unfortunately due to the government shutdown, the BLS inflation data for September 2025 is delayed from October 15 (as it normally is) until October 24[1], so please check back then to see if he is >109 Cent.
assuming future stability, the site will automatically update on the 15th of every month.
This is a powerful visual representation. I would suggest that the impact could be even stronger if you provided side-by-side images of 50 Cent, where the second is scaled up proportionately.
that’s a good idea. in future versions, i might need to consider multiple renderings as different economists likely prefer alternative visualizations of 50’s monetary adjustments
2. Copy and paste this into your browser location bar: javascript:void(document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 50/prompt("Inflation-adjusted 50 Cent value:"))
3. Enter the inflation-adjusted 50 Cent value, which as we are talking about this today, is 109.
Et voila, inflation-adjusted 50 Cent music, and anyone finding this later can adjust it to their current inflation-adjusted value.
I believe there are limits on how slow the browsers will playback video. This code is not guaranteed to work past any possible hyperinflations or massive deflations that may occur in the future.
If you're curious how that may sound with a more careful job done then the browsers will do with stretching, consider Beethoven's 9th symphony stretched to 24 hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSJ9Bkhb1Q4&list=PLMEcbs3sHQ... Some of you may well legitimately love this. Obviously the frequency profile of doing this to a 50 Cent piece will be quite different but it at least gives the idea.
[1]: It is sheer coincidence that this video ID ends in "Ass". This is "50 Cent - In Da Club (Official Music Video)" for those wondering.
I'm surprised Twista isn't much higher, if you listen to his lyrics he's always busting out different words like a thesaurus (I think he's one who mentioned reading one as a kid or something?) but I guess this just means he's not released as many songs. I do like that MF Doom is listed as well, big respect to him, I never listened to him heavily.
One thing to note, you don't need every word on the planet to convey amazing lessons with lyrics, some of the more profound lyrics (I can't remember, but it certainly felt that way to me 15+ years ago) were by artists somewhere in the middle of your graph for me.
Just looked up Tech N9ne on there, really surprised he's in the middle. Immortal Technique more to the right with the list of people who really use an insane amount of words in their lyrics, not surprised honestly.
Edit: Just realized its the first 35,000 words... Man... this needs to do its best to get all of them. Unfortunately, there's songs by artists I can't find on ANY lyrics sites, so I fear this list will never be 100% but a close enough ballpark.
Using the first 35,000 words is a bit unfair for a rapper such as Lil Wayne who's been releasing work since he was 14.
Also I wonder if this is including proper nouns and other references. (I'd think it should, but it's hard to account for the fact that referencing seven different Chris's would be counted as one token used seven times. Similarly, many words have many meanings, and those are all being lumped together as well, so no accounting here can probably ever be perfect).
If you had all the lyrics for all the rappers I think I'd
- aggregate word counts
- combine variations
- remove most commonly used words in each language (I, I'm, You, You're, etc)
Then see who came out ahead. You shouldn't get penalized for releasing more.
You could probably do a bunch of cool analysis with that data.
edit: Oh no, there's actually a Genius API isn't there. No no no no. I have no time!
The original author was pretty clear about the limitations of his work. I certainly would like to see an updated version, so I'm glad you got nerd sniped and not me. I look forward to see your super accurate updated version in a few months ;)
I've wanted to see a version that segmented rappers by topic clusters of what they rap about, with fine enough details that you could take something like "drugs" and drill down or aggregate specific ones, and even have some sentiment data as well like pot good/X bad. It'd be fun to see who has the most unique general topics and topics only covered by one rapper. I can see how that might be biased in favor of total lifetime output, but perhaps not. My favorite dead rapper is Eyedea, his album output didn't exceed the 35k word minimum for the vocab list but his topic breadth was pretty wide. I've thought LLMs might be good enough to do that for a lot of songs now, if they don't have a panic attack over the language anyway, but I haven't experimented. Maybe someone else can be sniped into doing it~
I would argue that valuation of '50 Cent' (real name Curtis James Jackson III) was essentially flat leading up to immediately before the release of Get Rich or Die Tryin', his debut album released February 6, 2003.
Which, undeniable, is an * all-time banger * that substantially increased the valuation of 50 Cent to something far surpassing US dollar inflation.
I was prepared to be absolutely fucking disgusted by such a comment but I.... shit. I mean... this is.... this is wild
I gotta go contemplate 'where we're at' again it seems. If that is truly a straight generative audio diffusion model.... wait, how did they get the same verse by verse chord progressions to match? this has to be professionally post-produced, right? AI models aren't able to do this end-to-end yet, right?
> wait, how did they get the same verse by verse chord progressions to match?
