This was an interesting calculation I did for my niece Netty in 2009 (updated December 2024). Thank goodness the deflation hawks don’t know about this. Deflation in prices is not necessarily a bad thing, certainly not the hysteria our betters insist when they want to justify inflationary fiscal shenanigans, such as printing money (called “quantitative easing” to fool us).
This calculation demonstrates how fabulously inexpensive computer technology has become over the years, unimaginably so. I used the dollartime.com inflation calculator to compare the dollar value between 1947 and 2024. For the purposes of these calculations, we’ll use 1,000,000 kilobytes (kB) equal 1 gigabyte (GB).
In 1947, 5 kB of computer storage cost $100,000 ($20,000/kB in 1947 dollars). In November 2024, you can buy from Amazon a 128 GB USB stick on sale for $7.99 (regular price $9.99). This is parsecs cheaper at $.0000000642/kB in 2024 dollars, and far faster.
Consider inflation since 1947:
5 kB in 1947 costs $1,415,533 in 2024 dollars
5 kB in 2024 costs $0.000000312 in 2024 dollars
Therefore, the cost in 1947 was over 4.5 trillion times more expensive than in 2024. This would be like a dollar candy bar in 2024 costing over 4.5 trillion dollars in 1947!
How much would the 128 GB memory stick cost if the base cost had stayed the same, but inflation had occurred?
In 1947 dollars, 128 GB of memory would cost $2,560,000,000,000 in 1947 dollars. This is more than 2.5 trillion dollars!
In 2024 dollars this would be $36,237,660,986,547
Thank God for technological progress over the ensuing decades since 1947. Otherwise, my $7.99 128 GB memory stick would cost over 36 trillion dollars in 2024! It would be a far different world if the deflation hawks had meddled with the decreasing cost of computer technology over the years.
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