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Comment by captn3m0 | Hacker News Reader

Trying to answer the following might be fun as well: How much is a 1000 USD from today in that era in terms of purchasing power? What could you have bought with the equivalent amount of money, and how many people could have afforded the iPhone equivalent then?

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According to saving.org, 111.42. According to http://www.earlytelevision.org/color.html a 21" color tv in 1955 was $755 1955 dollars... or more than 6 iPhones.

This site seems to have more prices of goods http://fiftiesweb.com/pop/prices-1957/

A cheap ford car was $1879 or 17 iPhones.

Kinda holds as a cheap ford today is around 14k

It's probably important to also consider these prices against the wages at the time.

It lists average income: $4,494

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/50selectrical.html

1000USD today would be around 100USD in the 50s.

Yep. I just checked with http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/. That site has a calculator that comes up with almost the exact same conclusion as you.

Or, you could assume an average rate of inflation and calculate this using the rule of 72. I like to keep that formula in my pocket for things like this.

Yeah would be interesting with real estate. A labourer could purchase a house backed then that would require 1000 labourers now to afford it.

a 14 inch TV. Or tuition at harvard...

1000 2017 dollars isn't equivalent to 1000 1957 dollars

True. My bad :)

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