Usually these AI covers don't use AI for the whole thing, but rather specifically for melding the to-be-impersonated voice into some given melody. That's been possible for a couple years now with decent results; one of my favorite examples is that of Plankton from Spongebob singing Disturbed's cover of “Sound of Silence”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eLRsw9mkmY
Possible that these newer ones are also using AI to generate other musical elements, but it's probably all being combined after-the-fact rather than being generated all at once.
I had similar emotions. The cover of 21 Questions by the same YouTuber is even better. And other covers of Mario's "Let Me Love You" and Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" are equally mind blowing.
I'm ashamed to say I prefer these to the originals so much so that its difficult for me to listen to them any more. Make of that what you will...
As a big fan of Chris Cornell I went through the same stream of emotions with their Motown version of Like a Stone[0]. And if you can get past the thumbnail, check out the 2000s Rock version of Many Men[1]
In some sense it's absurd. But historically its normal.
And to be more precise, 25 years to halve is actually less inflation than the historical average of 3.29% from 1914-2025. At that rate it would take 21-22 years to halve.
Actually there is a surprisingly good trick to be able to calculate this called the rule of 72. Take the inflation percentage (2, 3 %) and divide 72 by it. Thats how many years it will take to halve. Not completing accurate but actually very close.
But yeah, inflation is a bitch over long time horizons. It makes me laugh when people say stocks are risky. Say you are 20 years old and want to save $2M USD for your retirement by 65. Expect that to be more like $470k.
Historically - it's actually NOT normal. Link and quote below that examines this with graphs but, the crux is that we have accepted higher inflation in order to achieve stable inflation that is predictable.
"For the pre-Fed period (1790-1913), the average annual inflation was 0.4 percent with a coefficient of variation of 13.2. During the period 1941-2016, these figures changed to 3.5 percent and 0.8, respectively. If we look at the post-Volcker era (1988-2016), annual inflation was 2.2 percent on average with a coefficient of variation of 0.4." -
Also recommend Debt: The First 5000 Years (David Graeber) and Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Thomas Piketty) which cover this and more on how current concepts of finance and capital post-1914 are incredibly different from the majority of human civilization.
I think a broader historical/anthropological approach is helpful here to understand why those tradeoffs were made.
> "For the pre-Fed period (1790-1913), the average annual inflation was 0.4 percent with a coefficient of variation of 13.2. During the period 1941-2016, these figures changed to 3.5 percent and 0.8, respectively. If we look at the post-Volcker era (1988-2016), annual inflation was 2.2 percent on average with a coefficient of variation of 0.4." -
Citing an average number is misleading since the chart of the value of a dollar during that time looks like a zig-zag with some massive swings in both directions. This means periods of severe deflation, too, which can be very bad for people.
It definitely was not flat or consistently near zero, though citing an average number is a great way to give that impression.
If you move to before the central bank was created in 1913, the dollar remained remarkably stable in relation, although it did oscillate, it never deviated more than 50% from the starting point until after creation of the fed.
What is the source of data that image is using? It seems odd. A datum I quite like is the Campbell's Tomato Soup Inflation Index. [1] Since their introduction in 1897, Campbell's has sold the same tomato soup in the same size container. Its price remained quite stable until 1971 at which point it went into loony land, like many other data. [2]
The point is that even after the central bank was introduced, the US remained on a literal or defacto gold standard, of varying sorts, until 1971. That's when Bretton Woods ended and the value of the USD became based on absolutely nothing and the government granted themselves the power to 'print' arbitrary amounts at their discretion.
It's from a variety of sources due to the large time period and discontinuity in government and 3rd party measuring apparatus over 250 years. Refer to Table 5 for the non-BLS period sources.
Lots of topics that we discuss on HN require careful thought and other difficult efforts but somehow do not extinguish our curiosity. Going back to the ancient Romans, an ounce of gold has always been able to purchase a suit of clothes. As the market becomes more efficient at producing goods and services, we should expect prices to decrease, not inflate. In some sectors, we do see this outcome but not in others. Yes, the analysis required to explain why is difficult, and perhaps more difficult is having to face conclusions that challenge one’s priors.
... I was directly addressing GGP using 1914 as a cutoff. Now you object to the cutoff I didn't introduce only when someone introduce data on the other side of it? Funny how that magically ends up being the case.
To be clear, I think it’s also hard to make inferences after 1913. But it’s easier (and particularly after 1945, 1971, etc.) because the US’s geopolitical status after those periods is at least analogous and a matter of econometric research.
> The period from 1776-1913 arguably had as many changes as the period from 1913 to 2025.
I'm not arguing it didn't. But I think in kind the US's global economic position didn't change substantially between full independence in 1783 and 1913. It grew during that period, but the idea of the US as a peer (and then dominant) economic world power is a distinctly post-WWI one.
It's not absurd. And there's no automatic way to make money perfectly stable. That's not how money works.
