What were the pay rates during World War Two in contrast to pay rates in the U.S. military today? What is the ratio of today’s pay compared to WWII? The Navy CyberSpace website provides 2019 U.S. Military Basic Pay Charts. That same web site also helpfully provides 1942-1946 U.S. Military Pay Charts. Both pay scales […]
Pay for American soldiers during each major war is provided by We Are the Mighty. Their article, This is how much troops were paid in every major American war, provides the pay for a private in the major wars fought by the U.S. The then-current pay is also adjusted to an equivalent amount of money […]
What was the price of a Viking sword at the time? How about expressing a price then in some unit of measure we can grasp today? I have looked on the ol’ net but haven’t found any good guesses. Previous post discussed one indicator that I couldn’t process. Hurstwic website describes one sword that had […]
Transatlantic travel time has dropped radically in the last 500 years. Time to transit the Atlantic has dropped about 99% and cost has dropped about 95% by my calculations. Let’s look at several data points for cost and time, then calculate one indicator of improved quality of life. (Article cross-posted from my other blog, Outrun […]
This may not be ancient finances, but salary paid to the senior level military commanders in the 1860s and 1870s provides a worthwhile point of reference. William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country: A Life by James Lee McDonough is a delightful biography of the general. Gen. Sherman was a prolific letter writer. […]
For most of history, one of the main challenges was getting enough food to eat. Keeping your family alive through the winter until you can harvest the first crop in the spring has been a worry for thousands of years. That point is important when considering ancient finances back in the days of the Roman […]
(Article cross-posted from Outrun Change because it shows the radical change in per capita income over the last 200 years, which in turn illustrates the challenge of expressing ancient prices and incomes in terms of today.) Here is an approximation of annual per capita GDP from 1 AD through 1913: I’ve long been amazed at the […]