Accounting for inflation a piece of cake bought in 1789

[randr]

Is now worth $600

[Karadeniz]

1. And doesn't taste any worse than grocery store cake!

[randr]

2. It tastes like 231 year old cake

[Karadeniz]

3. Which is EXACTLY what a HEB birthday cake tastes like...

[hatrack]

26. It's probably the same fruitcake . . .

.

[Blue_true]

10. I believe that I read that a fruitcake was found in an isolated North Pole

location that the first explorer of the North Pole had encamped at. The tinned fruitcake was apparently left behind (more proof the everyone tries to lose fruitcakes). According to the article, when the tin was opened, the fruitcake was in almost like-baked condition.

[Karadeniz]

13. That sounds familiar.. And puts the lie to Johnny Carson's claim that there's actually only one

Fruitcake that is passed unopened from person to person, year after year!

[Blue_true]

18. I did't hear Carson's lie, but my life experience would have caused me to doubt his

claim. When a person grows up poor in the South, fruitcake was the only truly affordable cake. My parents used to buy it from home bakers and that cake was pretty decent. As an adult, I don’t touch the stuff, maybe because some that I eat as a kid is still in my digestive track

[hunter]

22. Reminiscent of John Wheeler's "One Electron Theory"

I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, "Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass" "Why?" "Because, they are all the same electron!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

[Prof. P.E. Name]

4. Mmmm. There's some real value here

Just decided to put my last pair of Twinkies in the closet with a little advisory note to my progeny about the future value of goods and money.

[Blue_true]

11. Throw a Big Mac or a Whopper in with it. nt

[Polybius]

5. How much was a piece of cake in 1789?

I'll do the math.

[Towlie]

27. That piece of cake originally cost $20.29.

 
←

$20.29 in 1789 is worth $600.01 today

We constantly hear that the man we all hate has claimed something "without evidence". It really bugs me when a DUer does the same, and it bugs me even more when nobody bothers to do a fact check.

[Beakybird]

6. So Marie Antoinette was a benevolent dictator.

[magicarpet]

7. If MickyDs sold it back in 1789,... the shelf life would not yet have expired,...

..... and it would still be fresh and tasty today.

Well,... the mold would at least be minimal.

[Autumn]

8. Looking at Twitter threads today people seem awfully angry but there will be no

storming the "Bastille."

[VMA131Marine]

9. $600 today is equivalent to $20 in 1789

A typical daily wage in 1789 was $1-$2 per day, so $365-$730/yr. That $20 piece of cake would take nearly a month to buy at the wage of a typical laborer.

[Blue_true]

14. So that piece of cake was a luxury item that likely only the reasonably

well off could afford on any regular basis. It was a special treat for a working class person, obtainable maybe a couple times a year, if things went well.

Going through that above brought memories for me. My family was so poor that places like Burger King and Pizza Hut were fine dining. I didn’t eat a slice of pizza until I was a young Engineer and had dinner at Pizza Hut after getting my first paycheck.

[MLAA]

17. I've never lost my taste for good old comfort food🙂

[Blue_true]

19. It kept my family alive when I was a child. Not fancy, but cheap and it

got the job done.

[MLAA]

28. I'm still a big fan of Campbell's tomato soup and grilled cheese.

What food do you still like from your childhood?

[Blue_true]

29. My favorites:

Lima-bean stew with hamhocks poured over fresh gummy rice, with collard greens on the side, cooked the way my Mom cooked them. I also loved bologna and cheese sandwiches, with a thin slice of fresh onion on fresh bread, but the bologna today isn’t very good, IMO, so I don’t bother. I simply can’t make the Lima-bean stew or collard greens, because they were done with skill by my Mom, skill that I haven’t seen in my adult life.

I developed a love for spaghetti with red sauce as a teen, that is the only thing from my childhood that I eat to any measure now - the rest of the food is hard to find in the world that I live in, though I have bought barbecued ribs from roadside stands on occasions (though they are still nothing like the great ones that I had as a kid, bought from an old man who had cooked them over a pit from just after midnight to when they were sold in late afternoon or early evening).

[MLAA]

32. I've made collard greens a time or two lately.

My husband turned me onto onion sandwiches of his childhood. Thinly slice onion on buttered/margarined white bread a sprinkle of salt. Didn’t sound appealing but I tried them and now love them.

I became vegetarian and then vegan about 10 years ago but I did miss fried bologna sandwiches. There is now a plant based bologna I get at whole foods or sprouts that brings back memories. I’ve never been a Lima bean fan, though my mom did cook them. I recently had the best little individual cheesecakes from Trader Joe’s. They are in the freezer section and are delicious and creamy. The secret ingredient? Lima beans!

[Blue_true]

33. Is the Vegan Trader Joe's cheesecake light?

I gave up cheesecake because it became too heavy for my stomach as I got older.

[MLAA]

34. Yes, light and creamy not the cake like texture of NY cheesecake.

You defrost them in the fridge and serve them cold. I put a little dairy free whip ‘cream’ from a can that I also get at Trader Joe’s.

[Blue_true]

35. I have always found NY Cheesecake to be way too dense and heavy.

I started eating cheesecake in college, a sub shop that served the U campus sold a creamy version that it topped with fruit on demand, I loved ordering canned strawberries on mine.

I will try the Trader Joe’s cheesecake.

[MLAA]

36. While you are there...

During the holidays they have a GINGERBREAD loaf. It is light and much like a fluffy spice cake. Again, spray a little of Trader Joe’s dairy free whip cream and delicious and light.

[Blue_true]

37. Thanks for the suggestions. nt

[randr]

23. I thanked God for Taco Bell

My young family could eat when I was in College for 2 or 3 bucks.

[Blue_true]

30. Crystal did that for my parent's family.

The tiny little burgers were cheap and surprisingly delicious. That was the only fast food that my parents could afford.

Your outlook on life, struggles and opportunity is likely shaped by you having to provide for a family in hard times. I only saw that as a kid, but I have great appreciation for how my parents struggled and provided while protecting us and giving us opportunities to live better lives.

[Roland99]

12. But how much would a slice of JFK's cake cost?

[Blue_true]

15. I don't get the reference, mind explaining? Thanks. nt

[Roland99]

20. Seinfeld episode. And wasn't JFK. I think that was the golf clubs episode

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogger

[Blue_true]

31. Thanks. nt

[moondust]

16. And the price of a guillotine?

[markpkessinger]

21. Calclulating inflation backwards doesn't really work that way

First, in 1789, there would have been very few places one could actually buy a piece of cake. Most baking would have been done at home.

Second, changes over time in how the various ingredients used in baking a cake were produced, distributed and acquired, and in the relative price of each ingredient relative to the others, and relative to other typical household outlays, render it nearly impossible to calculate something like this with any accuracy.

[Tom Rinaldo]

24. Right. Had the recipe and the means to bake them existed in 1789, backdating from today's prices...

One could have bought a whole lot pf cheese pizza in 1789 with the same money one slice of cake theoretically would have cost then. I think pizza would have made a far better deal.

[Towlie]

25. According to this site, your piece of cake originally cost $20.29. Expensive cake!

 
←

$20.29 in 1789 is worth $600.01 today


And inflation since the middle of the Civil War is about 2,000%. That means that The $200,000 in gold that the three bandits fought over in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was equivalent to $4,130,619.05 today. You'd think they would have been content to split it and all be millionaires.