And deflation is much worse. So we target a small 2% yearly inflation so that if it's 1% or 3% it's not a big deal. Whereas if you target 0% and wind up with -1%, you've got problems.
There's that word we again. So you're the crazy gringo who always picks my pocket?
Deflation is only bad for people who hold a lot of debt. For people who are cash positive, deflation means you're richer, you're being paid more to do the same job, etc. all while maintaining your freedom. Deflation actually being good is the central gamble behind bitcoin's design. If more people understood that then they'd probably stop using it for such frivolous purposes. Not everyone is privileged enough to even hold debt, so it's really an exclusionary system. And what do the people who the system trusts to have debt (e.g. private equity firms) do with it? They do leveraged buyouts to rip out the heart and soul of responsible American companies. The only thing inflation is good for is keeping folks running on the hamster wheel and bankrolling entitlements.
Inflation is just what you want when your debt is denominated in the currency that is being inflated, though. The more inflation the easier it will be to service the debt.
It's a foolish idea to short gold on the eve of a currency crisis. Gold went up 1812% the last time this happened. You'll be paying through the nose if you do it with $GLD since it's hard to borrow. You'll get IV crushed if you do it with put options. The smart way to profit off gold's fall from grace is by selling futures each time it hits a new high and then closing your position quickly after the inevitable ~50 point pullback. Markets can be timid. They sometimes price in new information slowly and reluctantly.
Certainly a lot of that inflation was in the last ~8 years. I certainly know what you mean.
Groceries are one of the more discretionary items. Your mortgage is fixed, demand for gas is inelastic, etc. But groceries you respond to the price. And so many staples have become 2,3,4X times more expensive compared to pre-covid. I remember the cheap beef (chuck roast) was about $4/lb and decent steak (ribeye) was about $9/lb. Now its about $10/lb and $22/lb.
So psychologically, now your "splurging" just gets you the "cheap" stuff.
Wages have risen a bit. But 1) not nearly as much as inflation 2) these are very asymetric and 3) the way they rise doesnt feel like wage inflation. Even those who saw wages rise due to inflation probably felt like it was other things. Such as simply changing jobs. Or just normal yearly review. Or maybe they havent switched jobs and have some "unrealized gains" awaiting them still. No one one saw their wages incrementally rise month by month.
How you feel is also very geographically dependent, and quality of life dependent.
The government published nationwide inflation measures are completely irrelevant to anyone who had a goal of buying land in a tier 1 metro, or in the higher end suburbs of tier 2 metros. And you will feel very different based on if you have kids or not.
Land, healthcare, and education pretty much eclipse everything else.
Why??? My (very limited) understanding is that we like a small amount of inflation, to incentivize reinvestment into the economy/R&D/etc. If there’s no inflation, you incentivize dragon-hoarding behavior
Get a brokerage account that has a sister bank account. Put money in, buy TIPS/gold/equities, pay the 30% tax or whatever on the inflationary difference, then buy your stuff. The point is to force you into buying more stable units of account and then taxing the inflation as a "capital gain."
Pretty genius because it can be framed as taxing greedy capitalists when literally they're just taxing fractional inflation.
How would that work? You have a claim to a past output that no longer exists. If the nominal value of the claim stays the same, the real value of the denomination unit must change.
People don't understand that money is a time and location bound object and pretend it is infinitely liquid and fungible when it isn't. Money is kind of like electricity. When you borrow it into existence and spend it, it travels a path through society, but it must then travel along a return path back to the source. Inflation could be thought of as a form of resistive loss, where current stays the same but voltage drops.
There's a reason why demurrage (or its ugly brother inflation) is a necessary bitter pill if you want a working money system. It forces money to travel down the return path sooner than later.
I feel like this is the real-life version of my favorite joke from Andy Kindler: "I know they said don't re-invent the wheel, but does it have to be so round?"
Much respect for the artist 50 Cent - converted his rap music success into respectable business ventures (Vitamin Water, others). So he is worth much more now!
This is backwards. He's still 50 cent, but to have the buying power he had in '94, he'd need to $1.09. But he's still 50 cent, so really, in today's money he's more like 23 cent.
I wonder how the data is updated. I dont see any network calls so I guess it's provided on build. The latest datapoint is August. Do we just not have data for the last few months? I suppose you could have github action or whatever to pull in the latest and republish on change.
edit: i see elsewhere in the comments the author explains this. github action indeed.
That's an incredibly misleading graph. Never look at something with a growth rate on a linear scale, as it will always have a "hockey stick" shape, even with constant growth. If you look at the same series on a log scale, you see high inflation in the 70s, but from the '80s on it looks pretty similar to the pre-70s trend.
