Forum Settings
       
Reply To Thread

Sort of Economics QuestionFollow

#1 Nov 10 2005 at 8:41 PM Rating: Excellent

I am an anti-math person, and I know very little about the economy, inflation, etc.

That said, I am writing a paper where I need to find out the value of a family member's wealth translated into today's dollar. This website seemed to have the answers I needed, but I am having trouble deciphering the numbers I am getting. In other words, I am lost.

This is in the US in the late 1700's; I have been using data for the year 1800. I have a figure of 1,032 pounds 17 shillings and 6 pence. According to the website I linked, the exchange rate of that year would have been 4.55 dollars to every British pound.

Probably a shot in the dark, but anyone have a suggestion?



#2 Nov 10 2005 at 8:52 PM Rating: Excellent
***
2,324 posts
Dammit! Do your own homework!











and no I dont have a clue....
#3 Nov 10 2005 at 8:54 PM Rating: Decent
Imaginary Friend
*****
16,112 posts
let me channel my great great great great great great grandfather and ask him.

hold on
____________________________
With the receiver in my hand..
#4 Nov 10 2005 at 8:58 PM Rating: Excellent

Quote:
Dammit! Do your own homework!


Heh! I am attempting! I had this hope that someone would say "why, I just love economics! Let me put this into plain English for you, since every website on the subject is confusing as crap!"

I am more asking for help or a point in the right direction than for someone to do it.


#6 Nov 10 2005 at 11:20 PM Rating: Decent
LOL. This one is classic

I see everyone is quick to compenstate ego inflated ignorance with big words, dimwitted jabs, and googled ******** but when it comes to someone with a genuine question, you all clam up like puckered ********.

With all the ubber intellegence you ********* claim to profess and spit at this forum, none of you can help with this persons inquirey?

LMAO. figures.
#7 Nov 10 2005 at 11:22 PM Rating: Decent
Imaginary Friend
*****
16,112 posts
Quote:
and googled bullsh*t



hey, that really is my great great great great great great grandfather



troll/sock, wahtever the fu[b][/b]ck you think your trying to be
____________________________
With the receiver in my hand..
#8 Nov 10 2005 at 11:24 PM Rating: Decent
Imaginary Friend
*****
16,112 posts
Quote:
none of you can help with this persons inquirey?


uhh, why don't you ask your parents waht the exact exchange ratio between modern day and 18th century currency?


you stupid little bratSmiley: oyvey
____________________________
With the receiver in my hand..
#9 Nov 10 2005 at 11:51 PM Rating: Decent
I see our paths cross on several posts this evening my mysterious assailant...

Quote:
troll/sock, wahtever the **** you think your trying to be


I'm at work and have nothing better to do. I have been wondering now for a while, why does one automatically get labled a troll for posting multiple times and/or on multiple posts?

How do you Identify and lable a troll?
Is it the post count?
The karma rating?
The fact that said troll has a real life and therefor is not posting 24/7 so everyone can see there stupid avatar and know they are not alone?

seriously, what is it? I post 2-3 times a week, and for a few consecutive hours at a time and all of the sudden everyone is like "who let the sock in?" "where did the troll come from?"
I just dont understand the ASSylum mentality.

Quote:
uhh, why don't you ask your parents waht the exact exchange ratio between modern day and 18th century currency?


I do not care to stick my **** out and take part in the eternal war that is words in this forum. Sometimes someone has something worth reading about and that is what interests me, not the meriad of ******** that clearly looks like someone is trying to just raise there precious karma rating.

Quote:
you stupid little brat


Well that was a stick in my side, good one.
#10 Nov 10 2005 at 11:58 PM Rating: Decent
Imaginary Friend
*****
16,112 posts
waht is a Troll?

somone who offers nothing but dull humourless and meaningless insults, for the sake of getting attention.

or somthing.


Quote:
I just dont understand the ASSylum mentality.


don't give yourself a hernea.


____________________________
With the receiver in my hand..
#11 Nov 11 2005 at 12:26 AM Rating: Default
forgive me but I dont think I was the only one doing it. Seems like 90% of everypost I read is full of

Quote:
dull humourless and meaningless insults, for the sake of getting attention.

#12 Nov 11 2005 at 9:21 AM Rating: Default
Katarine,

In order to determine a family members wealth there are certain things you need to account for; did they own a house? did they own property? did they have any investments? Once you've figured out what their worth would be today you can begin to determine their relative worth back then.

Achileez
#13 Nov 11 2005 at 10:01 AM Rating: Good


This is their wealth including slaves and silver, but not including land.

I had hoped that it was as simple as "a dollar would be this", but when you read about it, it is much more complicated than that. There are all of these different ways of calculating it which give you very different answers. I got answers ranging from 75,000 to several million. I wasn't sure which one to use, because of all of the economics-speak.

#14 Nov 11 2005 at 10:08 AM Rating: Good
Gurue
*****
16,299 posts
fishermanbmr wrote:
forgive me but I dont think I was the only one doing it. Seems like 90% of everypost I read is full of

Quote:
dull humourless and meaningless insults, for the sake of getting attention.


Well then, why don't you shut up and help the OP?
#15 Nov 11 2005 at 11:33 AM Rating: Decent
**
711 posts
[link=Might Help]http://oregonstate.edu/dept/pol_sci/fac/sahr/sahr.htm#_Conversion_Factor_Tables[/link]

While I can not be sure if the conversion tables on this web site will help you with out seeing the exact question you are trying to answer, it might give you a starting point.

