What Coins SHOULD Be Worth!

None. I don't eat candy.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

For 1900, you're way too high at $5 per day. A Chicago Tribune article quoted Census data as follows: ...Median family incomes in 1900 were $490 per year and in 1950 had grown only to $3,319...

The "median" is half above, half below.

In addition, a good many employees worked 52 to 56 hours per week, but with no income or sales taxes -- and no medical or retirement benefits. If you figure a very conservative 260 working days a year (i.e., no Saturday work, which would be exceptional), your median daily income is more like $2. In addition, households were larger, and sometimes included a Civil War veteran who received a tiny pension to contribute to the family. A household, by the way, is the occupant(s) of one housing unit; a family is two or more persons related by blood, marriage, or process of law (such as adoptions).

My great-grandfather's HUGE brick house at the edge of a small Illinois farming town, cost $488 to build in 1904, including land.

Incomes and living expenses were reasonably stable until the onset of World War I.

EDIT, forgot to add this point: "In 1914, Henry Ford started an industrial revolution by more than doubling wages to $5 a day—a move that helped build the U.S. middle class..."

 

Henry ford didn't give those raises out of the goodness of his heart. He was forced by the workers themselves to pay those wages. This is from Forbes Magazine:

"At the time, workers could count on about $2.25 per day, for which they worked nine-hour shifts. It was pretty good money in those days, but the toll was too much for many to bear. Ford’s turnover rate was very high. In 1913, Ford hired more than 52,000 men to keep a workforce of only 14,000. New workers required a costly break-in period, making matters worse for the company. Also, some men simply walked away from the line to quit and look for a job elsewhere. Then the line stopped and production of cars halted. The increased cost and delayed production kept Ford from selling his cars at the low price he wanted. Drastic measures were necessary if he was to keep up this production."

And that $5 per day came with strings attached. Also from Forbes Magazine:

"The $5-a-day rate was about half pay and half bonus. The bonus came with character requirements and was enforced by the Socialization Organization. This was a committee that would visit the employees’ homes to ensure that they were doing things the "American way.” They were supposed to avoid social ills such as gambling and drinking. They were to learn English, and many (primarily the recent immigrants) had to attend classes to become “Americanized.” Women were not eligible for the bonus unless they were single and supporting the family. Also, men were not eligible if their wives worked outside the home."

 

The point of mentioning Henry Ford's $5 wage (in 1914) was simply to show that $5 was much too high an estimate for 1900. More, read about Ford's flaps with Thomas Edison.

 

I have checked a few sources to find that the average working
persons wage in 1900 was about $2.00 for an 11 to 12 hour day.
And they all worked six 11 to 12 hour days a week.

 

Let us not forget that quite a few people were not even making $2, let alone $5 a day then - many immigrant workers usually women, and children were often paid substandard wages under a dollar a day and worked 16-20 hours a day - labour laws were skint and few betwixt then.

 

I agree...we should confiscate the profits of large corporations to pay reparations to anyone who is the descendent of a poor person ...but that wasn't the point of the thread. I was simply trying to point out (in relative terms) how truly worthless our coinage is and how ridiculous it is to keep making more.

Do you realize there's a $1.5M study going on right now to find cheaper coinage materials so the government can continue making these worthless coins?

http://www.coinworld.com/articles/u-s-mint-exploring-alternative-metal-options/

Many businesses in the Baltimore/Washington area don't even keep pennies. The productivity gain they get by simply truncating final sales totals to the nearest nickel, dime, or quarter far exceeds the cost. You go to just about any fine restaurant and their menu/wine prices are in whole dollars, only.

 

If you think it's bad now, wait until hyperinflation makes ALL coins superfluous, and the "rounding" is to the nearest $5 bill.

 

Up until December 8th 1941 my grandfather was a farm labourer making 50 cents a day, but that day he signed up for big money - making $22 a month in the US Army. He soon found out that the new money didn't buy much - there really wasn't a lot of frivolous stuff being sold during the war.

 

Keep in mind that for the past 20 to 30 years the official CPI numbers have been "massaged" to keep them artificially low so you figures are actually even lower than they should be.

Yes, and that strikes me as being an absurdly low sum for a nearly two year study which leads me to believe that they are not taking it seriously. And of course we can possibly save them a bundle by starting with the assumption that it can't be done for the cent or five cent. Production costs would require the cost of the cent material be negative (less than zero), and for the five cent just barely above zero.

 

I was thinking the same thing.:thumb: