How much would ten thousand 1976 dollars be today?
The college I graduated from in 1976 cost $5,000 a year. Now that same college costs $42,000 a year.
Based on that, I’d guestimate $90,000. I’m probably way off, but it’s a starting point.
Shoot! I’ve got a link for this very question at home.
One comparison I did this week was figuring that $3400 1964-dollars would be equivalent to $20,000 2005-dollars. That’s about a 4.4% growth.
So, $10,000[sub]1976[/sub] = $23,735[sub]2006[/sub].
Sound about right to anyone else?
I think college costs have increased way faster than general inflation.
Here you can get a historical list of CPI data. Looking at the CPI at least, $10,000 would be worth $35,615 in today’s dollars. That seems a bit high for me, but then again I wasn’t aware of relative prices (being 5-7 years old) until the 80s, after we had already experienced a doubling of prices in the near-hyperinflation of the late 70s and very early 80s.
And $10,000 invested in the Dow Index would be worth about $110,000.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=^DJI&a=06&b=1&c=1976&d=03&e=21&f=2006&g=m
The growth rate of tuitions at most colleges has exceeded the general rate of inflation by quite a bit over the past 30 years.
Or try this:
I got:
“In 2004, $10,000.00 from 1976 is worth:
$33,224.12 using the Consumer Price Index
$27,139.30 using the GDP deflator
$31,714.82 using the unskilled wage
$47,633.28 using the nominal GDP per capita
$64,286.97 using the relative share of GDP”
No 2006 figures, I’m afraid it only goes to 2004.
I can add this. In 1976, starting salaries were under $20K (range $16K to $20K)for someone with my qualifications. Today, people are being paid in the $90K range. So, to me, $10K translates to about $45K.
Another comparison point: The minimum wage in 1976 was $2.30/hr, and it is $5.15 today, making $10,000 in 1976 equal to $22,000 today. But this has lagged behind all the other indicators.
Suppose you bought a thing for $10,000 in 1976, and you want to buy the same thing in today’s dollars for the current equivalent of $10,000 1976 dollars. Since this would be a consumer item, does that mean that the CPI applies in this case?
I’m not so sure that would work very well, Johnny L.A.
Nothing wrong with your reasoning, just that “things” in 1976, well, tend to be very different in 2006.
Take TVs for example. A typical top-end 1976 TV would be what, a 25-inch console? Today, you’re looking at a 42-inch LCD or plasma unit. 25-inch TVs can be purchased at Wal-Mart for less than $200 and include stuff like remote controls, digital tuning, etc.
Or even houses. The typical 1976 house may not have had things that we consider standard in 2006 houses.
Cars? No airbags, anti-lock brakes, 4-wheel disc brakes(for the most part anyway). Air conditioning, PS, PW, remote entry, cruise control, all extra then, many of them included in the price now.
And so on. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but it would be a big effort to get comparable … uh, comparisons.
Of course a lot of products like TVs and cars have changed too much in thirty years, so what if you used something that’s relatively unchanged, like a can of peas, a loaf of Wonder bread or a can of Coca-Cola? Isn’t that what the Consumer Price Index is set up to measure; a basket of goods?
Yes, but the “basket” changes in order to represent what the consumer truly buys. After all measuring the cost of a typewriter wouldn’t accurately represent a good fraction of the cost of things these days due to lack of use of typewriters. There are adjustments when the entries in the “Basket” are changed called Hedonic modifiers that try to keep the level basically the same although the contents of the basket may have been upgraded. For instance if they replace a typewriter at $100 with a computer at $500 the value of the basket might stay the same since the computer has more intrinsic worth.
I knew someone would come up with that. The thing is that, as pointed out, things change. That seems to throw in unwanted variables.
What I’m looking for is a dollar comparison for a ‘thing’ – a widget that has been unchanged for 100 years and that sold for a given price in the past and sells for the same, adjusted, price today. Given that the adjusted price is the same as it was 30 years ago, and given the price 30 years ago was $10,000, what would the current price be?
OK, that is very reasonable. I am not trying to be a “know it all” here.
One thing I cant hink of is classic firearms. You can get pretty much a Colt .45 semi-automatic that is little changed from 1976. You could compare those prices. I don’t remember what I paid for mine, but I actually did buy it in 1975, close to 1976. I THINK it was around $175, but I do not remember. Still, I think this would be a fairly close comparison. Others, like some of the S & W revolvers, probably exist almost unchanged today.
I can also recommend a 6-pack of beer. Your brand choice, nothing added to my knowledge between then and now.
That’s all I got for now…
I’ll say. Tuition at Penn State when I was admitted in 1969 was $450 a year. Today it’s 11,024 a year.
Lessee here …
How about building materials, such as lumber, bricks, and nails? Concrete? Chain-link fence?
Motor oil?
Fresh produce?
This from a letter in AOPA’s Pilot magazine:
What year was it when Volkswagen’s commercials featured the song “Happy Days Are Here Again?” The reason happy days had returned was that an ordinary, basic, new car was going for $2,999. In 1994, a Dodge Spirit was $12,000, including AC, FM/cassette and dual airbags. I think they started at $10,000, so the 3.3-3.4 factor seems to bear out.