Just an idle thought: from 1900 to 1933, US dollar was worth roughly a pennyweight (1/20 troy ounce or 1.556 gram) of gold. As of today, gold trades for just under $ 43/gram. A dollar today buys about 67 times less gold than it did in 1925. Do we earn 67 times more? A more Meaningful comparison Would be to the Wages and prices of the Day .
In 1924, a typical farm wage was a little less than $ 50/month, or a little over $ 44K annually in today's money. Skilled trades (numbers for unionized workers in NYC, therefore not typical of the rest of the country) were four to six times higher. Another source listed average income under $ 100/month - I am sure that these numbers varied greatly with location and other factors. I am not sure how the linked site came up with the 1:12.48 ratio - for that to be accurate, the purchasing power of gold had to be 5.3 times lower than today.
For New Technologies , like radios, That was more than true. A good radio with a speaker approached $ 100 - imagine how much technology $ 6,700 buy us today!
More @ Oleg Volk
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