
How much would $1.50 in 1945 be worth today? - wqfeng
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.50+1945+today
======
jccooper
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 invested at 3%, you'd have... $12.22 today. A little better,
but inflation's still pretty rough. You'd have been better off buying that
pair of overalls in 1945.

Now, $1.50 worth of gold in 1945 would be worth $57-ish today, so if my great
grandparents didn't trust the greenback either, then that theoretical coffee
can is worth something. But don't take that as investment advice; the dollar
price of gold went through the roof when the dollar was taken off the gold
standard (go figure) and that's not going to happen twice.

~~~
shearnie
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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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.

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EricBurnett
I get the query "$1.50 1945 today" with no answer. What am I supposed to see?

~~~
sanswork
Change it to $1.50usd 1945 today to see what the OP expected you to see.

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baldajan
Fix: $1.50 USD 1945 today

The problem with this query is, wolframalpha auto detects location and uses
the $ currency (if available) in that country. So it only really works in the
states, and maybe countries that don't have a $ currency.

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Jxnathan
$1.50 in 1785 (when US dollars were issued)
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.50+1785+today](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%241.50+1785+today)

~~~
rangibaby
I was more surprised at the lack of inflation (about the same between 1785 and
1945 and 1945 and now).

~~~
ChristianMarks
Interestingly, the period after 1945 coincides with the explosive growth in
computing performance, according to William Nordhaus of Yale University in a
2002 study entitled The _Progress of Computing_ [1].

Nordhaus documents computer performance improvements on the order of 1 trillon
to 5 trillion times "...in constant dollars or in terms of labor units since
1900." During that period, Nordhaus notes that "...there were relatively small
improvements in efficiency (perhaps a factor of ten) in the century before
World War II. Around World War II, however, there was a substantial
acceleration in productivity, and the growth in computer power from 1940 to
2002 has averaged close to 50 percent per year."

Automation really picked up in industry in the period since 1970, which has
seen relatively stagnant wages for most of the working population.

[1]
[http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/prog_030402_all.pdf](http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/prog_030402_all.pdf)

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ChuckMcM
The more interesting result is that what was "worth" $1.00 in 1945 is "worth"
$13.20 today. Of course a nice family car was $1,500 in 1945, which would be
$19,800 today, except you can't buy a nice family car for $19,800 today. Its
quite useful to compare things like "how many hours of labor bought you car?"
or what percentage of your production went to feeding your family. That is
when you start looking at whether or not people are better or worse off than
they were in 1945.

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billforsternz
I remember reading a Time magazine article about inflation around 1980 when I
was at university. I remember it projected to the not too distant future
(maybe to 2000?) and said, and I quote because it stuck in my mind; "We'll
probably all make $100,000 then, but the downside will be that a candy bar
will probably cost a whole dollar". I think of it whenever I buy a
confectionary item, invariably for multiple dollars.

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snowwrestler
I've come to believe that inflation is the least-understood concept in
personal finance. The fact that this is on the HN homepage seems like evidence
supporting that.

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Ozark
for anyone using it outside the US try "$us1.50 1945 today" or it will
attempting this with your local currency and there will probably be no data

~~~
GhotiFish
It interpreted it as 1.50 CAD * 1945 and I briefly panicked.

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

~~~
picea
I haven't looked for others but Australia has a convenient calculator:
[http://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html](http://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html)

~~~
RustyRussell
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!

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

~~~
ganeumann
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.

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bryan_rasmussen
That's a pretty lousy rate of return for inventing time travel really.

The normal way one calculates this is by buying power of those dollars - what
could you buy then and what would it cost now.

But really I could have bought a Sub-Mariner comics #15 in mint condition, and
it would be worth quite a bit more today.

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foocc
I get:

Assuming Hong Kong dollars for "$"

HK$1.50 (Hong Kong dollars) to | today

(no exchange data available)

~~~
lukeholder
Change it to $1.50usd 1945 today to see what the OP expected you to see.

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benched
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 are.

~~~
aidenn0
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.

~~~
chad_oliver
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.

~~~
aidenn0
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!