It's a newly registered website, gets classified as a risk by some organizations "Newly-Registered-Domain". After 30 or 60 days, it's no longer flagged and blocked.
not really, he has a lot of businesses, this was one of them which turned out to be very successful. He was a very famous rapper back in the days, and he invented mixtapes :)
reminds me of the time, a Malaysian newspaper mentioned him in a story an converted his name to local currency: 1.50 Malaysian ringgit https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3915
hi, i made this. thank you for posting.
unfortunately due to the government shutdown, the BLS inflation data for September 2025 is delayed from October 15 (as it normally is) until October 24[1], so please check back then to see if he is >109 Cent.
assuming future stability, the site will automatically update on the 15th of every month.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/bls/092025-cpi-reschedule-notice.htm
You should extend it into the past. Hapenny hit hard.
You're doing a public service, thank you.
Love it. I think there's an off-by-one calculating the images at the top. (100-cent gives a single pixel slice of the third image.)
It would be fun to have currency conversions too.
Conversions to Nickelback, Poundz, Los Pesos, DJ Euro and Yen.
Since this goes back to 1995 I'd also like to request Franc Sinatra, Nick Gilder, and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.
Don't forget Johnny Cash and Eddie Money :D
Or to Robert Deniro's
Robert Dinero?
Bob Deniros
to Stanley Nickels and Schrute Bucks
This is a powerful visual representation. I would suggest that the impact could be even stronger if you provided side-by-side images of 50 Cent, where the second is scaled up proportionately.
If you scroll across it displays multiples of the image representative to the inflation at the time point.
Quick self nerd snipe:
I think the area should be scaled proportionally, so the new width and height should be multiplied by sqrt(cents/50)
If we're going to be pedantic about it, his name hasn't changed, so really he should be shrinking proportionally rather than growing over time
that’s a good idea. in future versions, i might need to consider multiple renderings as different economists likely prefer alternative visualizations of 50’s monetary adjustments
Curious how you set it up. Do you have to manually update it when inflation data comes out, or is it automatic?
it's on a scheduled workflow with github actions that rebuilds the site on the 15th, 30 minutes after the data is released.
cron: '0 13 15 * *'
Where is the inflated music?
1. Go to, let's say, a video like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qm8PH4xAss [1] Start it playing.
2. Copy and paste this into your browser location bar: javascript:void(document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 50/prompt("Inflation-adjusted 50 Cent value:"))
3. Enter the inflation-adjusted 50 Cent value, which as we are talking about this today, is 109.
Et voila, inflation-adjusted 50 Cent music, and anyone finding this later can adjust it to their current inflation-adjusted value.
I believe there are limits on how slow the browsers will playback video. This code is not guaranteed to work past any possible hyperinflations or massive deflations that may occur in the future.
If you're curious how that may sound with a more careful job done then the browsers will do with stretching, consider Beethoven's 9th symphony stretched to 24 hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSJ9Bkhb1Q4&list=PLMEcbs3sHQ... Some of you may well legitimately love this. Obviously the frequency profile of doing this to a 50 Cent piece will be quite different but it at least gives the idea.
[1]: It is sheer coincidence that this video ID ends in "Ass". This is "50 Cent - In Da Club (Official Music Video)" for those wondering.
I love it. If you track your mouse over the graph, the image of 50 Cent expands with inflation.
It reminds me of another great interactive rapper graph: "rappers, sorted by the size of their vocabulary":
https://pudding.cool/projects/vocabulary/index.html
Would love to see playboi carti on here.
I'm surprised Twista isn't much higher, if you listen to his lyrics he's always busting out different words like a thesaurus (I think he's one who mentioned reading one as a kid or something?) but I guess this just means he's not released as many songs. I do like that MF Doom is listed as well, big respect to him, I never listened to him heavily.
One thing to note, you don't need every word on the planet to convey amazing lessons with lyrics, some of the more profound lyrics (I can't remember, but it certainly felt that way to me 15+ years ago) were by artists somewhere in the middle of your graph for me.
Just looked up Tech N9ne on there, really surprised he's in the middle. Immortal Technique more to the right with the list of people who really use an insane amount of words in their lyrics, not surprised honestly.
Edit: Just realized its the first 35,000 words... Man... this needs to do its best to get all of them. Unfortunately, there's songs by artists I can't find on ANY lyrics sites, so I fear this list will never be 100% but a close enough ballpark.
Using the first 35,000 words is a bit unfair for a rapper such as Lil Wayne who's been releasing work since he was 14.
Also I wonder if this is including proper nouns and other references. (I'd think it should, but it's hard to account for the fact that referencing seven different Chris's would be counted as one token used seven times. Similarly, many words have many meanings, and those are all being lumped together as well, so no accounting here can probably ever be perfect).
If you had all the lyrics for all the rappers I think I'd - aggregate word counts - combine variations - remove most commonly used words in each language (I, I'm, You, You're, etc)
Then see who came out ahead. You shouldn't get penalized for releasing more.
