Rubies and diamonds, and _The Man Who Would be King_

[James Harbeck]

>   The amount of inflation since 1739 does interest me, however.  I
>was once told (1988) that U.S. inflation since the 1870s grew by a
>factor of about 40. Later I heard it was more like 20.

Depends on what item you're pricing, of course; houses have gone up a
lot more in the last few decades than cars have, for instance. So if
you're coming up with a general figure, there's a lot of weighting to
do, and you'll get different numbers for people with different
spending profiles. Someone who spends a lot of money on electronics
will even have experienced a certain amount of deflation in the last
few decades -- though of course the cost of the Cokes he chain-drinks
while working on his toys has gone up notably. (So, on the other
hand, has the container size.)

James Harbeck.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org