When the Federal Reserve began in 1913, the average wage was 25 cents an hour. To match real inflation today, that wage would need to be about 250 dollars an hour.
They stole 90% of our money.
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Average home prices in San Francisco: According to the U.S. Census Bureau's historical housing reports and local real estate listings in the San Francisco Chronicle (archived via newspapers.com and the California Digital Newspaper Collection):The median sale price for a single-family home was approximately $4,500–$5,500. "Nice" upper-middle-class family homes (well-built, in desirable areas like Pacific Heights or the Western Addition) ranged from $6,000 to $10,000.
Specific examples from 1913 advertisements:A 5-room cottage in the Mission District: $3,500–$4,000. A 7-room Queen Anne Victorian in Noe Valley (newly rebuilt post-1906): $6,500. A 6-bedroom Edwardian in the Richmond District with bay windows and hardwood floors: $7,500–$8,500. Luxury homes in Pacific Heights could exceed $15,000, but these were not typical "family" houses.
Here is an old Victorian place for sale right now in Pacific Heights for $2,995,000
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2275-California-St-San-Francisco-CA-94115/332851252_zpid/
Divide 2,995,000 by 15,000 and that is the real minimum conservative estimate for inflation.
So it is about 199x. In other words $1.00 from 1913 is worth about $199.00 today. That is a really a pretty conservative estimate as other houses are selling for 10mil or more in the same area right now. You could easily argue $1 in 1913 is $500 today.
what in the common core tarnation is this??
Yeah, here is a 10mil example https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2800-Pacific-Ave-San-Francisco-CA-94115/15080877_zpid/
Do the common core math on that one. That house would have cost $15-20k in 1913.
Yeah, things definitely get a little wonky with us having used a totally different currency.
Setting prices back to compare using it leads to different results.
Then you have complications from material production, historical value, etc.
I’m gonna do a deep dive on it at some point. Got some pricing records from the time.
It seems pretty certain that actual price discovery is gonna be an educated guess, complicated by the things we are about to have moving forward.
Its still the $USD....Not actually a difference currency.....Regardless of what it is backed by. I mean you could argue that a federal reserve note is not a silver/gold certificate. Even if you do take the value of a federal reserve note from 1914 and compare its value (buying power) to today its 200-500 times less valuable. Do you see my point now? (I know that you could trade a gold/silver certificate for actual gold/silver but there is no need for speculation that because we know the current price).
Inflation gets real tricky because “real” inflation data is not as easy to find. They typically report CPI (consumer price index), which is real inflation, sampled from a selection of markets and goods, and as soon as some product in CPI is making the metric look bad overall, they add or remove items to get CPI where they want it to be, without any actual economic changes having been made, only calculation changes.
My argument past that is essentially that the FRN is a wholly separate currency from the USD that is often called the “dollar”, but in reality is a “dollar bill” or a “bill for a dollar” that they don’t intend to pay. I’ve added some info on different aspects involved here, below.
You can probably see from some of these graphics, and if you look into CPI’s calculation vs M1+M2+M3 real inflation YoY over time, and taking into account materials changes and manufacturing efficiencies and such, why it’s real tricky to say what actual inflation has been since 1913.
“They almost successfully stole everything.” is probably a decent summary. What you posted is still good info, I’m just not sure it’s possible to get to the specific answer. Maybe AI could do it?
https://greatawakening.win/p/17sic6mdMe/critical-distinction--legal-vs-l/c/
https://greatawakening.win/p/199OKVNTZB/what-is-a-dollar-bill/c/
https://greatawakening.win/p/19BtUbb322/5th-geration-monetary-informatio/c/
https://greatawakening.win/p/17sic94WfJ/for-our-silver-bugs-out-there/c/
https://greatawakening.win/p/19AKd1zoPI/coins-financial-school/c/
https://greatawakening.win/p/17txRDGRRC/how-is-the-silver-spot-price-cal/c/
https://greatawakening.win/p/199hXKb93U/upend-the-pyramids/c/
https://greatawakening.win/p/17t1kD6BUb/x/c/4ZBIxM7Naze
u/pbman u/darq2light
Good stuff. Thanks for taking the time to post this. I used property as a real world example for inflation because I believe it to be the most realistic example of something that people actually need and use while also being something that isn't really changed too much by advances in technology (which is why I specifically used a Victorian house in SF as an example in the thread: something that existed in 1913/1914. Had a market value then and has one now). You could use food too but that has changed a lot with tech advances. I agree that its pretty hard to calculate actual inflation specifically but honestly if it has made our "currency" hundreds of times less valuable in 111 years then it is not a very good store of value now is it? END THE FED