What's that Hundred Dollars worth in your state

[Artful]

http://cdn.someecards.com/posts/100-map-Rlsb.png

[Artful]

Oh, and just to put it into prospective
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/07-2/dollar-value.gif

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/07-2/Dollar-value1776-2008a.gif

Or to put it another way
Calculated the value of $100 in 1960.
compared to calulated value: $798.68 in 2015
Annual Inflation: 3.85%
Total Inflation: 698.68%

or to reverse it
$ 100.00 2015 would buy the same amount as $12.52 in 1960 dollars.

http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=100&year=1960

But the US is not alone -
Britiannia
http://www.miketodd.net/encyc/dollar-verylong.gif

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/07/article-1633409-1A32AF8A000005DC-626_634x218.jpg

[andremajic]

People think their house has appreciated in value over the past 30 years. This is not the case. Barring actual improvements made to the structure, the value is the same, the inflated dollars are worth less, making it SEEM like your house is more valuable.

It's not that gold is higher value either. Gold and silver are a reflection on the public confidence in the federal reserve notes, which are worthless except for what value people put in it, and what the force of the law will provide for people to make good use of it.

Tangible items have the only value. Things you use on a daily basis and items that don't spoil over time. Transfer your worthless FRN savings into something of value. At least it can't be stolen from you through inflation. Every year your money is computerized numbers floating in a bank it's being slowly skimmed away. Debt is the only creator of money today.

Andy

[Artful]

GOLD - bah - I'm investing in lead and brass [smilie=w:

[robg]

I divide prices by 10 to get an idea of the real value of things.i work in 1970s prices

[snowwolfe]

The dollar is certainty worth less. But the vast majority of USA workers also make a lot more per hour.

[quickdraw66]

Anybody else notice that a lot of the uber liberal states are yellow while the super conservative ones are red?

[andremajic]

GOLD - bah - I'm investing in lead and brass [smilie=w:

If you keep your brass free of corrosion that's an excellent choice. Too bad lead weighs so much. I guess the weight of lead can be an asset because I haven't heard of any thieves that want to do heavy lifting to steal something like lead.

Andy

[popper]

Just the spend & tax government, all around the world.

[smokeywolf]

In Kali now, $100.00 buys you about 21 gallons of gasoline. In some areas gas prices have exceeded $5.00/gal.

I like the figures in Arkansas. That's my destination of choice as soon as I find the right property.

[Naphtali]

Comparing apples and watermelon. Rather than compare the value of the intermediate device, for money is more of a value of time elapsed to obtain a thing or a service, compare the amount of time - on average if you prefer - to obtain some basic thing (food, clothing, a Colt 1873 revolver???) from time period to time period. Many years ago I compared the cost of the Colt 1873 in terms of gold. While gold is still an intermediate device, it served my purpose. In 1873-74 the cost of the revolver was one ounce of gold. More than 100 years later the cost of the Colt 1873 was - wait for it - one ounce of gold. The cost in dollars for the gold had gone up while the value of the thing in gold remained the same. . . . Apples and apples.

[Artful]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-the-colt-peacemaker-outshone-gold-2009-11-05


The gun that beat inflation
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- There is an old and apocryphal saying that "a good handgun is worth an ounce of gold" and it turns out to be true -- at least it has for the past 136 years.

Because it is basically unchanged after 136 years of continuous production and because there is a healthy, liquid market for it, a good example of this case can be made by tracing the price of "The Gun that Won the West," the Colt Single-action Army revolver. The venerable Peacemaker turns out to be a better gauge of inflation than gold is and a better investment. President Ronald Reagan even named a missile after it.

The correlation of gold and guns can be traced back at least to 1873 when Colt's Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Conn., introduced the most technologically advanced handgun of its time, a six-shot revolver that used metallic cartridges. The Army adopted it as its standard side arm, a position it held until 1892. The innovation of metallic cartridges made it easier to reload in a hurry. Reloading had always been an issue because it was slow, unwieldy and required some expertise. Now anybody could do it.

In 1873 the Colt SAA sold for $17.50. The complete kit with a holster and some ammunition could be covered by a $20 gold piece. The $20 Double Eagle of 1873 contained 0.9675 ounces of pure gold. Today an ounce of gold is about $1,090 and a new Colt SAA can be special ordered from Colt's custom shop for about $1,500.

