
Unlocking an Early Modern Account Book - pepys
http://collation.folger.edu/2016/05/early-modern-account-book/
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a3n
> Checking this amount with an online historical currency converter set up by
> Eric Nye, 135 pounds would correspond to approximately $37,700 (American
> dollars).

I wonder if this is less informative than meets the eye. My unresearched
impression is that there were many households like this, but still relatively
few in the entire population. Any number of these households might have been
able to afford this. Yet practically no one in the entire population could
afford this; maybe they would never make this much in their lifetimes. How
much would an Indian tshirt sewer make in a lifetime?

So something like this didn't even exist, practically, in the general
population. It was two separate economies, that occasionally traded in the
middle. The people at the bottom, which would have been most people, were that
day's 3rd world cheap labor.

What does it cost to get a shoe or sandal in a village in
$THIRD_WORLD_LABOR_COUNTRY where shoes and sandals are made? Probably cheaper
than here, although it probably isn't the same shoe. What does it cost to get
a Tesla or buy a cruise in that village? It's all but meaningless, it doesn't
exist in that economy.

What will $37K buy you here, and what would it buy in a labor country's
village, or a 16th century English village?

