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Over the course of 250 years I think applying a CPI conversion is far too simple to capture all of the qualitative changes in a political economy. That said, th
by ahi 7y ago
Over the course of 250 years I think applying a CPI conversion is far too simple to capture all of the qualitative changes in a political economy. That said, this list estimates 40x increase in the size of the UK economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_%28PPP%29#1750%E2%80%931990_(Bairoch) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_by_past_GDP_%2...
A billion pound savings isn't anything to sneeze at in a niche luxury good.
- benj111 7y agoAgreed, it isn't clear to me what a 'good' conversion would be though. I suppose you could compare to an average wage or something, but then that doesn't capture subsistence farmers, or that there wasn't really a middle class then, or that on some measures a poor person today, is better off than a king from the 18th century. On top of that, the nature of the thing we are measuring has changed. Today it's a fruit, 250 years ago it's seeds and root were medicinal. All that said I'm struggling to work out where you got the billion £ figure from, or the 40x increase. The first 2 tables seem to suggest growth on the order of 100-150 fold, which would suggest £100 millions, rather than a billion, or am I misunderstanding something?
- ahi 7y agoI was looking at 1820-2008 in Maddison which gives us the 40x increase. Both those numbers are in 1990 dollars, so using your estimate of 20 million after inflation 20/36,232 ~= 1000/1,446,959 ignoring all the confounding coffee stains on the back of the napkin.