[Request] Is the math here accurate?
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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![[Request] Is the math here accurate?](https://meta.cdns.win/en/2025/03/Request-Is-the-math-here-accurate-scaled.webp)
Did Henry Ford pay his workers $5 a day? Yes
Was 75 oz t of gold worth $1560 in 1915. Yes.
Adjusted for inflation did a 1915 Ford employee make 142,500 a year? No. Not by a long shot, not by any accepted inflation metrics, the actual amount adjusted for inflation would be something like $50,000 a year.
Picking one specific good and saying “well if you transferred all your money to this, that’s what you should be making now” ok if I spent my entire salary on Bitcoin in 2010 it doesn’t mean my salary should now be $150 million a year. Not everything scales at the same rates.
Bureau of Labor and Statistics has an inflation calculator which will tell you roughly the answer. $1,560 in Jan 1914 = $49,557 in Jan 2025, the most recent piece of data available currently
Yes there are some details that make this not a perfect calculation but better than what is shared there.
[https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm](https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm)
Only relative to gold, which is mostly useless in real terms. For a more accurate comparison, one should look at what 1560 bucks got you back then in terms of food and housing, and what 142k gets you today.
It’s accurate in the same way that saying that eating a one kilo cake composed mostly of uranium would give you all the energy you need for the rest of your life.
Back when I worked at Target, my employer paid me $7.50 an hour.
Back then, Bitcoin was worth $0.10. So my employer was paying me the equivalent of 75 bitcoin an hour!
In today’s money that is $6,472,500 **an hour!**
That means my shitty boss was essentially paying me $6.5 million USD for an hour of unskilled labor!!!
See how stupid that sounds?
Yes but this doesn’t factor in the actual value of gold back then. What was the purchasing power of 75oz of gold? Could that 75oz have bought you a house? Maybe, maybe not. Using one of those CPI inflation calculations online it says the purchasing power of $1560 in 1903 was equivalent to $56,314.40 in 2025. So it was still ok wages, but nothing spectacular.
“$1,560 then could buy 15,600 Super Man #1 comics.
15,600 Super Man #1 comics today are worth $1,638,000,000.
Central banking is ripping you off.”
The price of gold does not equal spending power at any point in time except at the moment it is valued. You could do this comparison with any commodity, and they would equally only tell you how valuable the commodity is at that moment in time.
It misses the point that the wage is not dictated by gold vs currency prices but what a company willing to pay.
The top part is completely moronic
Math aside, calling what Ford workers did back then as “unskilled labor” is judging their work by today’s standard. They would’ve been the equivalent of a good trained technician by today’s standards market-wise.
Amazon paid its workers 10 USD/ hour.
In 2014, 10USD was a lot of bitcoin.
Today, bitcoin is very expensive
This means amazon workers in 2014 made shit ton of money
In 2011, I was earning $20 per hour. That was the price of one Bitcoin.
Today, one Bitcoin equates to $75,000.
That means I made $75,000 per hour mowing my neighbor’s lawn.
Why would central banking do this to us?
No, not really. It’s using a future value of an investment commodity to determine a past level of compensation. The workers weren’t getting paid in ~2010 gold value, they were getting paid in 1914 gold value.
Or, to put it another way: that same $5, if invested in the stock market instead of gold, would be worth about $275,000 now. It is prima facie silly to say that Henry Ford was paying his workers in 1914 the equivalent of $86M a year.
But if instead of looking at gold or other investments, you looked at what $5 could buy on a daily basis, you’d get that for a 6 day work week of manual labor, Ford was paying his workers about $50,000 a year in 2024 dollars without any benefits. Which was better than most at the time but really just shows the benefit of factory labor over farm work.
From some quick googling, the average cost of a 22” tv in 1960 was $260. The average salary in 1960 was $5600.
