7 ms·

You could buy a house and a 69 Charger for $25K in the 60's with a tidy sum left over.

by CodeWriter23 8mo ago

ok123456 8mo ago
take me back
- ecshafer 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tuyiown 8mo ago
    You're really reducing a whole economic situation to a currency issue ?
    - ecshafer 8mo ago
      The US had 0-1% inflation a year until the federal reserve. I blame the FED and currency, yes. Look up the "what happened in 1970" charts, and its we got off the gold standard.
    - logicchains 8mo ago
      It's not just a currency issue; inflation is by definition a reduction in the purchasing power of a fixed wage, and the issue we're facing is that the purchasing power of people's wages is less. If their wages were denominated in a unit of account that wasn't continuously losing value, they wouldn't be continuously losing purchasing power. The reason you may not know it's an issue is because inflation in our current system isn't just a loss of purchasing power, it's a transfer of purchasing power to those who first receive/spend the newly created money: the banking/financial system. So of course the system invested a lot of money, time and effort in convincing you that it's a good thing to continuously donate a fraction of your purchasing power to the finance industry every year.
      - quercus 8mo ago
        I can't remember a bigger HN blackpill than this getting downvoted.
        Dylan16807 8mo ago
        The first paragraph is doing a tricky little sleight of hand. Yeah inflation reduces the power of a fixed wage. Nobody has that kind of fixed wage. The issues with wages and prices we face are not caused by inflation, which is really easy to compensate for. The second part is just confusing. Inflation benefits the first to "receive/spend" new money? Receiving and spending are opposites, and inflation benefits anyone that's spending whether they got that money first or fiftieth.
      - eru 8mo ago
        > inflation is by definition a reduction in the purchasing power of a fixed wage So what? Nominal wages can go up just fine. They do that all the time. > it's a transfer of purchasing power to those who first receive/spend the newly created money No. That would only be true, if economic actors were too stupid to anticipate expected inflation. People ain't that stupid.
  - ux266478 8mo ago
    It's a confluence of various factors. Explosive population growth, for example. The modern economy (of which fiat currency plays a pivotal role) relies on that of course, as the lending system is a bet on future growth. If that fails the whole thing can enter a state of catastrophic failure. But population growth has more precedence. Fiat currency, bureaucratization, etc. were adopted as reactions to increasingly explosive populations and unchecked rationalism developing the absolutely ridiculous modern state system. If you want demons to point a finger at, you're going to have to look further back in time than the 20th century. Then and now we're just doing a frantic tap dance to keep what we inherited from catching on fire.
    - eru 8mo ago
      Huh, what? Population increased a lot in the 19th century, and many countries did not have fiat currencies back then; and the price level most went down slowly as the population grew. (Modern day 2%-ish stable inflation is mostly fine for the economy, even if it technically erodes the value of money in the long term. The classic pre-WW1 gold standard was also fine-ish. The Frankenstein gold standard-ish they until the 1970s was bad. And so was the rampant inflation that followed for a while.)
      - ux266478 8mo ago
