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When comparing across time periods as broad as this, pretty much the only thing that matters is how you compare purchasing power and adjust for inflation. If yo
by ThrustVectoring 7y ago
When comparing across time periods as broad as this, pretty much the only thing that matters is how you compare purchasing power and adjust for inflation. If you compare something that hasn't gotten appreciably cheaper over time - say, gold, or skilled labor - you wind up with an extremely large number. Compare something that has - like grain or clothing - and you wind up with a much more reasonable number. Going based off agriculture, back-of-the-envelope math gives about 400k people in Rome and $1000/yr expenses on staple foods for about $400m, which is significantly less than the probably-gold-based conversion scheme the article's source uses.
And if you want to be really persnickety, no amount of money in Rome would buy antibiotics, televisions, etc, etc.
- throw1234651234 7y agoWe also need to adjust for the supply of gold available at the time, which I would think is much less than the amount available now. That way we can estimate a reasonable percentage of global wealth. Though it's still a guess, since gold buying power fluctuates and then we are back to trying to estimate a basket of goods ala CPI. Also, this guy is a G and reminds me that my life has no meaning. Or at least less meaning than a dude who rode a chariot and chucked spears at dudes. Edit: Oh, looks like he didn't even chuck spears, just raced. I assumed gladiator for some reason. Didn't even know this chariot racing thing was a big deal. Interesting.
- sushid 7y agoHave you never seen Ben-Hur? It's an amazing movie with a classic chariot racing scene.
- throw1234651234 7y agoI haven't. Maybe I just ignored the chariot racing part of history because it didn't seem interesting.
- RobLach 7y agoChariot Racing was huge. The largest stadium ever built was the Circus Maximus which could hold over 150,000 people. The stadiums in the world right now don’t even come close.
- blackguardx 7y agoIt seems like the modern equivalent is NASCAR or F1. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway fits over 250,000 people.
- arethuza 7y agoIndianapolis Motor Speedway isn't in the middle of Washington DC though! The Circus Maximus is right at the bottom of the Palatine hill in the centre of Rome.
- jsjohnst 7y ago> isn't in the middle of Washington DC though 1) the speedway is far bigger in overall size than Circus Maximus 2) They likely didn’t have the same concerns over safety, noise (which is far louder with cars than chariots), traffic flow in/out, etc 3) didn’t likely have the same NIMB issues we’d have today
- jsjohnst 7y agoRe: #1, decided to look it up to get the exact difference. Based on km² data from Wikipedia, Indy is over 30x larger than Circus Maximus.
- Leherenn 7y agoEven if we leave aside race tracks, there's a few stadia over 100k, especially college football in the US. Michigan college is at 107k apparently. Camp Nou (Barcelona) is close to a 100k as well. They used to be bigger, in the 150k/200k range in the 20th century, back before safety concerns were really a thing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- koolba 7y ago> And if you want to be really persnickety, no amount of money in Rome would buy antibiotics, televisions, etc, etc. True, but there’s plenty of things that could have been bought in ancient Rome that simply aren’t for sale today.
- xeromal 7y agoI know there was a plant that acted as a birth control the the Romans used until it was extinct.
- seibelj 7y agoSilphium, a drug that induced abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium
- leesec 7y agoWhat are some examples?
- ThrustVectoring 7y agoRomans were far more tolerant of official corruption for one. Appointment to government positions and influence over government officials were pretty much blatantly for-sale.
- treerunner 7y agoReally? This doesn’t sound very different to me.
- cambalache 7y agoLOL, agree, from all the examples he could give, he chose the worst one. That has not changed at all.
- soperj 7y ago
- clairity 7y agothat’s still a boatload of duckets (ducats, for the intelligentsia). it would have bought basically anything you wanted. $400MM is roughly what lebron james has made from basketball (aside from side hustles), so the comparison of best athlete of his time is likely apt at least.
- redis_mlc 7y ago> And if you want to be really persnickety, no amount of money in Rome would buy antibiotics, televisions, etc, etc. Apparently they had advanced plastic surgery using obsidian blades, and must have had some type of antibiotics for all that surgery. https://bulletin.facs.org/2018/02/the-history-of-the-scalpel-from-flint-to-zirconium-coated-steel/ https://bulletin.facs.org/2018/02/the-history-of-the-scalpel...