As a collector's item the Colt fares even better. A recent check of Collectorsfirearms.com found scores of listings at a wide variety of prices from $1,699 at the bottom to $175,000 asked for a Colt "Pinch Frame" called "the Holy Grail of single action collecting." This gun carries the serial number 58. So your $20 gold piece spent on this gun in 1873 would have returned 874900%.

Gold Double Eagle $20 coins from that year can be found on line for $1500 to $5000 depending on condition about the same price as Colt SAA's of similar age and condition.

Gold's price is fixed
Gold was in the midst of one of its many upheavals when the Peacemaker arrived. In 1873, Congress put the United States on the gold standard with the Fourth Coinage Act, which de-monetized silver and made gold the only metal by which to fix currency. President Grant signed it into law in February of that year. Gold was set at $20.67 an ounce where it stayed until 1934 when President Franklin Roosevelt devalued the dollar to 1/35 of an ounce of gold. During this period gold lagged behind the handgun.


The handgun/gold equation was introduced to me by Bob Taber in 1987 when he and I worked at The New York Post and an ounce of gold was worth about $370 and a Colt SAA had jumped to $763.

Bob did not specify a Colt Single Action Army. He merely said, "A damned good handgun is worth an ounce of gold. That's always been true."

Bob was a night-side copy reader at The New York Post and a fantastic character and a holdover from the days when The Post was considered a leftwing newspaper. He'd had a journalistic career that included following Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the Cuban revolution from the mountains to Havana as a special correspondent for CBS television. He also wrote a book on guerrilla warfare, "The War of the Flea" that is still read by the military and intelligence services.

There is film of Bob interviewing Castro after the fall of Batista in 1959 that can be seen in the documentary "David Halberstam's the 50s". In it Bob holds a microphone and sports a beard even bigger than Castro's.

He had survivalist mentality, a guerrilla fighter's point of view. I generally believed what he said on matters dealing with firearms. More than 20 years later I put his statement to the test.

For the most part, it's still true. It does depend on the gun and what you consider to be "good." A Glock similar to the one Plaxico Burress was carrying when he accidentally shot himself in the thigh at a nightclub, can be found on line for a little over $500 and the gun that made Dirty Harry's day, the long-barreled .44 magnum Smith & Wesson 629, sells for about $825. The other gold-standard pistol, also made by Colt's, is the .45- cal. Colt Automatic Pistol. The Army bought about 2.7 million of these from 1911 to 1985 when it was replaced by the Italian-made Beretta 9-mm which can be bought for about $750.

The Colt .45 ACP could be called the standard now and it hits the price of an ounce of gold pretty close to the bull's eye if you go for a top of the line model, but don't go too crazy. A Web site sells the stainless steel Colt 1911 Gold Cup Trophy 45 for $1050 GLD, +0.27% (http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/gld?mod=MW_story_quote)

Gold and politics
Gold, despite its longevity as a trustworthy container of value, has proven more readily manipulated by the government than handgun prices. Congress was in inflation-fighting mode in 1873 when it voted to cease using silver to back paper money and established gold as the sole criteria. This act created a controversy that lasted for decades between those who were pro-inflation and those who were against it.

Silver had its own fanatical backers and they were for a bi-metallic standard that favored easy money. Farmers liked inflation because it raised the price of crops and lowered the cost of debt. Laborers and factory workers also wanted inflation to make it easier to pay off debts. Silver was favored by politicians from states producing silver and by many Democrats, and Southerners. The issue was embodied by William Jennings Bryan, who ran for president and lost on the Democratic ticket in 1896, 1900 and 1908. His acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention of 1896 ended with the famous, "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!"

The gold believers, sound money advocates, won the day. This victory kept the price of gold artificially low as evidenced by the 1956 price for the Colt Equalizer of about $125 when gold was still set at $35.

The victorious pro-gold standard bearers held sway until 1971 when President Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard altogether. He was concerned, among other things, that foreign governments held more U.S. currency than the $10.5 billion in gold the Treasury had on hand. A run on the bank was not out of the question. From then until now the dollar would float against other currencies on the open market.

The inflation that followed these policies would have done Williams Jennings Bryan proud -- from 4% in 1971 to 11% in 1973. And Nixon was a Republican!

