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I wish the article noted that $30k was in which year roughly, and value in today's currency. Interesting research!

by ozten 7y ago

tzs 7y ago
That plow was patented in 1797. If the $30k was $30k then, it would be about $450k now. I doubt, though, that it was $30k then. Blacksmiths in 1800 on average made under $1/day [1]. It would be very rare for a blacksmith then to be able to put $30k toward an invention. (For comparison, $25k/year was the salary of the President of the United States then). If the $30k is $30k now, it would have been about $2000 back then. That seems feasible for a blacksmith to save up in around a decade or so. [1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89071501472&view=1up&seq=65 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89071501472&view=1...
- gxqoz 7y ago
  Comparing values in the past to values today is tricky and comes down to judgement. "It helps if one understands how the comparators are constructed. They have two components. The first is prices of a range of goods which the ordinary person might buy, such as bread, meat, beer or clothing and possibly rent or the cost of fuel; these are gathered from a range of archives or surveys. These prices have to be added together in a way which reflects the proportions which these items formed in the spending of an average person. If – as was the case in the past – bread accounted for 25 per cent of what the average person spent, then the price of bread has to have an influence of 25 per cent on the overall set of prices. This is known, in the jargon, as its ‘weight’ and the weights add up to 100 per cent. A calculation is then done for each year, multiplying the price of each good by its weight, adding the results together and finally dividing by the number of items to get an average price of goods for that year. Then, if the result is a figure of, say, £10 in 1800 but of £767 in 2017, we say that prices rose between those two dates by about 77 times. Another way of putting it is that £10 in 1800 equates to – or has the same ‘purchasing power’ as – £767 today." https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/changing-value-money https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/changing-value-...

I wish the article noted that $30k was in which year roughly, and value in today's currency. Interesting research!

by ozten 7y ago

I wish the article noted that $30k was in which year roughly, and value in today's currency. Interesting research!

tzs 7y ago

That plow was patented in 1797. If the $30k was $30k then, it would be about $450k now. I doubt, though, that it was $30k then. Blacksmiths in 1800 on average made under $1/day [1]. It would be very rare for a blacksmith then to be able to put $30k toward an invention. (For comparison, $25k/year was the salary of the President of the United States then). If the $30k is $30k now, it would have been about $2000 back then. That seems feasible for a blacksmith to save up in around a decade or so. [1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89071501472&view=1up&seq=65 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89071501472&view=1...

gxqoz 7y ago
Comparing values in the past to values today is tricky and comes down to judgement. "It helps if one understands how the comparators are constructed. They have two components. The first is prices of a range of goods which the ordinary person might buy, such as bread, meat, beer or clothing and possibly rent or the cost of fuel; these are gathered from a range of archives or surveys. These prices have to be added together in a way which reflects the proportions which these items formed in the spending of an average person. If – as was the case in the past – bread accounted for 25 per cent of what the average person spent, then the price of bread has to have an influence of 25 per cent on the overall set of prices. This is known, in the jargon, as its ‘weight’ and the weights add up to 100 per cent. A calculation is then done for each year, multiplying the price of each good by its weight, adding the results together and finally dividing by the number of items to get an average price of goods for that year. Then, if the result is a figure of, say, £10 in 1800 but of £767 in 2017, we say that prices rose between those two dates by about 77 times. Another way of putting it is that £10 in 1800 equates to – or has the same ‘purchasing power’ as – £767 today." https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/changing-value-money https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/changing-value-...