You could probably do a bunch of cool analysis with that data.
edit: Oh no, there's actually a Genius API isn't there. No no no no. I have no time!
The original author was pretty clear about the limitations of his work. I certainly would like to see an updated version, so I'm glad you got nerd sniped and not me. I look forward to see your super accurate updated version in a few months ;)
I've wanted to see a version that segmented rappers by topic clusters of what they rap about, with fine enough details that you could take something like "drugs" and drill down or aggregate specific ones, and even have some sentiment data as well like pot good/X bad. It'd be fun to see who has the most unique general topics and topics only covered by one rapper. I can see how that might be biased in favor of total lifetime output, but perhaps not. My favorite dead rapper is Eyedea, his album output didn't exceed the 35k word minimum for the vocab list but his topic breadth was pretty wide. I've thought LLMs might be good enough to do that for a lot of songs now, if they don't have a panic attack over the language anyway, but I haven't experimented. Maybe someone else can be sniped into doing it~
I too have always been curious about the volumetric comparison of rap lyrics about Edgar Allan Poe Vs those about the people in the front row.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Z0VynTR84
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqCyTM1bF6Q
Aesop Rock's first on that graph, I think his track about going to the drive-through is pretty poetic:
https://genius.com/Aesop-rock-time-moves-differently-here-ly...
Lil Wayne also has an insane amount of mixtapes and freestyles.
yeah, no wonder cunninglinguist was pretty high in that list :)
Blackalicious near the top of the pack checks out.
And "0 Cent" before June 1994 :)
I would argue that valuation of '50 Cent' (real name Curtis James Jackson III) was essentially flat leading up to immediately before the release of Get Rich or Die Tryin', his debut album released February 6, 2003.
Which, undeniable, is an * all-time banger * that substantially increased the valuation of 50 Cent to something far surpassing US dollar inflation.
Seriously, go listen that that album again; total game changer. Top cut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D3crqpClPY
If you're into AI music I leave this without comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4GrSKMzQg0
I came to post the exact same link. So instead I leave this Motown Soul version of Eminem which is equally as wild:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqH-GKVyryM
I was prepared to be absolutely fucking disgusted by such a comment but I.... shit. I mean... this is.... this is wild
I gotta go contemplate 'where we're at' again it seems. If that is truly a straight generative audio diffusion model.... wait, how did they get the same verse by verse chord progressions to match? this has to be professionally post-produced, right? AI models aren't able to do this end-to-end yet, right?
> wait, how did they get the same verse by verse chord progressions to match?
Usually these AI covers don't use AI for the whole thing, but rather specifically for melding the to-be-impersonated voice into some given melody. That's been possible for a couple years now with decent results; one of my favorite examples is that of Plankton from Spongebob singing Disturbed's cover of “Sound of Silence”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eLRsw9mkmY
Possible that these newer ones are also using AI to generate other musical elements, but it's probably all being combined after-the-fact rather than being generated all at once.
I had similar emotions. The cover of 21 Questions by the same YouTuber is even better. And other covers of Mario's "Let Me Love You" and Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" are equally mind blowing.
I'm ashamed to say I prefer these to the originals so much so that its difficult for me to listen to them any more. Make of that what you will...
As a big fan of Chris Cornell I went through the same stream of emotions with their Motown version of Like a Stone[0]. And if you can get past the thumbnail, check out the 2000s Rock version of Many Men[1]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_88Qg8FGrqY [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gFKREP3gPg
Probably not end to end, no. But you can make something similar to just about any pop song on suno.com now.
Too bad ska-punk beat him to today's value of 109 cents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck-O-Nine
It's remarkable how over this time frame how inflation in the UK and the USA has been so similar.
https://www.rateinflation.com/consumer-price-index/uk-histor...
https://www.rateinflation.com/consumer-price-index/usa-histo...
Both approx +110%
Yet over that time UK GDP per capita is up only 46% compared to the US which is up a massive +223%. Depressing.
They don't say that the currencies are pegged, but I'm pretty sure they're defacto pegged. Same deal with the Euro.
They don't call USD the global reserve currency for nothing.
A currency being worth half it's value in 25 years is absurd. The US despreately needs to make it's money a stable unit of measure.
In some sense it's absurd. But historically its normal.
And to be more precise, 25 years to halve is actually less inflation than the historical average of 3.29% from 1914-2025. At that rate it would take 21-22 years to halve.
Actually there is a surprisingly good trick to be able to calculate this called the rule of 72. Take the inflation percentage (2, 3 %) and divide 72 by it. Thats how many years it will take to halve. Not completing accurate but actually very close.
But yeah, inflation is a bitch over long time horizons. It makes me laugh when people say stocks are risky. Say you are 20 years old and want to save $2M USD for your retirement by 65. Expect that to be more like $470k.
