Netti Schreiner-Yantis asked the other day about Revolutionary War
inflation. A recent Web site contains some general information and
references to some of the leading scholarship: 

http://mises.org/story/1273 

When it comes to attempts to translate currency values for the
eighteenth century into twenty-first century values, I have always
believed that was a more misleading than helpful exercise because what
was valuable and available then isn't now. What is more interesting is
to use whatever standards of value were employed at a given time to
compare items of merchandize, rates of taxation, personal prosperity,
and the like to get a better informed sense of how a person or a family
or a group or a place stacks up against others.

$0.02 American (such as it is, these days) from

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at
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