Читать книгу The Thirties: An Intimate History of Britain - Juliet Gardiner, Juliet Gardiner - Страница 6

Translating the value of money is fraught with difficulties. As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations (1776): ‘The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it … but it is not that by which their value is estimated … Every commodity is more frequently exchanged for, and thereby compared with other commodities.’

www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare suggests that there are five indices that can be used to compare monetary values in different eras. I have generally chosen the lowest (the retail price index), which multiplies a sum by roughly fifty — so that £100 in the 1930s would equal almost £5,000 today. But perhaps a more useful guide is to remember that in 1935 a working man would earn between £3 and £4 a week, and that an average semidetached suburban house would have cost between £500 and £750.