Historically - it's actually NOT normal. Link and quote below that examines this with graphs but, the crux is that we have accepted higher inflation in order to achieve stable inflation that is predictable.
"For the pre-Fed period (1790-1913), the average annual inflation was 0.4 percent with a coefficient of variation of 13.2. During the period 1941-2016, these figures changed to 3.5 percent and 0.8, respectively. If we look at the post-Volcker era (1988-2016), annual inflation was 2.2 percent on average with a coefficient of variation of 0.4." -
Source: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/s...
Also recommend Debt: The First 5000 Years (David Graeber) and Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Thomas Piketty) which cover this and more on how current concepts of finance and capital post-1914 are incredibly different from the majority of human civilization.
I think a broader historical/anthropological approach is helpful here to understand why those tradeoffs were made.
> "For the pre-Fed period (1790-1913), the average annual inflation was 0.4 percent with a coefficient of variation of 13.2. During the period 1941-2016, these figures changed to 3.5 percent and 0.8, respectively. If we look at the post-Volcker era (1988-2016), annual inflation was 2.2 percent on average with a coefficient of variation of 0.4." -
Citing an average number is misleading since the chart of the value of a dollar during that time looks like a zig-zag with some massive swings in both directions. This means periods of severe deflation, too, which can be very bad for people.
It definitely was not flat or consistently near zero, though citing an average number is a great way to give that impression.
Maybe a better metric is some kind of yearly median, i.e what you would actually experience living year by year.
> Citing an average number is misleading
Not when you are also citing the coefficient of variation it isn’t.
> since the chart of the value of a dollar during that time looks like a zig-zag with some massive swings in both directions.
Uh, exactly the claim made, “we have accepted higher inflation in order to achieve stable inflation that is predictable.” (emphasis added)
Characterizing this as a bad thing is, IMO, quite bonkers, but so is denying that it is exactly what has happened.
If you move to before the central bank was created in 1913, the dollar remained remarkably stable in relation, although it did oscillate, it never deviated more than 50% from the starting point until after creation of the fed.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Dollar_v...
What is the source of data that image is using? It seems odd. A datum I quite like is the Campbell's Tomato Soup Inflation Index. [1] Since their introduction in 1897, Campbell's has sold the same tomato soup in the same size container. Its price remained quite stable until 1971 at which point it went into loony land, like many other data. [2]
The point is that even after the central bank was introduced, the US remained on a literal or defacto gold standard, of varying sorts, until 1971. That's when Bretton Woods ended and the value of the USD became based on absolutely nothing and the government granted themselves the power to 'print' arbitrary amounts at their discretion.
[1] - https://theglitteringeye.com/the-tomato-soup-index/
[2] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
It's from a variety of sources due to the large time period and discontinuity in government and 3rd party measuring apparatus over 250 years. Refer to Table 5 for the non-BLS period sources.
https://www.measuringworth.com/docs/cpistudyrev.pdf
It seems difficult to draw any inference from this, given how different the US’s economy and global position is in 2025 versus 1913.
Lots of topics that we discuss on HN require careful thought and other difficult efforts but somehow do not extinguish our curiosity. Going back to the ancient Romans, an ounce of gold has always been able to purchase a suit of clothes. As the market becomes more efficient at producing goods and services, we should expect prices to decrease, not inflate. In some sectors, we do see this outcome but not in others. Yes, the analysis required to explain why is difficult, and perhaps more difficult is having to face conclusions that challenge one’s priors.
There’s a big gap between curiosity and making inferential leaps.
> As the market becomes more efficient at producing goods and services, we should expect prices to decrease, not inflate.
Yes, that’s why the cost of clothes has decreased in real terms.
... I was directly addressing GGP using 1914 as a cutoff. Now you object to the cutoff I didn't introduce only when someone introduce data on the other side of it? Funny how that magically ends up being the case.
To be clear, I think it’s also hard to make inferences after 1913. But it’s easier (and particularly after 1945, 1971, etc.) because the US’s geopolitical status after those periods is at least analogous and a matter of econometric research.
The period from 1776-1913 arguably had as many changes as the period from 1913 to 2025.
In the first 130 years of the US, the value of the dollar didn't change, as far as I can tell, more than 50% from the starting point.
From 1913 to 2025, the dollar lost 96+% of its value. The difference between a ratio of 2:1 and a ratio of more like 30:1.
> The period from 1776-1913 arguably had as many changes as the period from 1913 to 2025.
I'm not arguing it didn't. But I think in kind the US's global economic position didn't change substantially between full independence in 1783 and 1913. It grew during that period, but the idea of the US as a peer (and then dominant) economic world power is a distinctly post-WWI one.
Why do you believe that makes the data comparison pre to post central bank irrelevant?
Your starting point of 1914 is strangely specific. Why did you choose it?
The correct calculation isn’t too hard either.
