Thread: Straight Razor Prices in real terms: 1901-Today

Here's an inflation calculator. It lists $1.50 in 1901 being the equivalent of $38.17 in 2009 dollars. The Inflation Calculator

A worker making $.21 per hour, brought home about $12.50 a week, the equivalent of $318.08 in 2009 dollars.

Originally Posted by GeauxLSU

Here's an inflation calculator. It lists $1.50 in 1901 being the equivalent of $38.17 in 2009 dollars. The Inflation Calculator

A worker making $.21 per hour, brought home about $12.50 a week, the equivalent of $318.08 in 2009 dollars.

Well, that's true, but you're basing your calculations on a 60 hour work week; whereas today most people work 40 hours per week, which equates to a weekly income of $213.75.

That would suggest to me that whereas our grandparents had to work longer hours, they were relatively better off in terms of income than the average Joe today.

However, the numbers seem off to me. I don't think you can compare hourly wages of manufacturing jobs in the early 1900's to retail/service sector jobs of today.

And, do we even have a manufacturing sector to our economy today? It seems like all those job are now in China.

For what it's worth, when our money was backed by gold, a dollar was worth a dollar for 80 years before the establishment of the Federal Reserve System (US Central Bank) in 1913. Since the Fed's creation, a dollar in 1913 is now worth about 4 cents or so.

One thing about Central Bankers, they all LOVE to print money and devalue the currency. Look at QE2.

Kent

I was looking this up today on another site.
There were some 1900's razors that were around three dollars, so I looked up how much that would be back in those days. The site I used said to use "Unskilled Wage" or "GDP per capita" for the value of commodities. A three dollar razor comes out between 350-500 USD now.
http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/