- pjc50 7y agoUnfortunately they didn't. They didn't have anaesthetic either, beyond the usual drugs and alcohol.
- kalium_xyz 7y agoPlastic surgery is as old as civilization and possibly older, there are recorded procedures for doing rhinoplasty in ancient Egypt. I’d attribute the reason for this being certain bones in the face breaking and mending easily.
- c3534l 7y agoComparisons beyond 100 years or so are largely meaningless. You're right about purchasing power, and that leads to your last point which is that what could actually be bought was so fundamentally different that attempting to do so is almost always going to mislead the public and be irresponsible. But it's one of those things that reporters and journalists can't help themselves from doing.
- greggman3 7y agoIs 100yrs that hard? I recently watched "The Little Giant" (1933) where the main character claims to have over a million dollars and is kind of retiring. I found it fun to look up what that million dollars would be worth today. According to one site it is $18 million. He went to a hotel in Santa Barbara where he was paying $45 a night for a giant suite. That comes out to over $800 a night which sounds like it might be in the correct ballpark. He gave is girlfriend who he was breaking up with a check for $25k which came out to about $500k in todays terms it seems. He rented a 20 bedroom 12 bathroom mansion for $1450 a month which is apparently $25k today. Sounds reasonable for a 20 bedroom mansion? Those all seem like reasonable numbers. PS: not recommending the movie. It was cute but not great.
- cheez 7y agoWell... That's less than 100 years ago so....
- malux85 7y agoThis isn’t some threshold below which results are meaningless, it’s a time period approximation. Given the lack of computerised record keeping at the time compared to now, it’s more important to have a reliable metric from the period than hit the 100y mark exactly
- akiselev 7y agoThat's measuring the monetary value while ignoring actual utility. No amount of money could have bought a polio vaccine or advanced cancer treatments or genetic testing or microelectronics in 1933 but these are common things across the world now. Purchasing power doesn't just grow in quantity, it grows in technological sophistication that make any comparison between now and even the early 20th century more than useless - they're actively misleading. The biggest growth is in industrial production and distribution of goods and it isn't really quantifiable.
- quickthrower2 7y agoAnd if you want to be really persnickety... let's see how much money it would take to get CO2 levels down to Roman times! It would cost $0 in Roman Times, and trillions now, so ... they were all rich?
- grawprog 7y agoWell...not $0: https://www.livescience.com/23678-methane-emissions-roman-times.html https://www.livescience.com/23678-methane-emissions-roman-ti... >researchers found that methane production was high around 100 B.C., during the heyday of the Roman civilization, and waned around A.D. 200 as the empire faltered. The methane was released when Romans burned down forest to clear land for crops and expanding settlements, Sapart said.
- sergeykish 7y agoYep! These were Little Ice Age prevention measures, or maybe Roman Warm Period investments. Still expenses. State should have been involved, economic incentives, campaigns like "Burn the coal - stay Huns home" Everyone knew it, but then as now too little to late https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Warm_Period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Warm_Period
- jdminhbg 7y agoCO2 levels now aren't great, but I'm not sure Roman-era lead emissions were an improvement: https://phys.org/news/2019-05-roman-polluted-european-air-heavily.html https://phys.org/news/2019-05-roman-polluted-european-air-he...
- m463 7y agoI grant you a city with all its subjects and a position in my government.
- angel_j 7y agoYour persnickety line is precisely why you would use Gold instead of commodities for the comparison. The appreciation of Gold is perhaps the best stand-in for the value of technological progress since then (including financial technology, e.g. if the Roman held onto that gold to from then until day). And to be really persnickety, staple purchasing power is hardly a ruler for enormous wealth.
- rorykoehler 7y agoNet worth per capita is another measurement worth considering. $400m at roman population size is nuts.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoTrue to all you said, but no athlete can do (the equivalent of) this today: “His total take home amounted to five times the earnings of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period – enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a fifth of a year”.
- DavidSJ 7y agoThis is basically the same problem that cross-cultural or -temporal IQ comparisons have.
