The USS Midway cost about $85 million in 1945 dollars. How do I get an estimate of what that means in 2016 dollars?
If a ballpark based on inflation is good enough for an estimate, you can just put ‘inflation calculator in dollars’ into Google and plug in the numbers.
For instance, using the first link that popped up, I got about 1.13 Billion in 2016 dollars.
Google “historical currency futureboy”. It’s what I use when I’m reading books set in England in the thirties and I’m trying to wrap my head around sixteen shillings.
The CPI isn’t always the best measure to use for specialty items like warships.
But if you want the CPI, these guys are the horse’s mouth: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/ There’s a “calculators” link at the very bottom.
It’s also worth considering that a better measure of what the Midway “really” cost would be to compare the sticker price to that year’s GDP, or that year’s federal tax take.
Just cranking in inflation via the CPI would tell you something about buying it today, but nothing about how *affordable *it would be today. Our current economy and federal budget are both vastly larger vs. 1945 even after you correct for inflation.