Current Dollar-Credit Equivalent

[Timerover51]

I was looking to post some actual equipment prices along with equipment, and I am wondering what the current Dollar to Credit equivalent is. Is it still based on the 1976 Dollar which was equal to One Credit, or has that been changed for T5?

I will have to adjust most of the prices as they are going to be from World War 1 costs or World War 2 and Korea. I will be using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation calculator for the adjustment, and if I need to go before 1913, I will adjust as best as possible.

 

[aramis]

T5's credit basis is Cr4/hour for base level labor.

Credits (Cr)
The basic personal form of money is the Credit. Prices
for most goods and services are expressed in Credits.
One Credit is roughly the value of a short period (a quarter
hour) of unskilled labor.

Same quote, T5.09 p. 24

 

[Timerover51]

The for T5 purposes, it would be safe to assume One Credit is equal to Two Current Dollars.

For Classic equipment, given the minimum wage in 1976, that would equate to One Credit equals One Dollar.

Thank you.

 

[aramis]

The for T5 purposes, it would be safe to assume One Credit is equal to Two Current Dollars.

For Classic equipment, given the minimum wage in 1976, that would equate to One Credit equals One Dollar.

Thank you.

Actually, it would vary. If you're in Oregon, it's $2.3...
In Seattle, it's $5...

If you're a farm laborer (which is the kind of base level labor envisaged) it's still $1...

 

[kilemall]

Actually, it would vary. If you're in Oregon, it's $2.3...
In Seattle, it's $5...

If you're a farm laborer (which is the kind of base level labor envisaged) it's still $1...

Which, I would tend to use the TCS or Striker tables to explain 'currency' differences for that sort of thing.

TCS for formal currency exchange, Striker for practical 'on the ground' per unit pricing, which would presumably factor in all the costs Free Traders don't deal in with getting an item through the supply/support/customs/taxation chain, and the desirability of higher tech over lower tech.

Those two tables have a LOT to talk about especially if you meld them together, but that's another thread.

Maybe Traveller retired characters go to low tech low port worlds to make that pension dollar stretch? Could live like a low tech poobah if those retirement benefits are denominated in hard CrImp.

I was under the impression that given the real world prices of the directly named gun examples in 1977, that somebody had figured out $3 = 1 Cr then.

So what is $3 of 1977 money then worth now, or more precisely how many current dollars to equate a credit given the previous 'exchange rate'?

My goto site for this is

https://www.measuringworth.com/

Using a simple price calculation of converting 1977 $3 into 2014 value, the answer would be $11.70 per credit.

Say it is $1 = 1 Cr. Then it's $3.91.

The website explains all manner of other ways to calculate this.

Of course T5 doesn't have to reference all that back rules history, but I would still use a similar approach, take a careful look at the price tags and equate them to current pricing for 'our' tech level items to get a feel.

 

[aramis]

The fundamental problem with the base level labor assumptions are that, fundamentally, US base level labor varies in value wildly. Meanwhile, Marc has pegged the credit to it.

Therefore, Timerover's assumption of federal minimum is one of two obvious methods to covert. The other is to look at actual base level labor pay - and the best fit there is the agricultural migrants working cash-per-bushel, which averages about half minimum.

It's a :CoW: can of worms...

 

[kilemall]

Labor pricing varies greatly due to as noted differing regional considerations, external events such as wars, recession/depressions, etc. and differing market conditions.

That's why I would bank more on consumer pricing as a measure, or percentage of total economy, focusing on the item costs as opposed to per capita income.

It's cost of living and purchases we are more interested in, the per capita would be more the sort of thing the Striker/TCS taxation rules have to deal in for total force build limits.

 

[JimMarn]

I was watching a program on ancient times, pre-Roman, and bsides weapons and architecture, they talked about money. As here already discussed, they said there was no actual equvalent to today's money. However, they said one way to make an equivalent was indeed to make a comparison to the same items. A loaf of bread of a loaf of bread, both done by hand.