Edit: I guess I don't know how to work the URL thingy Smiley: disappointed

Edited, Fri Nov 11 11:44:29 2005 by Wertyone
#16 Nov 11 2005 at 11:56 AM Rating: Excellent
Will swallow your soul
******
29,360 posts
That's a pretty cool site. Apparently if I could take my current currency alone back to 1800, I'd be wealthy as hell.

Earwig! Fire up the Wayback machine, and fetch me a big bag!
____________________________
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

#17 Nov 11 2005 at 11:58 AM Rating: Good
Quote:
[link=Might Help]http://oregonstate.edu/dept/pol_s...ctor_Tables[/link]


You almost had it right. Try swapping the locations for "Might Help" and "http://oregonstate.edu/dept/pol_s...ctor_Tables" in your link and it should look like you wanted.
#18 Nov 11 2005 at 11:59 AM Rating: Good
Oddly, enough, I was broke back then, too.
#19 Nov 11 2005 at 1:19 PM Rating: Good


Hmm...that site just talks about consumer price index and doesn't mention the other ones. I wonder if that means that is the one to go with?

Maybe I will just assume it is just to get this done, heh.

#20 Nov 11 2005 at 1:55 PM Rating: Decent
***
1,697 posts
Well lets go with $5 from 1800 is worth

From your website it returns these numbers. Which vary wildly.

$72.87 using the Consumer Price Index
$78.99 using the GDP deflator
$1,253.54 using the unskilled wage
$1,931.99 using the GDP per capita
$134,071.49 using the relative share of GDP

So this web site says your family could be worth anywhere from 72.87 to $134,071.49 depending on which way you want to measure $5 of worth in 1800

Let's start with the GDP number (since its the biggest)

Now clicking on the link below the results brings you. A big ol paragraph of how this is caculated. The most important sentance in these paragraphs is this..

"A central point to keep in mind is that the quality of the data deteriorates the farther back in time one goes. The reason for this is simple: GDP was not measured before the 1930s and thus any measures for years before 1929 rely on sources that were not collected for the purpose of constructing national income and product accounts."

So not good.. Comparing the worth of $5 dollars in 1800 to todays money using how much $5 was of the 1800's GDP (which was not tracked then) is sorta not good. Since they didnt track the GDP in 1800.

My suggestion is to read up on which is most likely the closest, or has the best reliability for the year 1800.

The un-skilled wage rate (the middle one) is basically they are comparing what $5 meant to an unskilled worker in 1800s.. to what the equivelent would be to an unskilled worker in 2003.

IE in the example above using the Unskilled wages

$5 to burger flipper in 1800 is equal to $1,253.54 to a burger flipper today...

(In most cases ZOMG!! $1,253.54 !!!! I am teh RICHES!! Me buy IPODS for everyone!)


Make cents?

Edited, Fri Nov 11 14:13:10 2005 by Fng
#21 Nov 11 2005 at 2:16 PM Rating: Good


Okay...reading a bit more, here is what the website I linked gave me:

68,432 CP Index
74,183 GDP deflator
1,177,221 Unskilled Wage
1,814,374 GDP per capita
125,909,217 relative share of GDP

The two that look the most useful are CP and unskilled wage. Here are the descriptions:

The CPI is most often used to make comparisons partly because it is the series with which people are most familiar. This series tries to compare the cost of things the average household buys such as food, housing, transportation, medical services, etc. For earlier years, it is the most useful series for comparing the cost of consumer goods and services. It can be interpreted as how much money would you need today to buy an item in the year in question if it had changed in price the same as the average price change.

The Unskilled Wage Rate is good way to determine the relative cost of something in terms of the amount of work it would take to produce, or the relative time it would take to earn its cost. It can also be useful in comparing different wages over time. The unskilled wage is a more consistent measure than the average wage for making comparisons over time.

Here is an example they give of figuring out Babe Ruth's relative salary:


Babe Ruth's salary in 1932 was $80,000. In 2003 the CPI was 13.5 times larger than it was in 1932 and the GDP deflator 11.5 times larger. This means that if we are interested in Ruth's purchasing power of housing or meals, then he was "earning" the equivalence of about $1,000,000 today. The relative cost of (unskilled) labor is 42 times higher in 2003 than in 1932. So if we wanted to compare his wage to what someone selling hot dogs would earn, we could say his "relative wage" is $3,400,000.

GDP per capita and GDP are 80 and 187 times larger in 2003 than they were in 1932. Thus Ruth's earnings relative to the average output would be $6,430,000 today. Finally, as a share of GDP, Ruth "output" that year would be $14,900,000 in today's money.


So....yeah. And we are talking net worth here, not salary, so that makes this a little more odd. Based on other history surrounding this family member, the CP index number just doesn't feel right. This guy was a legislator and extremely wealthy...for that to be his relative net worth doesn't make as much sense to me as maybe the unskilled wage being his relative net worth. This is also not counting land...I am just going to ignore that. I don't see any way I could calculate that. Not worth it for this particular project.

I sure could use a piece of that....darn civil war eating family resources!


#22 Nov 11 2005 at 2:25 PM Rating: Good
Gurue
*****
16,299 posts
Math is hard. Let's go shopping!
#23 Nov 11 2005 at 2:27 PM Rating: Good


I could use some new shoes

#24 Nov 11 2005 at 3:47 PM Rating: Good

So, how do you cite an 18th century spanish land grant in MLA format?

C'mon college students, an easy one!

Blech!!!! I'll figure it out somehow...


Edit: Have I mentioned that this paper blows?



Edited, Fri Nov 11 16:05:08 2005 by Katarine
Reply To Thread

Colors Smileys Quote OriginalQuote Checked Help

 

Recent Visitors: 195 All times are in CST
Anonymous Guests (195)