Hi. I’m reading Paine’s Rights of Man and he does some back of the envelope budgetting for a welfare state. Just for reference what’s a pounds from 1791 about worth now? I assume there’s several ways to figure that, but what might be the range? :dubious:
sorry…should say “what’s a thousand [or million] pounds”
IIRC a sovereign (gold pound coin) contained about a quarter ounce of gold, so to get a very rough idea you can think of what the price of a quarter ounce of gold would buy today, and multiply that by a million.
A million pounds was an astronomical sum in 1791.
In 1791, a UK pound was worth US$4.55.
This site compares purchasing power, and says £88m.
Forgot the other half: and today, $4.55 in 1791 would be worth about $94.06 using the Consumer Price Index.
Can’t find numbers for 1790, but from this site £1 in 1830 gives you anywhere from £66 to £2400 in 2004
thanks. so when I use this page: http://eh.net/hmit/compare/ to see what US$4.55 from 1791 is for now it get answers from $95 to over $250,000. Anybody have insight on what that means?
Ah, elsewhere on that site I got this:
There’s explanations elsewhere on that site, which made my eyes glaze over very quickly 
Since Paine was talking about money needed to provide basic living and schooling expenses, I assume that maybe the first two figures from that site are a good basis. Although the wages calculation seems plausible since the money is in theory meant to keep people at a subsitence level like a basic wage substitute. Hmm…
IANAEconomist, but it’s comparing different things such as:
Retail price index (RPI) - how much beer does beer cost?
GDP deflator - how much does it cost to to keep a family of four (families in 1790 didn’t have cell phones bills etc)
Average earnings - fairly obvious
GDP - how wealthy is the country as a whole (including government spending)