If currency halves in purchasing power in 25 yrs, that means inflation is 100% in 25 years, so
In terms of being able to do it in your head, its a lot harder.
A span of time that happens to include The Great Depression.
It's not absurd. And there's no automatic way to make money perfectly stable. That's not how money works.
And deflation is much worse. So we target a small 2% yearly inflation so that if it's 1% or 3% it's not a big deal. Whereas if you target 0% and wind up with -1%, you've got problems.
There's that word we again. So you're the crazy gringo who always picks my pocket?
Deflation is only bad for people who hold a lot of debt. For people who are cash positive, deflation means you're richer, you're being paid more to do the same job, etc. all while maintaining your freedom. Deflation actually being good is the central gamble behind bitcoin's design. If more people understood that then they'd probably stop using it for such frivolous purposes. Not everyone is privileged enough to even hold debt, so it's really an exclusionary system. And what do the people who the system trusts to have debt (e.g. private equity firms) do with it? They do leveraged buyouts to rip out the heart and soul of responsible American companies. The only thing inflation is good for is keeping folks running on the hamster wheel and bankrolling entitlements.
We're $38.8 trillion in debt and still printing. https://www.usdebtclock.org/
Inflation is just what you want when your debt is denominated in the currency that is being inflated, though. The more inflation the easier it will be to service the debt.
That's why everyone sane is fleeing into gold and silver.
They're probably too late, it's already priced in. Gold is up like 30% in 3 months.
Being up doesnt show that it's priced in.
Of course not. It being known to the market is what causes it to be priced in.
Thanks, I'll go short gold now since it's going to go down!
Things being priced in is such horse shit. Momentum trading works specifically because the market fails to price in information.
It's a foolish idea to short gold on the eve of a currency crisis. Gold went up 1812% the last time this happened. You'll be paying through the nose if you do it with $GLD since it's hard to borrow. You'll get IV crushed if you do it with put options. The smart way to profit off gold's fall from grace is by selling futures each time it hits a new high and then closing your position quickly after the inevitable ~50 point pullback. Markets can be timid. They sometimes price in new information slowly and reluctantly.
We tend to target 2% inflation. Half in 25 years is under 3%, so on target.
That said, I feel like this number is way off, personally, based on changes in housing and food prices between the two times.
Certainly a lot of that inflation was in the last ~8 years. I certainly know what you mean.
Groceries are one of the more discretionary items. Your mortgage is fixed, demand for gas is inelastic, etc. But groceries you respond to the price. And so many staples have become 2,3,4X times more expensive compared to pre-covid. I remember the cheap beef (chuck roast) was about $4/lb and decent steak (ribeye) was about $9/lb. Now its about $10/lb and $22/lb.
So psychologically, now your "splurging" just gets you the "cheap" stuff.
Wages have risen a bit. But 1) not nearly as much as inflation 2) these are very asymetric and 3) the way they rise doesnt feel like wage inflation. Even those who saw wages rise due to inflation probably felt like it was other things. Such as simply changing jobs. Or just normal yearly review. Or maybe they havent switched jobs and have some "unrealized gains" awaiting them still. No one one saw their wages incrementally rise month by month.
I think wages are a great way to look at it too, rather than just comparing prices.
Said another way, I think making 100k in 1995 would make one feel way, way richer than making 200k today.
How you feel is also very geographically dependent, and quality of life dependent.
The government published nationwide inflation measures are completely irrelevant to anyone who had a goal of buying land in a tier 1 metro, or in the higher end suburbs of tier 2 metros. And you will feel very different based on if you have kids or not.
Land, healthcare, and education pretty much eclipse everything else.
Why??? My (very limited) understanding is that we like a small amount of inflation, to incentivize reinvestment into the economy/R&D/etc. If there’s no inflation, you incentivize dragon-hoarding behavior
that's why no one every buys TVs
honestly its a large factor for me personally when I look at buying a new tv!
Your understanding is silly. Inflation or no inflation, you'd like to maximize your roi.
Get a brokerage account that has a sister bank account. Put money in, buy TIPS/gold/equities, pay the 30% tax or whatever on the inflationary difference, then buy your stuff. The point is to force you into buying more stable units of account and then taxing the inflation as a "capital gain."
Pretty genius because it can be framed as taxing greedy capitalists when literally they're just taxing fractional inflation.
Username is "CS Mastermind". Evidently not an economics mastermind.
How would that work? You have a claim to a past output that no longer exists. If the nominal value of the claim stays the same, the real value of the denomination unit must change.
People don't understand that money is a time and location bound object and pretend it is infinitely liquid and fungible when it isn't. Money is kind of like electricity. When you borrow it into existence and spend it, it travels a path through society, but it must then travel along a return path back to the source. Inflation could be thought of as a form of resistive loss, where current stays the same but voltage drops.
