How much would one dollar in 1931 be worth today?

Answer 1

If you mean $1.50, it was worth $1.50 in the 1930s.

If you mean how much it would be worth today allowing for inflation, that's a much more difficult question. The CPI has gone up at least 20- or 30-fold since then but it's very hard to compare prices since so much has changed. For example, some foods that were once comparatively cheap are now expensive, and vice versa. One measure would be that it bought about 7 or 8 gallons of gasoline, which would cost around $20 today. It would have paid for 30 bus rides in most cities, versus one today. At the post office it would have let you mail 50 letters, which would cost $20 today.

On the other hand you have to compare quality and technology, too. $1.50 would have purchased 3 or 4 78-rpm records each holding 2 songs, so you could try to match that to the cost of say 15 or 20 songs on a CD or 6 iTunes downloads. However, the 78s would last through about a hundred playings before wearing out, they broke really easily, couldn't be copied or put on a portable player, were mono and had a frequency response from around 100 to 6000 Hz, so the quality difference is far greater than the price difference.

CommentPostal rates and gasoline prices are two commonly cited examples of inflation, but their price behavior is so badly skewed by non-market influences that they should probably be excluded from any inflation analysis, IMHO.

For instance, a first-class postage stamp in 1863 cost $.03. The same stamp in 1958 cost $.03. Today, the first-class stamp costs forty-some cents, but it's a number that inflates so often that no one can keep up with it, and even the US Postal Service has begun to issue "Forever" stamps, bought at a current rate, but honored through subsequent rate hikes. One might speculate that issuing "Forever" stamps is more cost-effective than printing and handling billions of one-cent "add-on" stamps. But it's hard to ignore the fact that the US Postal Service is so addicted to rate hikes that it has memorialized them in the form of "Forever" stamps.

As for gasoline, the market changed completely with the rise of OPEC. Until then, gas could be had at the pump in the US for a quarter a gallon. After, it's been a wild ride.

The main point is this: non-market influences have governed the rises and falls of these two prices, and many others.

In the case of the postage stamp, market influences don't even enter the arena. The US Postal Service is a branch of the US federal government, and thus is not examined for profitability. Like all government enterprises, it is expected to lose money, and does so with alacrity and dependability.

In the case of oil/gas prices, they have been artificially manipulated since the early 1970s, when the Middle Eastern oil-producing nations figured out that they had a virtual stranglehold on the rest of the world, and could charge practically any price they wanted for their oil. A barrel of crude that sold for pennies in 1965 now sells for $90.

Answer 2

Adjusting for inflation, one dollar in 1930 would be about $14 in 2012.

Answer 3

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