Gold was traded freely again and rose quickly. But the Colt stayed ahead where it remains to this day. By 1980, gold had topped $600 an ounce as inflation headed to 14%. Today the standard, blued single-action Army six-shooter goes for $1290, or $1490 for the nickel-plated version. Can gold be far behind?

Want to check out Machine guns as investment instead of SAA's?
http://rkmerting.com/investing-in-machine-guns/

[Handloader109]

In Kali now, $100.00 buys you about 21 gallons of gasoline. In some areas gas prices have exceeded $5.00/gal.

I like the figures in Arkansas. That's my destination of choice as soon as I find the right property.


If I were you and was looking at a nice piece of property in South, I'd look around at the Springfield West section of Missouri. I'm in Nw Arkansas and have seen some really pretty locations around the i44 corridor and i49 South to the line.

[funnyjim014]

Yep my NY is the worst... I wonder what the map would look like if NY cut off NYC... the place all my tax dollars get sent to

[jmort]

Thank God I am moving to Missouri in less than two weeks.

[smokeywolf]

If I were you and was looking at a nice piece of property in South, I'd look around at the Springfield West section of Missouri. I'm in Nw Arkansas and have seen some really pretty locations around the i44 corridor and i49 South to the line.

We looked around Springfield and Nixa and very seriously at the Howell County (West Plains) and Dent County (Salem) areas, but their schools just aren't quite as good as the Baxter County area of North Central Arkansas. With 2 kids in high school, we have to put a priority on the local schools.

[smokeywolf]

Thank God I am moving to Missouri in less than two weeks.

Good for you jmort. Hopefully I won't be more than a few months behind you.

[jmort]

"Hopefully I won't be more than a few months behind you."

It feels like the exact right time to flee from this state. Will be praying for you on your move, as no matter what, moving is stressful.

[smokeywolf]

Even though we have not yet found the place that "speaks to us", we've started cleaning up, packing up and throwing out the accumulations of 32 years in the same house.
Because of my machine shop, horse tack, antiques and whatnot (lots of whatnot), moving will almost surely take at least 2 to 3 months, 4 or 5 trips and cost well into 5 figures.

[white eagle]

Anybody else notice that a lot of the uber liberal states are yellow while the super conservative ones are red?

Also where the dollar is worth less

[MaryB]

In Minnesota if we got rid of the metro corridor (Saint Cloud to the Twin Cities then down to Rochester is turning into one giant urban sprawl) that $100 would go a lot farther.

[kootne]

Even though we have not yet found the place that "speaks to us", we've started cleaning up, packing up and throwing out the accumulations of 32 years in the same house.
Because of my machine shop, horse tack, antiques and whatnot (lots of whatnot), moving will almost surely take at least 2 to 3 months, 4 or 5 trips and cost well into 5 figures.

Smokey, when I moved back to Mt. some years back, I had 6 machine tools I needed to bring with. I found a trucker who came this way empty from time to time. He said he would haul my machines for the fuel. I asked him about the rest of his space on the trailer and he said I got the whole thing for the fuel price. So I made up a 4' x 4' x 8' box out of OSB, 2x4's and deck screws. Filled it full of personal stuff. Then I figured I could get 5 more on the trailer so I built 5 more and crammed them full. Screwed a sheet of OSB on top of each to seal them up and 4 evenly placed stickers underneath so they could forked on and off easy. Had to rent a forklift to load the machines anyway. Moving day took me about 2 hrs to load, the trucker tarped the whole shebang and a couple hrs with a forklift on the other end and I was moved. WAY better way to move than pick-ups with uhaul or horse trailers. My move was 600 miles, the trucker charged $1200, my new employer had already given me a $2000 moving stipend, I like to think I made good use of it. Built a garden shed with the boxes after I tore them down. Don't know if this idea will work for you but your situation sounds similar.

[GhostHawk]

It is only the concept that money is worth something that makes it worth anything. When enough people realise that it is in fact worth nothing, it will fail, dramatically.

[MtGun44]

Good that I have been living in KS for more than 35 years. My friends in Cali and
other insane liberal places have been getting screwed financially and in their freedoms
for decades.

[smokeywolf]

Thanks for that kootne. I'll have to do some thinkin' and checkin' on that.