Comment by quantified

7 hours ago

When the $1000 bill was retired, a loaf of bread cost a couple cents. There was indeed a push to purge them during the drug scares of the late 20th century. A suitcase of $1000 bills is far sexier than one of $100 bills. It really was porting them.

With bitcoin, it's moot.

A $100 is basically a tank of gas and a sandwich in CA.

In 1934 the dollar was worth approximately 24x more than in 2025. A cheap loaf of bread is about $2 here in NYC, so it would be about 8¢ at the time.

On one hand, the difference between 2¢ and 8¢ looks completely inconsequential now. OTOH it's a four-fold difference.

  • It makes sense when you think of coins in terms of the commodities they were pegged to - a sliver of copper and nickel to pay for a loaf of bread.

> A $100 is basically a tank of gas and a sandwich in CA.

I was just lamenting with my wife the other day about how "$100 is the new 20 bucks"

When I was a kid, mowing someone's yard for $20 was a really good payout. Kids my neighborhood last year were doing it for $70 lol.

  • $70!? How big are these lawns? Hell, I'd mow lawns for $70 each.

    I wouldn't pay more than $5 for someone to mow my lawn, but then again, it's tiny at like 20x15 feet. I spend more time getting the mower out and putting it back away than actually mowing. Probably gonna replace it with just a bunch of wildflowers next spring.

    • Your neighbors who pay a service with similar sized lawn are mostly paying them to drive to their house. The neighborhood kids can undercut them without that time inefficiency. But they only need to slightly undercut them, so they get a good payout (for them)