        I specifically mentioned that population growth precedes fiat currency. Where's your confusion? I'm explicitly telling you to broaden your perspective and look at overarching political currents across the centuries succeeding the renaissance. For instance many countries also were not so extensively bureaucratized, particularly in how they interfaced with the public, until the late 19th century and early 20th century. Political evolution is spread over many years and is structurally anisotropic. Metallism's death was inevitable by the 18th century at best, but don't misunderstand that to mean it was going to happen immediately. It's also just a symptom. The enlightenment's political revolution is a manifold spread across centuries. Don't just look at the symptoms, you won't understand anything and it will lead you to half-baked conclusions.
  - twodave 8mo ago
    No, fiat currency has allowed our money supply to track closer to our GDP, preventing currency shortages and price manipulation by foreign adversaries, giving us the most stable economy the world has ever experienced over the last 50 years. Yes, it can be abused (and some Asian countries have taken this to dangerous extremes), but it’s better than all the alternatives so far.
  - littlestymaar 8mo ago
    The good standard didn't even last half a century before collapsing. Gold is way too inelastic to work as a basis for currency in an industrial economy.
rendaw 8mo ago
$50k in 2016 dollars.
- zamadatix 8mo ago
  You're correct, but for some reason heavily downed at the moment (Edit: no longer the case!). Relevant excerpt backing this up: > the sugar industry paid the Harvard scientists the equivalent of $50,000 in 2016 dollars I.e. it was something more like 6k-7k in terms of dollars at the time of payment.
  - citizenpaul 8mo ago
    Did you know the average bribe accepted for a politician is something like 5K (This was from a few years back so probably higher now). So yeah this is totally within bribe limits. As a unrelated note it really is depressing to think about how easy it is to buy off politicians and how much money the bribers have vs an average person.
  - jayers 8mo ago
    Average home price in the late 60s was 25k so even if it is equivalent to $50k in 2016 dollars, 25k could still get you further than today in some specific areas.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - zamadatix 8mo ago
      Some clarification as the actual numbers and the random 25k number keep getting compared to the wrong contexts in this chain (it originally arose as a misunderstanding that the 50k was already in terms of 2016 dollars instead of the original 1960s payment https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CodeWriter23 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CodeWriter23): ~$6,000-$7,000 is the amount the researchers were paid off with in the mid 60s. This is roughly equivalent to ~$50,000 in 2016 when using CPI-U figures. $25,000 in the mid 60s would be equivalent to ~$193,000 by the same measure, and does not relate to $50,000 in 2016 in any way. But your core point that the items in the CPI-U basket do not adjust equally, which is why it's a basket in the first place. Median housing price in 2016 was ~$300,000, so ~$193,000 is a bit of variance... but not nearly as much as mixing the numbers from the different comparisons made it sound.
parpfish 8mo ago
I doubt that the 50k was given to the research as personal pay. It was likely a “research grant” that was used to fund the research and/or get swallowed up as “overhead” by the university
SoftTalker 8mo ago
And you probably earned under $10k/yr.

