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I had tried out that Bank of England page, while I was writing the article, but I decided not to mention it. It wasn't clear to me that £10 in London in 1735 wo
by mjd 2y ago
I had tried out that Bank of England page, while I was writing the article, but I decided not to mention it. It wasn't clear to me that £10 in London in 1735 would mean the same thing as £10 in Philadelphia, where hard money was probably much scarcer. So I left it out.
- ralferoo 2y agoIt should be approximately the same in theory - £1 was pegged to the price of silver, although of course there might be local differences in demand causing the price of silver to vary relative to the price of gold. In practice, I think the values should be approximately the same, as significant regional variations would be normalised to speculators moving them around from place to place to make a profit until the demand reached an equilibirium.
- mjd 2y agoBut the price of goods is going to be completely different because of availability, shipping costs, import duties, etc. etc. etc. Franklin's Autobiography has that famous story about his first day in Philadelphia when he tried to buy three pennies' worth of bread and was taken by surprise hen he got three giant rolls instead of the tiny loaf he was expecting. And that was just the difference between Boston and Philadelphia.