The cost of a 22” tv on Amazon is $99, therefor 5600/260*99=2,132.31: the average 1960s family survived on $2,132.31 in today’s money. This is what big TV took from you
A more useful comparison is against CPI, which tracks how buying power changes over time. (Gold fluctuates in value a lot.)
BLS estimates that $5 in 1914, when Ford implemented that salary, would be worth about $159 today. Assuming an 8-hour work day, that’s a little under $20/hr. Not bad, but closer to $40k/yr.
We can also compare how many days it would take to buy a typical Ford product. In 1914, a new Model T cost about $500, so that’s 100 days of work to buy the car. In 2025, a new F-150 costs about $38800 which would mean if workers could afford one in 100 days, it would be a daily wage of $388, or $48.50/hr.
These sorts of comparisons are always tough because we have a much higher standard of living now than a hundred years ago. An F-150 is much more comfortable than a Model T was. And just in general, the average worker now enjoys luxuries that the average worker in 1914 could only dream of.
if henry paid his workers in coca cola stock, they would’ve all been billionaries now. this doesn’t mean he paid his employees good, just that over 70 years value of certain things can increase a lot.
No, because central banking is required for the debt that fuels the loans that provide the capital for businesses to be founded and run, and people to buy houses and cars despite not having the cash in hand.
Without central banking, we’d still be a nation of substance farmers.
I love this post. It really shows the diversity of human reasoning. Going by the Gold standard and converting that to today’s gold value w/o taking into account that it is not a 1 to 1 comparison. Since we split from the gold standard and gold became an investment vehicle, its value would rise while that of the dollar would decline. Making this post completely in accurate.
However, I still appreciate the reasoning behind it and is a perfect example of how, as rational animal, we can create fallacies that lead us astray from the truth.
Yeah, but did you know Frank Detorre worked a job at a pea soup factory making about $110/hr after inflation in 2006, before he was let got for throwing up all over his daughter’s teacher because of some bad shellfish he ate?
As always others have said, yes and no.
Yes in that the numbers are correct and accurate, but no in that they aren’t actually showing what the image implies they’re showing.
There is an argument that moving off the gold standard was terrible for the middle class, but the gold standard was also not really working anymore because it’s such a limited resource.
Gold has uses outside being a shiny value store. It’s extremely necessary for computer parts, for example. A company making computer parts shouldn’t be competing with every bank and government in the world for gold supply. It just isn’t feasible. The image assumes that the value of gold and the value of money is determined by the same factors, which just isn’t true.
If you swap out gold with any other resource or commodity with a price determined through market discovery, the flawed thinking becomes very obvious. The real problem is that housing costs have so dramatically outpaced pretty much everything else.
Sure sure but in 2014 my restaurant job paid me $18,720 a year ($72 a day).
$18,720 was equivalent to 58.5 Bitcoin.
Today 58.5 Bitcoin equated to $5,031,000.
That means unskilled high school laborer me made $5,031,000 a year.
Making a ratio to the gold standard is silly here. It’s an apples to oranges comparison. Inflation does not track with the relative price of a commodity.
“In the spring of 2013, a minimum wage worker earned the equivalent of one bitcoin per day. If American workers were paid in bitcoin, minimum wage would now be $86,000 per day and even poor people would be bajillionaires.”
The post shared by OP makes approximately this much sense in terms of real world economics.
Whether it is accurate or not, this is really misleading. And it is demonstrating recency bias.
Prior to 1915, Ford has a real problem with employee turnover. So what he did was offer to *certain* workers $5/day if the workers met certain conditions and agreed to have their entire lives monitored. The $5/day pay is equivalent to modern day stock options really and was *profit sharing*. There were various conditions including you had to work 48hr/week.
That is $1560/year in what would be called today total compensation for working 312 days/year compared to today’s standard “full time” being 250 days/year. Ford didn’t switch to a 5 hour work week until 1926 and I don’t know when vacations/holidays began.
But there is a lot more to it than just numbers.
