Current value of money in any given past year?

At 05:51:27 on 30/11/2005, Alex Flaherty delighted uk.finance by announcing:

You planning a bit of time travel?

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Alex Flaherty said

If you mean 'dividing it by RPI' (i.e. £1 in 1987 is worth 37p now, or whatever), then it depends how far you want to go back .. RPI numbers only exist back through somewhere in the 19xx's (and I only have them back to about 1980). So if you were going to stick in '1632' you'd be pretty much out of luck.

However inflation as a problem/concept didn't really get going until fairly recently, as far as I know.

In message of Wed, 30 Nov 2005, GSV Three Minds in a Can writes

Depends what you mean by fairly recently. There was high inflation during the first World War, but by 1922 there was high deflation. Again during the second World War there was high inflation. Another smaller blip in 1951, and then again in the 1970s.

I have RPI going back to 1917 but as a re-based figure against the current base set to 100 in January 1987.

DF

Bitstring , from the wonderful person David Floyd said

This century - well, really some time after the Boer War, iirc.

well its for a non-internet-savvy friend who wants to know what something in 1944 is worth today?

There are many ways of comparing ...how about as a percentage of the average wage, that ought to be relatively easy to find? eg if sum in 1944 , average wage 200 (pure guess), = 1/10, todays average wage0k (just a number not even a guess) , worth today 00

Bitstring , from the wonderful person Tumbleweed said

Your logic is better than your maths .. that'd be £3k. However someone said they had inflation figures back that far, so presumably we can have a better-than-guessed answer ..

Ooopsy! Do I get any points for showing my working though? If this was GCSE Maths presumably I'd get at least an A* anyway?

The trouble with inflation figures is that that far back they arent comparing like with like. For example, cars cost a lot more then relative to wages than, say turnips, whilst mens sock suspenders were probably quite cheap compared to now except no one wears them these days. And try and buy a flash memory based MP3 player in 1944 with your inflation adjusted money.

I think my dad told me he earnt 17/6 per week in his first job. So 45 pound per year. That must have been just before the war, but of course, a first job isn't going to be an average wage.

I think today's average is somewhere around 22K.

HTH

tim

In message of Wed, 30 Nov 2005, Alex Flaherty writes

The RPI in 1944, using today's base of January 1987 = 100, was 7.25

On that basis only, £1 in 1944 would be equal to £26.66 now (RPI 193.3), but I think you need to take other things into consideration as wages have increased differently than the RPI and the cost of housing has increased differently again.

DF

Yes, inflation of course is just the average increase in prices of products and services. I read an article a while ago which listed things whose inflation rate is vastly different to the RPI over the last 50 years or so.

Not surprisingly, products & services which rely on technology have become much cheaper, eg a telephone call from the UK to USA. At the other end of the scale, the things which increased in price massively more than the RPI are things like public transport fares and beer. IIRC a pint of beer would now be something like

28p if it had increased in line with RPI since 1900! Property costs were not too far off the average.

To be more accurate, inflation is the action by governments to raise their finances by printing pieces of paper. This results in an increase in the prices of products and services. Measuring this increase in prices produces a figure which is a rough guide to the rate of inflation that is causing such increase.

Many other factors change prices. Pretending that one thing is the sole, or even the main, cause of price increases is just plain silly.

"Alec McKenzie" wrote

If you want to know the level of "money-printing", then why not simply measure that? Surely proper records are being kept of the levels of paper money being created & destroyed?!

Didn't the Japanese try this, unsuccessfully, to avoid deflation? Mike H?

I dont know if your mean the printing of bank notes or the printing of gilt edged stock certificates. If it is the first I think you are confusing the amount of BoE notes in circulation' with 'money supply'. They are not the same thing.

I understand inflation to mean an increase in the money supply.

The monthly Bank Return in fact.

Yes, of course they do. Which is why they are only a *rough* guide to the true rate of inflation being performed.

I don't know of anyone pretending such a thing.

They are both pieces of paper, which is what I described them as.