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What things cost in ancient Rome

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Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#31

Post by DanielBMarkham »

dmix wrote: post #30
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

Love the flowery language. Yep -- anybody who thinks government can control prices should take a look at history. This kind of thinking goes back a long ways. Wiki has the result: "However, the Edict did not solve the problem, as Diocletian's mass minting of coins of low metallic value continued to increase inflation, and the maximum prices in the Edict were apparently too low. Merchants either stopped producing good…

Ancient Rome had a population of roughly one million people. That's quite a large market for a government to attempt to manipulate back then, especially before any financial system had matured. Now with populations a hundred times the size and economies many times more complex, its interesting how they are still trying.

Did you check out the penalty? Death.

You sell a loaf of bread for a proscribed price and they come and kill you. I would imagine the arresting, jury, and trial took only a very short amount of time.

There's a human urge to try to micromanage economics. It all looks so simple. You just set the price of bread so that everybody can afford a loaf each day. How much easier could it get? Or if people are poor, just up the minimum wage. Heck, make the minimum wage 100 bucks an hour and we'll all be upper middle-class! All of us! Above average. All it would take would be some smart politicians to write a law.

Somebody once said that voters should have one year of economics before they would be allowed to vote. I'm against that, but the guy had a point: of all the political topics, economics is the most non-intuitive.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#33

Post by jodrellblank »

pg wrote: post #11
swombat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question is meaningless. Why? 1) The value of the denarius was clearly subject to inflation, and so varied greatly. You could say "how much was the denarius worth of October 1st, 10 AD?", but that value would have changed by the next day. In fact, around the time this edict was proclaimed, clearly the value of the denarius was inflating rapidly. 2) The only way you could come up with a relative value for even on…

That is a complicated issue. If it's not meaningless to ask what a dollar 50 years ago was worth in present terms, then it isn't meaningless to ask about further back. E.g. the answer would appear not to be a trillion, or a trillionth. However, while this seems to be the view of most economists, I think it's meaningless to ask even what the value of a dollar 50 years ago was, because we are so much richer now. A doll…

I found a National Geographic Moon Landing Special from 1969 the other day. It being more than a decade older than me, I was amused at the adverts in the front.

Watches with "electric" (rather than 'electronic') precision, that run for a year on a power cell and don't need winding (gasp!).

A stereo where the 'stereo' ability was the main feature (woo!).

Polaroid cameras advertising all the brilliant things you could do for your business by having a near-instant photo (You mean they didn't bother inventing a digital camera to take to the moon? What were they doing?).

A cadillac, an oldsmobile, a steel framed suitcase, a Hassleblad camera crowing about auto-wind-on film, an insurance company covering an elephant on a raft, a dishwasher...

A mere 40 years ago, and a lot of the products have an air of being low-spec, basic, simplistic, even. Growth in wealth? Aye.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#35

Post by netcan »

pg wrote: post #11
swombat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question is meaningless. Why? 1) The value of the denarius was clearly subject to inflation, and so varied greatly. You could say "how much was the denarius worth of October 1st, 10 AD?", but that value would have changed by the next day. In fact, around the time this edict was proclaimed, clearly the value of the denarius was inflating rapidly. 2) The only way you could come up with a relative value for even on…

That is a complicated issue. If it's not meaningless to ask what a dollar 50 years ago was worth in present terms, then it isn't meaningless to ask about further back. E.g. the answer would appear not to be a trillion, or a trillionth. However, while this seems to be the view of most economists, I think it's meaningless to ask even what the value of a dollar 50 years ago was, because we are so much richer now. A doll…

I think here we have an 'IQ Test Problem.'

We define money in terms of wealth & then are forced to define wealth in terms of money. Even using item baskets as a unit of wealth is really doomed to imperfection. All you are doing is attempting to standardise wealth. That's what money try's to do.

In any case, while I disagree that it is meaningless to make comparisons, I think that it is meaningful to discuss the value of money. Wealth is not a precise unit. I'm not at all sure that makes it meaningless. But I'd rather avoid defining it as that which a basket measures.

Emotional wealth anyone?

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#36

Post by kragen »

jacquesm wrote: post #6

Very interesting read! It seems that once again, those that don't study history are bound to repeat it. It's noteworthy how teachers were paid 'by the pupil', and how architecture is apparently lower on the social ladder than rhetoric. An advocates fee for a pleading works out to teaching 5 pupils geometry for a month. Some things never change!

Architecture is still lower on the social ladder than rhetoric; rhetoric is what politicians, CEOs, lawyers, judges, lobbyists, and to a lesser degree, managers, specialize in.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#37

Post by jwilliams »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

Love the flowery language. Yep -- anybody who thinks government can control prices should take a look at history. This kind of thinking goes back a long ways. Wiki has the result: "However, the Edict did not solve the problem, as Diocletian's mass minting of coins of low metallic value continued to increase inflation, and the maximum prices in the Edict were apparently too low. Merchants either stopped producing good…

Indeed - Mugabe attempted the same in Zimbabwe 18 months ago: http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20070706-Robert-Mugabe-dri...

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#38

Post by jacquesm »

ardit33 wrote: post #9
sam_in_nyc wrote: post #2

History is a fascinating topic. It's a bit hard to make sense of this without seeing it converted into current units ($/lb or something).

Here are the very basic: Pork 1 Italian pound 12 Assuming a person eats 1/2 of meat a day, plus bread and other stuff, you could deduct that it would take about 8-10 Denarii per day for a person to feed themseleves. The lowes wage, is for unskilled famer: Farm laborer, with maintenance (daily) 25 So about 33% of the income is spend on food, nevermind basic necessities. But when you compare to today's countries in dev…

I think the 'with maintenance' means 'room & board'.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#39

Post by dhughes »

jwilliams wrote: post #37
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

Love the flowery language. Yep -- anybody who thinks government can control prices should take a look at history. This kind of thinking goes back a long ways. Wiki has the result: "However, the Edict did not solve the problem, as Diocletian's mass minting of coins of low metallic value continued to increase inflation, and the maximum prices in the Edict were apparently too low. Merchants either stopped producing good…

Indeed - Mugabe attempted the same in Zimbabwe 18 months ago: http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20070706-Robert-Mugabe-dri...

As did Chavez.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#40

Post by tlb »

swombat wrote: post #10
bprater wrote: post #7

How much is a denarius worth in today's US dollars?

This question is meaningless. Why? 1) The value of the denarius was clearly subject to inflation, and so varied greatly. You could say "how much was the denarius worth of October 1st, 10 AD?", but that value would have changed by the next day. In fact, around the time this edict was proclaimed, clearly the value of the denarius was inflating rapidly. 2) The only way you could come up with a relative value for even on…

It is hard to make a good comparison because the economy was so fundamentally different. Our modern kg of corn could be anywhere from pennies (for animal feed) to several bucks at Whole Foods. Which do you compare against?

(In fact, what we call corn is a new world crop, unknown in Europe until the 16th century. The word would have referred to barley or wheat before that.) So not even the most basic foodstuffs were comparable.

Wages are a much better basis for comparison. Unskilled, medium-skilled, and high-skilled jobs are pretty comparable now and then.

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