4 ms·
FWIW, when adjusted for inflation, $39.93 (the total annual cost of Stigler's 1939 diet) is approximately equivalent to $712 in 2018 US dollars(1). Still a palt
by erickhill 9y ago
FWIW, when adjusted for inflation, $39.93 (the total annual cost of Stigler's 1939 diet) is approximately equivalent to $712 in 2018 US dollars(1). Still a paltry sum, though, for a year's worth of food for most people in the US, I think.
1. http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
- randallsquared 9y agoOr delivered on a pallet for about $1000/person-year: https://www.costco.com/THRIVE-1-Year-Food-Storage-31%2C500-Servings.product.11763436.html https://www.costco.com/THRIVE-1-Year-Food-Storage-31%2C500-S...
- itp 9y agoNote that that's $1000/person-year for 1300 calories per day, vs. 3000 calories on the Stigler Diet!
- ha8o8le 9y agoThe diet I created and posted here is only $2,000 per year and includes fresh, nutritious foods that don't detract from your health like most of those foods loaded with carbohydrate and sugar would in your example. Obviously they aren't comparable, I just think it's cool you could live in perfect health for a year for $2,000
- vinchuc0 9y ago(the irony of avoiding my own noprocrast settings)... For a university course, I managed roughly 600$ a year (local prices) with a (few-constraints-)diet of peanut butter and rice sandwiches. Even lower price for directly consuming spoonfuls of flour. Thus the added commentary: - you manage what you measure (linear programming is really powerful, but also simplistic for this model) - the human body is great at survival (general requirements are easily achievable, but surely something is wrong with the spoonfuls-of-flour approach)
- Kluny 9y agoHaha, the Stigler diet leaves out a couple of important items. Salt and yeast turn flour into bread, which is damn tasty. They're cheap, but not free, and should have been accounted for.
- rflrob 9y agoIf you have a sourdough starter, then you don’t need to pay for yeast (though in my experience, I always end up pouring off excess starter, ie wasting flour).
- Kluny 9y agoMe too. Someday I hope to have a kitchen, life, and workflow that allows me to bake sourdough every week, but I'm not there yet.
- zeveb 9y agoIt doesn't even need to be sourdough: you can make a starter for regular bread, too! I mention this because I'm not typically a fan of the sourdough style, but I am a fan of starter-leavened bread.
- bitcoinboi9 9y agoI'm not sure that food is so cheap anymore.
- Kluny 9y agoHow much would the items actually cost at today's prices, though? Edit: Okay, I figured it myself. Around $1850 Canadian, where I live. Still works out to $153 per month, which is almost exactly what I was spending on food during my frugal student days, about 3 years ago. I ate better than the pretty boring diet described here (though not by much) and I'm also quite a bit smaller than the human described in the question. Still, it's good to know that I couldn't have done much better than I did. Numbers and assumptions: https://imgur.com/a/udCL3 https://imgur.com/a/udCL3
- Houshalter 9y agoAren't the inflation adjustments entirely based on the cost of common goods like flour?
- function_seven 9y agoYes, but also a lot of non-food items. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_basket#Consumer_basket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_basket#Consumer_basket There are a lot of ways to measure inflation. It's tricky because some categories of goods or services didn't exist decades ago, but do now.