Other programs I've watched, they pick a date, like 1870 dollas or 1930 dollars or 1970 dollars, and say that x number of thousands is now x number of millions or billions of dollars.

In my opinion, it would be almost impssoble to project equivalent money values thousands of years into the future.

My first job out of high school, mid-1960s, the business was exempt from minimum wage... I got paid less than half of minimum to cook burgers and fries.

May as well, as pointed out, 1 Cr = $1.

 

[Timerover51]

When it comes to trying to come up with Dollar-Credit equivalents, I have about three ways of attacking the issue.

The inflation rate from 1913 to 2016 is just about 24 ($23.93 to be precise).

The inflation adjustment for the period 1870s and 1880s to 1982 Dollars is 10. As a check on that, the inflation adjustment for 1913 to 1982 is 9.75. Looking at food prices, those began to drop considerably around 1900, so the slightly lower rate from 1913 fits.

Lastly, I use the price of gold in US Dollars in the year the equipment was purchased, and then convert to Credits using the value in Credits for an ounce of Gold given in Research Station Gamma, that of 200 Credits to the ounce of gold. The average price of gold per ounce in 1982, when the adventure was published was $376, which I round to $400, or One Credit equals 2 US Dollars.

This along with the values already mentioned. Then it is a case of looking things over and deciding which figure "feels" right, so there is some subjectivity involved.

 

[Timerover51]

I was watching a program on ancient times, pre-Roman, and bsides weapons and architecture, they talked about money. As here already discussed, they said there was no actual equvalent to today's money. However, they said one way to make an equivalent was indeed to make a comparison to the same items. A loaf of bread of a loaf of bread, both done by hand.

May as well, as pointed out, 1 Cr = $1.

In 1914, the average price for a 16 ounce loaf of bread in the United States was $0.058 or about 6 cents.

 

[kilemall]

The inflation adjustment for the period 1870s and 1880s to 1982 Dollars is 10. As a check on that, the inflation adjustment for 1913 to 1982 is 9.75. Looking at food prices, those began to drop considerably around 1900, so the slightly lower rate from 1913 fits.

The combination of technologies slamming into place- refrigeration, insulated train cars, canning, the nascent prepared foods industry- meant a lot more food being captured at the cheapest places to create it, storable in a form that could last days or months, and relatively cheaply shipping it to where it could be consumed even 2000 miles away.

As I believe you know, the lowly can made the frontage concentration of troops in WWI possible. Same thing with supporting larger populaces.

All this was happening circa 1890-1900, so no surprise there.

Had a lot to do with the Free Silver movement's cache amongst granger progressives, as the value of localized food production and distribution plummeted yet the bank loans on the land remained the same and the currency did not expand to the levels of economic activity- hence Cross of Gold.

There may be more of that sort of unintended economic consequence built into Traveller tech, so any number we come up with will be by 'feel'.

Complicating matters is that loaves of bread are not strictly the same- we have a higher tech loaf of bread now too.

 

[Condottiere]

I remember one advert for gold, I think Coast to Coast, where comparison was made that a gold coin bought a good suit back in the day, and still does today.

 

[JimMarn]

In 1914, the average price for a 16 ounce loaf of bread in the United States was $0.058 or about 6 cents.

My mother talked about 5 cents a loaf during the 1930s. It was about 10 cents in the 1950s, but the small bakery in town might have helped keep the competitor's prices down. I remember when a loaf went up to 25 cents. My parents and other relatives got very upset. Now I pay almost $3 a loaf for whole wheat bread.

I used to make my own bread, but it was cheaper to buy it.

 

[Timerover51]

My mother talked about 5 cents a loaf during the 1930s. It was about 10 cents in the 1950s, but the small bakery in town might have helped keep the competitor's prices down. I remember when a loaf went up to 25 cents. My parents and other relatives got very upset. Now I pay almost $3 a loaf for whole wheat bread.

