
List of prices of medieval items (2009) - benbreen
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm
======
weareallslaves
So, from the document:

Row house in York (well built) -> 5£

Also:

Laborer wage -> 2£/year

In 1300, 2.5 years of wages bought a good property in York. Interesting.

Also, using pjc50's linked calculator:

[https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/relativ...](https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/relativevalue.php?use\[\]=CPI&use\[\]=NOMINALEARN&year_early=1300&pound71=5&shilling71=&pence71=&amount=5&year_source=1300&year_result=2016)

5£ in 1300 are more or less equivalent to £3,534.00 in 2014's purchasing
power.

I don't think I can _rent_ a house in York for a year for that kind of money.

What's going on? It looks like that 1300's little folk was better off than we
are. Technology has improved, but social distances are bigger than ever. Yes,
we have heating and the internet and all that, but if you look back Louis XIV
didn't have any of that... does that mean he was poor?

God I despise this world so much.

~~~
iamthepieman
With a 50k salary you can afford a 125k house at the same 1300 ratio. This
seems about right for a rural area but not, of course, for an urban one. Of
course neither the laborer in 1300 or today is able to spend their full salary
for 2.5 years straight on a dwelling. They would have to save over a much
longer period of time as that 2 pounds a year has to cover food, clothing,
coal etc.

Sure both Louis and the laborer didn't have central heating and the internet
but Louis could afford whatever WAS available for luxury and the laborer today
can afford those 'luxuries' that even royalty didn't have access to 700 years
ago.

Not saying social differences aren't huge but they are influenced by
perception, social norms, media, and both absoulte and relative levels of
comfort/luxury. It's hard to compare directly.

~~~
pyb
UK minimum ('laborer') wage is £13k, not 50.

~~~
iamthepieman
My reply was very US centric and I didn't make that clear. My figures were in
USD. 50k is the median household income in the US which, now that I think
about it is not that useful a number for this.

------
bryanlarsen
Another interesting price fact: the price of bulk wheat has stayed relatively
constant in British pounds for the last 800 years or so, staying at about 1
pound per bushel. We've had more inflation in the price of wheat in the last
ten years than we had in the previous 800. A bushel of wheat contains about
66,000 calories. So that laborer making 2£/year wouldn't be able to afford
wheat -- that's one reason the food price list has a price for oats, but not
bread or wheat.

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dredmorbius
Gregory Clark (economics, UC Davis) has a prive history of English agriculture
from 1209 to 1914.

[http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Agprice.pd...](http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Agprice.pdf)

Adam Smith discusses prices and notes that whilst silver prices are more
uniform across the decades, corn (grain) prices are across the centuries.
Daily food is a pretty good constant, after factoring out annual ag
variability.

------
benbreen
Came across this via HN user raddad's comment in a thread yesterday about
medieval music and thought it was interesting enough to stand on its own:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11607392#up_11608211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11607392#up_11608211)

------
elcapitan
I wonder if it makes sense to use the notion of a 'price' when talking about
former times? Prices as in list prices seems to be a relatively modern
phenomenon. One thing you notice when being outside of modern places is that
price tends to be completely based on who asks whom. In many shops you'll only
find products and then get a price when asking.

~~~
rdancer
Even in modern times, only suckers pay retail. That has ever been true, and
ever will. Price in economic terms is _whatever is paid_. The list has for
example different prices for ale, wine, and uni education. The descriptions
seem to indicate both difference in quality and the affluence (or negotiation
skills) of the buyer.

~~~
cpach
_”Even in modern times, only suckers pay retail”_

What does that mean? Is one a sucker for going to the store and paying list
price for e.g. bread?

~~~
elcapitan
Having retail prices is actually the best way to avoid being the sucker,
because the "old" way - I think - was that you would have to pay an arbitrary
price otherwise.

------
Xophmeister
It would be interesting to see what those values are equivalent to in today's
money. Of course, that might be pretty hard to estimate given they pre-date
any central bank and presumably the notion of interest rates. Perhaps the
variety of goods listed here could be used to estimate some semblance of a
comparable RPI.

~~~
pjc50
Various people have worked on this kind of thing, such as
[https://measuringworth.com/gold/](https://measuringworth.com/gold/) "The
Price of Gold, 1257 - Present", their broader purchasing power calculator
[https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ppoweruk/](https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ppoweruk/)
or this big archive:
[http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.h...](http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.html)

Classical studies have reasonably good models of the Roman economy, its
inflation and comparative prices for goods and services.

