What Happened to the Price of Silver and Gold?

For the sake of simplicity all numbers in this workup will be close approximations rather than detailed values because the point to be made goes well beyond detail.

In Jesus' day, a man worked a day for a denarius. A denarius contained just a bit more than a tenth of an ounce of silver.

Now if this man had a family of four how would he fare in today's world? His wage for the day would be (0.1 X $22) or $2.20. His monthly wages assuming a six day work week and a lunar calendar would be (24 X $2.20) or $52.80 which I will round down to $50/month. Could you support your family on an income of $600/year? How about $6,000/year? How about $24,000 a year? Twenty-four thousand a year is possible but it is deemed by the government to be near the poverty level.

But let's not be generous. We'll keep our phantom breadwinner at near poverty level wages. He is, after all a laborer and not a land owner. We'll adjust the price of silver so the man can at least support his family.

In a years time the man would earn (six days a week X four weeks per month X 12 months per year) or 288 day's wages or approximately 29 ounces of silver. Let's call it 30 ounces because a solar year has a few more days, earlier we rounded down a bit, and 30 is a nice round number.

He needed $24,000 in today's terms to support his family (which by the way he did) and he did it with 30 ounces of silver.

So what should the value of silver be today if we had truly free markets?

I'll put the calculation here but is it not obvious? $24,000/oz / 30 oz = $800 per ounce.

Incidentally that puts the true value of gold (traditional 15 to 1 ratio) at $12,000 per ounce.

P.