I used to make my own bread, but it was cheaper to buy it.

For a very long time, the cost for the Army to subsist a man for one day was about 25 cents. That runs up to the 1930s. The exception was during World War One, where price inflation drove that up to 57 cents. That 25 cents cost was based on buying in bulk and preparing the food by the company mess sergeant.

 

[aramis]

My mother talked about 5 cents a loaf during the 1930s. It was about 10 cents in the 1950s, but the small bakery in town might have helped keep the competitor's prices down. I remember when a loaf went up to 25 cents. My parents and other relatives got very upset. Now I pay almost $3 a loaf for whole wheat bread.

I used to make my own bread, but it was cheaper to buy it.

Depends upon where you were...

1942 price for a loaf of bread was capped by law at $0.23 in anchorage, $0.25 in Juneau. Similar prices for a gallon of milk. (See the Records of the Office of Price Administration, as stored at the Anchorage offices of the National Archives and Records Administration.) And the bakers were complaining about the thin allowed profit margin.

 

[JimMarn]

We had milk delivered for a short time, to me anyway. There was a local dairy to. Cost was about 25 cents per quart. They went out of business about the mid-1950s.

By 1960 movies had gone up to a dollar, milk was close to a dollar a gallon.

I'm not going to worry about those type of equivalents on my site though.

One galaxy arm has an empire called Jalan, loosely based on GURPS Ancient Japan.

The other galaxy arm has The Empire very loosely based on GURPS Ancient Rome called The Empire. I can change it easily if necessary.

I haven't decided if the will have similar or different money systems or not.

As for the other empires and civilizations, I haven't decided on what to base them on, if anything.

 

[Condottiere]

You could base it on rice.

The standard unit being how much a normal person would eat in a year.

 

[Murph]

I always used the rule of thumb 1Cr=$5, now with the crappy economy I go 1Cr.=$10 in actual purchasing power.

 

[Timerover51]

You could base it on rice.

The standard unit being how much a normal person would eat in a year.

The US Army ration for Philipino units in 1916 was 12 ounces of meat, 8 ounces of flour, 20 ounces of rice, and 8 ounces of potatoes per day.

The Japanese field ration in WW2 for rice was between 20 to 30 ounces as well. The rice was the principal component of the Japanese ration, but some hard bread or barley and flour was added to that, bringing the weight of that component of the ration to 28 ounces or so.

Based on this, you are looking at about one and a quarter pounds to over 2 pounds of rice per day per person. Allowing for 1.5 pounds per day per person, that would be 547.5 pounds, or 248 kilograms of rice per year. That would be five 50 kilogram sacks of rice per year, or eleven 50 pound sacks of rice a year.

As a cross check on that, my son's fiancee is Chinese, and the household she is in has 5 persons, and they eat a 50 pound sack of rice each month, but are not totally dependent on rice for a majority of their calories.

 

[aramis]

The US Army ration for Philipino units in 1916 was 12 ounces of meat, 8 ounces of flour, 20 ounces of rice, and 8 ounces of potatoes per day.

The Japanese field ration in WW2 for rice was between 20 to 30 ounces as well. The rice was the principal component of the Japanese ration, but some hard bread or barley and flour was added to that, bringing the weight of that component of the ration to 28 ounces or so.

Based on this, you are looking at about one and a quarter pounds to over 2 pounds of rice per day per person. Allowing for 1.5 pounds per day per person, that would be 547.5 pounds, or 248 kilograms of rice per year. That would be five 50 kilogram sacks of rice per year, or eleven 50 pound sacks of rice a year.

As a cross check on that, my son's fiancee is Chinese, and the household she is in has 5 persons, and they eat a 50 pound sack of rice each month, but are not totally dependent on rice for a majority of their calories.

It's worth noting that the troops in the field usually get fed well more than the recommended daily allowance, in part because they usually need it.