You could buy a house and a 69 Charger for $25K in the 60's with a tidy sum left over.

ok123456 8mo ago

take me back

ecshafer 8mo ago
[flagged]
- tuyiown 8mo ago
  You're really reducing a whole economic situation to a currency issue ?
  - ecshafer 8mo ago
    The US had 0-1% inflation a year until the federal reserve. I blame the FED and currency, yes. Look up the "what happened in 1970" charts, and its we got off the gold standard.
  - logicchains 8mo ago
    It's not just a currency issue; inflation is by definition a reduction in the purchasing power of a fixed wage, and the issue we're facing is that the purchasing power of people's wages is less. If their wages were denominated in a unit of account that wasn't continuously losing value, they wouldn't be continuously losing purchasing power. The reason you may not know it's an issue is because inflation in our current system isn't just a loss of purchasing power, it's a transfer of purchasing power to those who first receive/spend the newly created money: the banking/financial system. So of course the system invested a lot of money, time and effort in convincing you that it's a good thing to continuously donate a fraction of your purchasing power to the finance industry every year.
    - quercus 8mo ago
      I can't remember a bigger HN blackpill than this getting downvoted.
      - Dylan16807 8mo ago
        The first paragraph is doing a tricky little sleight of hand. Yeah inflation reduces the power of a fixed wage. Nobody has that kind of fixed wage. The issues with wages and prices we face are not caused by inflation, which is really easy to compensate for. The second part is just confusing. Inflation benefits the first to "receive/spend" new money? Receiving and spending are opposites, and inflation benefits anyone that's spending whether they got that money first or fiftieth.
    - eru 8mo ago
      > inflation is by definition a reduction in the purchasing power of a fixed wage So what? Nominal wages can go up just fine. They do that all the time. > it's a transfer of purchasing power to those who first receive/spend the newly created money No. That would only be true, if economic actors were too stupid to anticipate expected inflation. People ain't that stupid.
- ux266478 8mo ago
  It's a confluence of various factors. Explosive population growth, for example. The modern economy (of which fiat currency plays a pivotal role) relies on that of course, as the lending system is a bet on future growth. If that fails the whole thing can enter a state of catastrophic failure. But population growth has more precedence. Fiat currency, bureaucratization, etc. were adopted as reactions to increasingly explosive populations and unchecked rationalism developing the absolutely ridiculous modern state system. If you want demons to point a finger at, you're going to have to look further back in time than the 20th century. Then and now we're just doing a frantic tap dance to keep what we inherited from catching on fire.
  - eru 8mo ago
    Huh, what? Population increased a lot in the 19th century, and many countries did not have fiat currencies back then; and the price level most went down slowly as the population grew. (Modern day 2%-ish stable inflation is mostly fine for the economy, even if it technically erodes the value of money in the long term. The classic pre-WW1 gold standard was also fine-ish. The Frankenstein gold standard-ish they until the 1970s was bad. And so was the rampant inflation that followed for a while.)
    - ux266478 8mo ago
      I specifically mentioned that population growth precedes fiat currency. Where's your confusion? I'm explicitly telling you to broaden your perspective and look at overarching political currents across the centuries succeeding the renaissance. For instance many countries also were not so extensively bureaucratized, particularly in how they interfaced with the public, until the late 19th century and early 20th century. Political evolution is spread over many years and is structurally anisotropic. Metallism's death was inevitable by the 18th century at best, but don't misunderstand that to mean it was going to happen immediately. It's also just a symptom. The enlightenment's political revolution is a manifold spread across centuries. Don't just look at the symptoms, you won't understand anything and it will lead you to half-baked conclusions.
- twodave 8mo ago
  No, fiat currency has allowed our money supply to track closer to our GDP, preventing currency shortages and price manipulation by foreign adversaries, giving us the most stable economy the world has ever experienced over the last 50 years. Yes, it can be abused (and some Asian countries have taken this to dangerous extremes), but it’s better than all the alternatives so far.
- littlestymaar 8mo ago
  The good standard didn't even last half a century before collapsing. Gold is way too inelastic to work as a basis for currency in an industrial economy.

rendaw 8mo ago

$50k in 2016 dollars.

zamadatix 8mo ago
You're correct, but for some reason heavily downed at the moment (Edit: no longer the case!). Relevant excerpt backing this up: > the sugar industry paid the Harvard scientists the equivalent of $50,000 in 2016 dollars I.e. it was something more like 6k-7k in terms of dollars at the time of payment.
- citizenpaul 8mo ago
  Did you know the average bribe accepted for a politician is something like 5K (This was from a few years back so probably higher now). So yeah this is totally within bribe limits. As a unrelated note it really is depressing to think about how easy it is to buy off politicians and how much money the bribers have vs an average person.
- jayers 8mo ago
  Average home price in the late 60s was 25k so even if it is equivalent to $50k in 2016 dollars, 25k could still get you further than today in some specific areas.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - zamadatix 8mo ago
    Some clarification as the actual numbers and the random 25k number keep getting compared to the wrong contexts in this chain (it originally arose as a misunderstanding that the 50k was already in terms of 2016 dollars instead of the original 1960s payment https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CodeWriter23 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CodeWriter23): ~$6,000-$7,000 is the amount the researchers were paid off with in the mid 60s. This is roughly equivalent to ~$50,000 in 2016 when using CPI-U figures. $25,000 in the mid 60s would be equivalent to ~$193,000 by the same measure, and does not relate to $50,000 in 2016 in any way. But your core point that the items in the CPI-U basket do not adjust equally, which is why it's a basket in the first place. Median housing price in 2016 was ~$300,000, so ~$193,000 is a bit of variance... but not nearly as much as mixing the numbers from the different comparisons made it sound.

parpfish 8mo ago

I doubt that the 50k was given to the research as personal pay. It was likely a “research grant” that was used to fund the research and/or get swallowed up as “overhead” by the university

SoftTalker 8mo ago

And you probably earned under $10k/yr.