Comment by Retric
17 hours ago
> A new car still costs around 13oz of gold.
A car or house built in 2025 is very different object than one built in 1945.
Consistent commodities like coal, rice, or silver make better points of comparison, but each give wildly different values for inflation just as gold does. Inflation doesn’t mean anything specific on very long timescales because the underlying economy fundamentally changes.
There’s really nothing suggesting gold is a more fundamental measure of value than silver which was far more commonly traded. IMO the reason people focus on gold today is its more consistent use in video games as a currency rather than say platinum. There’s just never been enough gold to use as a common medium of exchange between individuals, but in virtual worlds that’s a non issue.
Houses built in 1945 are still on the market for comparable prices to those built in 2025
Nope land is comparable, subtract that out and you’ll see a huge difference as you literally can’t legally build a house that shitty in most areas. These things were typically ~750 SF and had terrible insulation via single pane windows etc.
Survivorship bias means most of the lowest quality housing stock either didn’t survive or was significantly upgraded, but that’s irrelevant when talking about what was being built.