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$450 when corrected for inflation.
by davikr 1y ago
$450 when corrected for inflation.
- tim333 1y agoIn 1945 they had the gold standard at $35/oz so $27.50 would have been 0.7857 oz of gold currently worth $2540.
- standeven 1y agoIs this a reasonable metric though? No one was buying books in 1945 with gold.
- koolba 1y agoIf I were selling books in Europe in 1945, I’d much prefer gold to Reichsmarks.
- killingtime74 1y agoIt's a better metric than the estimate of the dollar inflation. Gold standard was in use until 1971
- jonhohle 1y agoGold is considered to have relatively consistent value over time. Median home price in 1940 Boston area was $3,600 or 180oz gold. Today the median home price is 215oz of gold in the same area (or $670,000). In terms of gold, house prices are up 20%. In terms of dollars, 18000%. A new car still costs around 13oz of gold. Real inflation of fiat is easy to obscure for political reasons. That’s much harder to do with the market value of gold.
- Aurornis 1y ago> Gold is considered to have relatively consistent value over time. Not really. It has fluctuated a lot. You can pick starting and ending points a few years apart and come up with very different results relative to actual inflation. > A new car still costs around 13oz of gold. Now take this idea and average it across a large number of different items and you arrive at inflation statistics, which are better than using 1 commodity or 1 purchasable item as a benchmark.
- thatcat 1y agoUsing core, required assets actually makes more sense considering recurring purchases tend to change over time.
- boroboro4 1y ago> Now take this idea and average it across a large number of different items and you arrive at inflation statistics If only it was as simple: you will need to introduce weights between different items, and account to the change of those weights too. Also gold isn't just commodity, it's monetary commodity. If you use official inflation dollars you get 1$ 1940 ~= 23$ 2025. You can see how magnitude wrong it is for housing or cars in the example above. Here's food prices from 1940 diner: > A 25-cent platter, 5-cent hotdog, and 10-cent hamburger. Also doesn't really work with official inflation dollars either. And again works much better with gold prices.
- kemotep 1y agoMedian household income in the 1940’s seems to be something like $2,600. Using your inflation figure that is ~$59800 in today’s dollars. 2024 there seems to be an estimated ~$75,000 median household income. Housing and cars are also apples and oranges seeing that the average family size and sq footage for even 50’s homes is completely different than today. Today fewer people are living in significantly larger spaces than was normal back then.
- b112 1y ago[flagged]
- tstrimple 1y agoThis is what passes for "intellectual contributions" for Hackernews. Notice there is zero dang's preaching about the values of HN to posts like these. He reserves his warnings for things that are popular but also goes against his fascist administration. This site is chock full of outright bigotry but it's acceptable as long as you present it politely.
- cyberax 1y ago> In terms of gold, house prices are up 20% Except that the gold price fluctuated by 50% within the last 30 years: https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html
- deeg 1y ago> A new car still costs around 13oz of gold But a new car today is vastly different from a 1940s car, so different that it's nonsensical to use it to compare purchasing power of gold.
- ekianjo 1y agoIt's all about utility. So it does not really matter how better or worse cars are over time
- maxerickson 1y agoThat is a very interesting utility function
- ekianjo 1y agoIf you need to go 50 km away from where you live what functions the car has is irrelevant besides getting you there at the end of the day.
- maxerickson 1y agoSure, but modern cars are in fact much, much better at this. New cars aren't necessarily a lot better than cars built 20 years ago, but compared to anything built before EFI they are vastly more reliable. And then you could also talk about radial tires if you are comparing to the 1940s. While you are fiddling with your carb and fixing 2 flat tires, I'm cruising along with a misfiring cylinder and a nail causing a slow leak.
- ulfw 1y agoWhat is a 'car'? I don't know what a car is. Sorry. Is it a used Ford Bronco for $2000 or a Ferrari Purasongue for $450,000? They have basically the same utility. What is a car?
