3 ms·

> Instead, $100 in 1914 is worth $3.05 today. Doesn't that mean $3.05 in 1914 us worth $100 today?

• stavros 7mo ago
  Yeah, they must have gotten it the wrong way around.
  • win311fwg 7mo ago
    Both are valid, depending on perspective. The joy of English.
    • silisili 7mo ago
      I'm having trouble coming up with a valid use case of the way it's written, mind sharing?
      • phil21 7mo ago
        "worth" can have two meanings in this context. $100 from 1917 can be worth exactly $100 today. Or it can be worth what you can buy with it. Some folks will see a $100 bill from the era and see an old $100 bill. Some folks will imagine what that $100 took to save back then, and what it bought. FWIW my brain automatically went with "the goods that can be bought with $100" - such as what I could buy in a grocery store today with $100 would be about what I could buy with $3 back then. I never considered the other reading until this thread. It was obvious to me the author meant "you can buy 97% less stuff today with the same $100".
        • stavros 7mo ago
          I don't understand how you mean. They say $100 back then, in what meaning is a $100 bill back then worth the same as having $3 today?
          • krackers 7mo ago
            I think it's used to convey that the buying power has been reduced. If you have a $100 basket of goods (as measured in 1914 dollars), $100 in 1914 allows you to buy 1 basket of goods. Due to the devaluation, today spending $100 would only give you a $3.05 basket of goods (as measured in 1914 dollars). It's a bit of an odd comparison since you're using two different units for dollars to compare the basket vs purchasing dollar. The clearer way to say it is that today's $100 basket of goods is equivalent to $3.95 basket of goods of 1914.
    • gwbas1c 7mo ago
      No, it's very clearly a typo and doesn't depend on perspective. English isn't that ambiguous.
      • win311fwg 6mo ago
        It's clearly not. Think about it: - If you had $100 in 1914, it is worth $3.05 today. Inflation erodes value; amount goes down. - But it is also true that if you had $3.05 in 1914 that it is worth $100 today. Inflation sees price rise; amount goes up. - And it is even true that if you had $100 in 1914 that it is worth $100 today. Inflation does not affect face value; amount stays the same.
• kogus 7mo ago
  I'm pretty sure you are right. Or to emphasize the devaluation, "$100 today would be worth only $3.05 in 1914." I think it is astonishing that we accept that in a best case scenario of sustained 2% inflation, we are literally planning for the value of the dollar to be cut in half every 36 years.
  • empthought 7mo ago
    Dollars that people hold onto, instead of using to purchase something else of value, are effectively worthless to everyone.
    • rationalist 7mo ago
      That means there are less dollars in circulation, which is the opposite of inflation.
      • empthought 7mo ago
        Yes, I wasn’t clear. I was offering a reason why dollars “losing value” is not actually a thing to worry about. If they didn’t lose value, people would hold onto them instead of spending them. Which is objectively a loss to everyone, regardless of how you decide to denominate it.
  • ramesh31 7mo ago
    >I think it is astonishing that we accept that in a best case scenario of sustained 2% inflation, we are literally planning for the value of the dollar to be cut in half every 36 years. Our system is designed to encourage asset ownership, not cash saving. If you stuff it under a mattress for 36 years, yeah you'll get fleeced. But buying assets is the way to keep up; an investment of $100 in the S&P500 in 1990 and never touched would be worth $4,120.93 today.
• eykanal 7mo ago
  The purchasing power of $3.05 in 1914 would require $100 in today's time. A bag of "stuff" worth $100 today could have been purchased for $3.05 in 1914. Technically, it does mean that $3.05 from 1914 is worth $100 today, but that's not a useful way of thinking about this. I.e., if your great-grandfather put $3.05 in an envelope in 1914 and you opened it today, it's still $3.05 worth of money (ignoring wheat pennies being a collectors items and whatnot).