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How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today?

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Re: How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today?

#21

Post by RustyRussell »

picea wrote: post #10
wqfeng wrote: post #2

It's interesting. I'd like to see more countries. How about ￥1 1980 today ?

I haven't looked for others but Australia has a convenient calculator: http://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html

1 pound 10 shillings in 1945 (which would convert to $1.50 in 1965 with the changeover to decimal) becomes $98.74 in 2013. Ouch!

Re: How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today?

#23

Post by aidenn0 »

Even better: the half-cent was last minted in 1857 so:

    $us0.005 1857 today

    14.04¢ (2014 US dollars)
So the half-cent was worth more than a dime when it was eliminated, and the penny (new smallest denomination) was worth more than a quarter. We could simplify our currency by eliminating all coins smaller than a quarter and have currency in similar resolution to 1857.

Re: How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today?

#24

Post by aidenn0 »

benched wrote: post #18

Inflation is very powerful. I always feel like people don't think about it in enough detail. For example, the year that your dollars were worth twice what they are now? That would be the long-ago time of ... 1988. Did you learn your general sense for how much "20 dollars" is in the '80s? Doesn't "40 dollars" just sound like more, somehow? I wonder how many people mentally account for just how elastic nominal amounts…

I know, and you rarely see a $50 (in fact many places will refuse to take notes larger than $20) despite the fact that $20 notes were common in the 80s and a $50 is similarly valued now.

Re: How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today?

#25

Post by ganeumann »

WalterBright wrote: post #22

The US had no net inflation from 1800-1914, and endemic inflation ever since.

And thus William Jennings Bryan's famous Cross of Gold speech: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

The gold standard meant that there was no ability to increase the monetary base (and thus no inflation!) at that time (1890s), causing much bitterness among populists.

Re: How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today?

#26

Post by billforsternz »

benched wrote: post #18

Inflation is very powerful. I always feel like people don't think about it in enough detail. For example, the year that your dollars were worth twice what they are now? That would be the long-ago time of ... 1988. Did you learn your general sense for how much "20 dollars" is in the '80s? Doesn't "40 dollars" just sound like more, somehow? I wonder how many people mentally account for just how elastic nominal amounts…

Don't forget though that not all goods are affected the same way. I remember working on a project in the early 1980s. We decided that the future was non-volatile solid state memory and that Intel's new "bubble memory" looked pretty sweet. From memory it cost something like $NZ1000 for 100Kbytes, yes that is K for Kilo, of solid state, non volatile memory. Today a 16Gbyte flash drive costs around $NZ10 retail. So in round terms today we get something like 100,000 times the bang for one hundredth of the buck. And of course the modern product is hugely preferable in terms of speed, size, weight, robustness, power consumption and any other metric you can name. Obviously tech is a standout field, but there are others, air travel for example.

Re: How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today?

#28

Post by chad_oliver »

aidenn0 wrote: post #24
benched wrote: post #18

Inflation is very powerful. I always feel like people don't think about it in enough detail. For example, the year that your dollars were worth twice what they are now? That would be the long-ago time of ... 1988. Did you learn your general sense for how much "20 dollars" is in the '80s? Doesn't "40 dollars" just sound like more, somehow? I wonder how many people mentally account for just how elastic nominal amounts…

I know, and you rarely see a $50 (in fact many places will refuse to take notes larger than $20) despite the fact that $20 notes were common in the 80s and a $50 is similarly valued now.

To be fair, credit cards* are much more common now than they were in the 80s. Cash is mostly a back-up medium.

* or Eftpos cards, if you're in Australia or New Zealand.

Re: How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today?

#29

Post by aidenn0 »

chad_oliver wrote: post #28
aidenn0 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, and you rarely see a $50 (in fact many places will refuse to take notes larger than $20) despite the fact that $20 notes were common in the 80s and a $50 is similarly valued now.

To be fair, credit cards* are much more common now than they were in the 80s. Cash is mostly a back-up medium. * or Eftpos cards, if you're in Australia or New Zealand.

Naturally. My grandfater did business meetings in NYC, and a lot of restaurants even didn't take charge cards (credit cards weren't even a blip on the radar). He would probably bring a few thousand dollars in cash with him on those trips.

I can't imagine carrying that much cash, even before the bump for inflation!

Re: How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today?

#30

Post by shearnie »

jccooper wrote: post #14

If you had $1.50 in 1945 and held it until today, you'd have $1.50. Problem is, in 1945 it would have bought you lunch for a week, and today it would buy you one miniature fast food hamburger. My parents tell me tales of my great grandparents who didn't trust the banks and probably buried money in the yard near where I live. If they buried it in cash, well, it wouldn't be a very impressive sum today. That same $1.50…

My wife's grandad left her some cash as an inheritance. It was only something around 20k. But he saved diligently for his grandkids for years and year even before they were born. I wonder if at the time it was a decent savings but just destroyed by inflation.
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