats will say my cost actually fell on kbps basis, even though it's costing me an extra $180/year. And yes, it is faster; pages that used to load in 1.5 seconds now load in 1 second. Big effing deal; the extra expense compared to the miniscule time savings should show up as in increase in CPI, not a decrease. But, please, by all means continue to drink the Kool-Aid; meanwhile, my gold funds have more than doubled in the past two years.

They are charging 20 million a person?

When indexed for inflation the entire Apollo program would cost about $85,000,000. Hell, the entire NASA budget for 1960 through 1973 would be about 250 million. The Apollo program put six manned missions on the moon with 1960s technology.

We put 18 men on the moon for what it would cost for 4 low earth orbits.

That is pathetic. Now we've decided to go back but this time its going to take 15+ years and cost several billion dollars. And the worst part is that nobody cares.

I bet we here at Slashdot could raise enough money to start our own space program and beat our government back to the moon by at least a year or two.

numbers from http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-16_Apoll o_Program_Budget_Appropriations.htm and converted http://www.measuringworth.com/