Wood burning stoves used in homes in developing countries are the number one cause of disease and death. To suggest that countries downgrade from electricity to this is absurd, would cost lives, and billions in increased medical expenses.
You'll easily pay $800 for one of these stoves, used -- in the summer. Which is why I was saying that you can just use an inflation calculator to figure out how much things cost today relative to yesterday. We have better technology, more building codes to follow, and more things to buy.
Life does cost more today than it did back then, more than inflation can account for.