There's a reason why demurrage (or its ugly brother inflation) is a necessary bitter pill if you want a working money system. It forces money to travel down the return path sooner than later.
Wait, what's absurd about it?
I feel like this is the real-life version of my favorite joke from Andy Kindler: "I know they said don't re-invent the wheel, but does it have to be so round?"
Edit: emphasis
> Based on 50 Cent's name being coined
I see what they did there.
Reminds me this: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/9ljv3n/50_cent_in_ma...
Much respect for the artist 50 Cent - converted his rap music success into respectable business ventures (Vitamin Water, others). So he is worth much more now!
This is backwards. He's still 50 cent, but to have the buying power he had in '94, he'd need to $1.09. But he's still 50 cent, so really, in today's money he's more like 23 cent.
Absolutely. This is the correct way do this. It should be adjusted downwards to account for inflation, not up.
How many 2025 dollars will it cost me to take a nice lady to the candy shop?
A lot less than in da club that’s for sure
I don't care if there are some special privileges unlocked at higher "karma" levels, I hope my "karma" stays at 69 forever because of this thread.
It wouldn't matter because she can't get a dollar out of you.
2.6% per year inflation. Fed did a decent job.
30% error.
Made this a while back riffing on the same idea
https://ryanschaefer.github.io/Its-one-banana-michael/
50 cent sure loves Republican administrations
I would have gone the other way. He’s still 50 Cent today, but he’s less than a quarter 20 years ago.
Burying the lede here, the real story is that he was already 60 Cent by the time his first album dropped.
I wonder how the data is updated. I dont see any network calls so I guess it's provided on build. The latest datapoint is August. Do we just not have data for the last few months? I suppose you could have github action or whatever to pull in the latest and republish on change.
edit: i see elsewhere in the comments the author explains this. github action indeed.
you bet. I pull it straight from the BLS.
The full chart
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2j0...
That's an incredibly misleading graph. Never look at something with a growth rate on a linear scale, as it will always have a "hockey stick" shape, even with constant growth. If you look at the same series on a log scale, you see high inflation in the 70s, but from the '80s on it looks pretty similar to the pre-70s trend.
Imagine how much worse that chart would look were it not for deflationary pressure from science/technology introduced efficiencies.
https://archive.is/68cAI
(In case you can't see the official link for firewall purposes.)
... Is the term 50cent commonly blocked in firewalls, or am I missing some joke?
It's a newly registered website, gets classified as a risk by some organizations "Newly-Registered-Domain". After 30 or 60 days, it's no longer flagged and blocked.
Thanks! Funny I one minute before your comment, commented on when the domain was registered. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45619354
Needs to use an AI generated coin in his likeness.
To be benchmarked against his net worth.
The favicon updating is a nice touch.
Didn't he make more money from his stake in Vitamin Water being acquired by Pepsi or CocaCola than from rap?
not really, he has a lot of businesses, this was one of them which turned out to be very successful. He was a very famous rapper back in the days, and he invented mixtapes :)
He absolutely did not invent mixtapes.
Eventually he'll be about tree fitty
I think he increased since this morning!
This is the reason for internet to exist
I guess we gotta sip something cheaper than Bacardi now?
Pretty good value for a dollar, you don't see much of that these days.
I created an account just to comment that I laughed my balls off as a hiphophead.
I wonder if 10cc resizes due to changes in male fertility.
Since 50 Cent worked with Robert Greene to co-author The 50th Law, maybe now he and Peter Thiel can co-author Zero to 109 Cents.
Or, you know, something about rap and the Antichrist.
Yesterday's 50cent in today's dollar
I'm tired of using technology, boss.
the images at the top is the best part, we get a little over 2 50 Cents. Makes it so much easier to understand inflation
What does Ja Rule think about this?
Do you offer 50 cent in other currencies? Approximately what point in time would he have appropriately been called 50 euro cents?
reminds me of the time, a Malaysian newspaper mentioned him in a story an converted his name to local currency: 1.50 Malaysian ringgit https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3915
That or a similar occurrence elsewhere is probably the inspiration for this.
I'm in my Lambo maggot
these harry potter fans are weird man
I don't get it. I posted 50 Cent lyrics
awesome website!
looking forward to see websites for $uicideboy$, C-Note, 2 Chainz, maybe Lil $1
damn, it wasn't sarcasm, people are dumb here
bbno$?
1994? The artist 'made it' in 2003.
88 cent in 2025.
Not great, not terrible.
So before 2003 he was less than 50 cent? When was he a dime?
Chamillionaire was another rapper who pivoted into tech investing and venture capitalism and did 50x to his net worth. I think he still posts here.
I miss the era when the internet was more fun like this
Seems the creation date of the domain was 2025-10-08, so you're in luck, this particular fun exists and was created in this era!