- sergeykish 7y agoHe could fed megalopolis of his time (with what they expected), and pay soldiers of empire of his time, shouldn't we adjust this as well? * Feed New York for one year, grocery expenses $500/month [1] 8000000 * $500/month * 12 month = $48 billion 18000000 * $500/month * 12 month = $108 billion // metro area * Pay US Army soldiers for a fifth of a year [2] $140 billion / 5 = $28 billion Who have enough to pay that? Contemporary athletes, even Michael Jordan ($2.1 billion [3]) absolutely can't. But Bill Gates ($106 billion [4]) can! As well as Jeff Bezos ($114 billion). Was antique inequality bigger? Yes! "It is believed that Marcus Licinius Crassus expanded his personal fortune to 170 million sesterces, while Pliny the Elder surmised his fortune to be valued even higher, at 200 million sesterces" [5]. That's five times bigger. And Augustus "personally owned all of Egypt". That's $898 billions [6] [1] https://smartasset.com/mortgage/what-is-the-cost-of-living-in-new-york-city https://smartasset.com/mortgage/what-is-the-cost-of-living-i... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_... [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wea...
- throwaway2048 7y agoIts funny how many comments in this article question that an athlete could have such absurd wealth, but don't pause to think that there are many modern people that have multiples of his claimed 15 billion in wealth, which is somehow completely not absurd...
- golergka 7y agoI think you're confusing discussions about whether something is (or was) true and discussions about whether something should be true be some moral standards, the classic Hume's is/ought distinction. People in the comments here don't seem to be making any value judgements, just arguing about historical truth.
- asjw 7y ago> pretty much the only thing that matters is how you compare purchasing power and adjust for inflation Or just compare it to the average salary at the time Is there an athlete today that could pay for the entire Roman army (80 thousand people more or less, their salary, food, houses, equipment) for a year? The 1,000$/year expenses on staple food is entirely made up, Roman food supply wasn't based on agriculture, at the dawn of Rome it was vegetables, catch of the day and the occasional meat bought at the market When Rome became an empire the food started coming from all over the place as a tribute to the empire, so to establish how much it costs you have to factor in military expenditure and the cost of the political structure to sustain the logistic Romans in fact rarely ate at home, they usually went to tabernas where they could buy their meals Supplies were taken from the provinces and brought to Rome, that's why they also built roadways, harbours and other facilities to improve moving armies and good throughout the empire ("all roads lead to Rome" was born from that) Now you have a better idea how much 5 times a local governor means. It means 5 times the amount of goods and troops a local governor could control. It's like saying that an athlete today earned 5 times the GDP of an US State.
- zozbot234 7y ago"Average salary at the time" was of course far lower than today's. It's like what we hear about folks in Sub-Saharan Africa that still have to subsist on $2 per day - the reality for most folks back then wasn't far from that.
- asjw 7y agoLower doesn't mean anything, when compared relatively You have to compare the wealth of the rich guy with the average wealth at the time not with today's standards... And even today, 2$ a day seem low but it's about how much the US government is giving away as aid too poor people to eat (it's about 3.4$ a day) It doesn't mean anything if it's not compared with something that has the same base (hence my whole comment about Roman food cost that should include expenses for keeping the military state running)
- zozbot234 7y ago
- im3w1l 7y agoThe two big metrics I would use to measure inflation * How many acres of average quality land could you buy? * How many hours of average skill labor could you buy? Maybe we should also have one taking improved efficiency into account * How much food could you buy?
- zozbot234 7y ago"Average skill labor" would not account for a reasonable comparison in standards of living. It takes the exact same amount of "average skill labor" to perform a string quartet in 2020 as it did in 1720, but the cost today is far higher than it was back then, if assessed via a reasonable consumption basket (perhaps involving chained comparisons over time, etc.). That's no coincidence, of course; performing a string quartet is the rare case of a good/service that has not been made cheaper by technological progress and growth. Comparing by food prices, while ultimately a bit more reasonable, would plausibly err in the other direction since food prices have radically fallen in modern times. It's very helpful to expand the basket beyond food, and additional historical data helps take a guess at questions like "how much would good X have been valued in Roman times, if it was available on the market?"
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- b0rsuk 7y agoBut some things got more expensive over time. Human labor, manufacture, handicraft.