- kurthr 1y agoNaw. Just look at the plots over the last hundred years. Lately, it's become just as financialized at bitcoin or any of the other "stores of value". https://www.5yearcharts.com/historical-gold-price-chart-how-much-is-gold-worth/ https://www.5yearcharts.com/historical-gold-price-chart-how-...
- ajross 1y ago> Gold is considered to have relatively consistent value over time. Uh... Gold has doubled in the last two years. Fast forward past the trade war and it'll likely crash again. Gold is far, far more volatile than currencies. More even than securities, and frankly even most commodities are more stable.
- jonhohle 1y agoMy grocery bill has doubled over roughly the same time period.
- ajross 1y ago"Groceries" likewise make extremely poor metrics for "consistent value". Also "grocery bill" sounds like you're trying to sneak in an argument about inflation, and not value (gold inflates too!). Also, too, no it hasn't, not remotely. Don't hyperbolize, it cheapens the discourse. Food CPI is about 1-2% higher than general CPI right now. (Or maybe you moved from CDMX to San Jose or something, likewise not a statement about value).
- rat87 1y agoMedian home prices have risen. Home prices have gotten out of control due to limits on supply that's one of the main factors of inflation. Cars today are very different then cars back then and come with more features. The dollar is what we use for currency and the measurement of inflation is well defined (even if there can be good faith argument of which inflation works better especially when comparing long term) meanwhile gold is just shiny rocks
- Retric 1y ago> A new car still costs around 13oz of gold. A car or house built in 2025 is very different object than one built in 1945. Consistent commodities like coal, rice, or silver make better points of comparison, but each give wildly different values for inflation just as gold does. Inflation doesn’t mean anything specific on very long timescales because the underlying economy fundamentally changes. There’s really nothing suggesting gold is a more fundamental measure of value than silver which was far more commonly traded. IMO the reason people focus on gold today is its more consistent use in video games as a currency rather than say platinum. There’s just never been enough gold to use as a common medium of exchange between individuals, but in virtual worlds that’s a non issue.
- jjk166 1y agoHouses built in 1945 are still on the market for comparable prices to those built in 2025
- Retric 1y agoNope land is comparable, subtract that out and you’ll see a huge difference as you literally can’t legally build a house that shitty in most areas. These things were typically ~750 SF and had terrible insulation via single pane windows etc. Survivorship bias means most of the lowest quality housing stock either didn’t survive or was significantly upgraded, but that’s irrelevant when talking about what was being built.
- pyuser583 1y agoIn 1945, private ownership of gold was illegal. Being contraband, its value was pretty static. The ban was only lifted once we adopted fiat currency, and it became not particularly useful for trade.
- AtlasBarfed 1y agodesilvering of coins was in the 1965 coin act. So if they paid in dimes/quarters/ half dollars /dollars, they were paying in silver
- hilsdev 1y agoAll cash was convertible to gold at a fixed rate, so more or less they were
- jltsiren 1y agoIn 1945, US GDP per capita was almost $1600. Using your conversion factors, that would be almost $150k today. The actual number is something like $85k. I don't think Americans are that much poorer today than they were 80 years ago.
- hilsdev 1y agoYou’re starting to get into the theories of how they hide true inflation
- rileytg 1y agoi’m american, what’s the price in big macs?
- qingcharles 1y agoFour myocardial infarctions.
- rat87 1y agoPoe's law strikes again. Is this supposed to be a parody of goldbugs or do you seriously think Americans were that much richer in 1945? Without a wink we don't know
- anshumankmr 1y ago1945 is the year 5 AMC (After McDonalds)
- andrei_says_ 1y agoHow is GDP per capita a useful measure in the presence of almost-trillionaires? Depending on which city they sleep in, Bezos or Musk make all local citizens multimillionaires. Per capita. Statistically.
- actionfromafar 1y agoThis is very true. One should look at some select percentiles instead, IMHO.
- ajross 1y agoGold is volatile. Two years ago it would have been half that.
- voxic11 1y agoIn 1945 US citizens were banned from owning gold so the exchange rate was not really tethered to the common value of the dollar.