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Read Ebook: Price/Cost Indexes from 1875 to 1989; Estimated to 2010 by Hart Michael
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Ebook has 183 lines and 242012 words, and 4 pages
Price/Cost Indexes from 1875 to 1929
United States
October, 1993 expanded for release in November, 1993
WHILE IT APPEARS THAT COMPUTERS ARE AN INCREDIBLE DEAL THEY ARE REALLY TWICE AS GOOD A DEAL AS IT SEEMS TO BE
WHERE DOES OUR MONEY GO?
Many of you are aware that the ,000 you spent on computers last year could be replaced by ,000 spent today. However, only recently have I actually purchased computer gear that I bought with dollars that were only half as valuable as those with which one of my drives was purchased in 1979.
Many of you are aware that the average personal computer was ,000 - ,000 some 10 - 15 years ago when Apples and IBMs first appeared on the scene, but you might not be aware of a trend beyond the price reduction that makes today's computer prices an even better bargain in comparison.
In fact, computers today are TWICE as good a bargain as they appear in comparisons with those early computers, and it was already looking as if they were bargains beyond all belief.
In earlier articles I mentioned the fact that today's cheapy 486 DX2/66 computers were 100 times as fast as the originals from IBM, and were likely to also have 100 time as much hard drive storage.
Here are a few examples to jog your memory:
These are "bare bones" prices for the computer systems; when filled out with color monitors, printers, ports, modems, and the rest of an average computer system, these prices usually doubled, and the prices I usually quote as modern comparison figures include VGA, printer, modem, mouse, and software.
Back in those days extra floppy drives from Apple or IBM for around 5 to 5 respectively 1993 6 per 1000M at $.67/M 1994 4 per 1000M at $.44/M 1994 6 per 1000M at $.30/M 1995 8 per 1000M at $.20/M 1996 2 per 1000M at $.13/M 1997 per 1000M at $.08/M 1998 per 1000M at $.06/M 1999 per 1000M at $.04/M 2000 per 1000M at $.03/M 2001 per 1000M at $.02/M 2002 per 1000M at $.01/M
Disclaimer: most of these are personal recollections, but are close to estimates I have looked up, as below.
How to use the chart, first set of examples:
The price in current 1993 dollars for any year is found in the first column. Thus you can see that a one dollar item from 1993 will cost about .95 in 2010.
The value of the dollars used in any particular year would be found in the second column . A dollar in 2010 will be worth about $.51 1993 dollars while a dollar from 1978-9 would be worth about .00 now.
How to use the chart, second set of examples:
To remind you that these figures are presented ONLY as an indicator and not as anything approaching reality, here are an additional set of examples from a different report, for several sample years. You can easily see that not only are the adjustments sometimes quite high, but that figures from different reports aren't always even remotely close to each other.
As an example, while working on these figures I noticed a lack of a period of "double digit inflation" commonly referred to in most all recent reports on these economic trends. I checked this with local sources in the field, and was given the following figures which did include some "double digit inflation", but only for a few years of the 70's and early 80's.
In short, continue to beware of statistics, and please be advised a bit that while these figures MAY have a certain consistency, within the columns, that there relation to reality is probably far from an intensely accurate reflection of real prices over the century.
Additional figures from:
Economic Report of the President
base year 82-84
D-D indicates prices from the end of one year the end of the previous year. . .December to December is the official terminology.
The adjusted rise is the percentage equivalent to the change in adjusted prices.
% is Dec to Dec on unadjusted indexes %2 is year to adjusted
Adjusted Rise Year Price D-D Adj%
YEAR: 1989
Prices will double from 1989 to 2007 at 4.0000% Prices will double from 1989 to 2012 at 3.0000%
Average price rise for 20 year period 1970-1989 is about 6% Average price rise for 30 year period 1960-1989 is about 5% Average price rise for 40 year period 1950-1989 is about 4%
Old$/1989$ 1989$/Old$ Yearly % D-D Adj
BASE YEAR: 1993
Year Year/1993 1993/Year Year/Previous Year
How to use the chart, third set of examples:
This index will allow you to estimate the cost of any item in the dollars of any year included in the index.
Example: You know the cost of an item in 1900 was , and you want to know the cost it would have had in 1989 dollar figures .
First go to the base year of 1900, in which 1.000000 is an estimated base for the year 1900.
Then look for the 1989 figure in the 1900 table:
This indicates that the item costing in 1900 would cost approximately in 1989.
The second column is the inverse function, meaning an item costing in 1989 would have cost about $.05 or $.06 back in the year 1900.
You should be able to find some interesting trends such as that prices were falling back in 1875 as industrial growth swept the United States and the West was being developed.
Prices fell from to from 1875 to 1898, in a rather steady progression, and then rather steadily rose back for the next two decades until World War I, until they reached again in 1913 and in 1914, which were the last two years of moderate inflation until after 1919, when pricing dropped from a high of 9 after doubling since 1914.
Prices stabilized during the rest of the 1920's about 0 until 1930, and the Great Depression, in which prices fell to in 1933 and then back to the ranges of the 1920's-- until around the end of World War II, when prices went out of control, rising from an average of around 0 for WWII on the whole to 0 in 1951. It took 17 years to hit the 0 level in 1968 and 22 years to double to 0 in 1973.
From 1973 it took only 9 years to double again to 0 for the year 1982.
. Based on 4% inflation, it will be
Below are files for every year on this chart independently listed with that year as the base year, so you can look up for instance, what something from 1930 would have cost in 1950, or the reverse.
YEAR: 2010
YEAR: 2009
YEAR: 2008
YEAR: 2007
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