Ford required each worker dress a certain way, keep their house a certain way, raise their kids a certain way to get that rate of pay including that each worker must learn English. If you had or went into debt you lost your job. If your house failed to maintain a level of decorum and cleanliness you lost your job. If your kids weren’t in a proper school, you lost your job etc. Basically, Ford tried to mold all his workers into good consumers mostly so they would buy his cars. It was corporate paternalism.
Google “The Socialization Organization”
And, more importantly, Ford employed the *highest skilled* workers of the time. Detroit was the silicon valley of the day. The average income was very high compared to the rest of the country. This was Ford’s problem initially. His best workers found better paying jobs elsewhere and would quit.
A mechanic in 1915 was like an AI engineer today. So you need to compare the salary Ford paid his workers to the salary a company like Microsoft or Google pays its workers. Today’s highly skilled workers can easily make $150k+/year for working considerably fewer hours from home. Microsoft with profit sharing (stock options) made janitors and secretaries millionaires.
Now beyond that onto the political issue that post is about.
Central banking has been vital for the economy and personal freedom people. Before central banking liquidity was controlled locally which led to monopolistic financial environments.
Google “Company Stores”
The reason people want central banking or a gold-backed currency is because it would give them control again over people. Your lives are much better off because the US left the gold standard and setup a central bank.
You can’t have a modern innovation economy based on a currency that is limited and fixed supply. If you tried to base on economy on bitcoin or gold (any assets that appreciate) no one would take risk. Everyone would just leave their gold in the bank and the economy would slogged to a halt as there is no liquidity.
Brazil tried this once. When people are guaranteed interest (appreciation) they just leave their money in the bank. This means there is less of it to buy tomatoes so the price of tomatoes goes up.
**Fact Check: Half True**. The math regarding gold price equivalency is accurate, but the comparison ignores key economic factors such as inflation, productivity, and standard of living. It exaggerates how much Ford’s workers were making in real terms relative to today’s economy.
First of all, Model T assemblers can’t be called “unskilled”. Also, for the record: the ACTUAL pay was $1/day. To get the other $4 you had to adhere to Ford’s rules of living: be married (in your race), have children, don’t drink, etc.
1oz of gold retail is over $3000 now.
So, 75oz x $3000=$225,000. That’s about right amount to afford a house, a car, two kids and a wife on one salary, which they did.
So, this was $5 a day for an 8 hr day starting on Jan 5, 1914. That is $158 in Jan 2025. That new top UAW rate is $47/hr or $376 for an 8 hr day. Not including additional benefits which are probably another $100 a day. If they work a 6th day they make, I assume, 1.5x. That’s $564 plus benefits. So, assuming 52 weeks times 6 days equals $127,088 a year. Plus benefits. Say another $30,000. So, $157,000. About the same per the gold bugs post.
To get a more complete picture, we need to consider several factors:
1. Inflation (CPI-based adjustment): The Consumer Price Index (CPI) tracks the general rise in prices over time. A simple CPI adjustment tells us that Henry Ford’s $5 per day in 1914 is roughly equivalent to $153.37 per day ($39,076 per year) in 2024 dollars.
2. Wages & Standard of Living: While $5 per day was revolutionary in 1914—essentially doubling the typical factory worker’s wage at the time—today’s median wage for manufacturing jobs is significantly higher. As of 2023, the median annual wage for production and manufacturing workers is around $45,000-$50,000, which suggests that wages have outpaced inflation to some degree.
3. Purchasing Power & Cost of Living: The real purchasing power of a wage depends on how much essential goods and services cost relative to income. In 1914, $5 a day was enough for a worker to comfortably support a family, buy a house, and even afford some leisure. In contrast, $39,000 today is barely above the U.S. poverty line for a family of four. Housing, healthcare, education, and transportation have risen much faster than inflation, meaning that $39,000 today does not offer the same quality of life that Ford’s $5/day did in 1914.
4. Work Hours & Productivity Gains: Workers today are far more productive due to automation and technology, but wage growth hasn’t kept pace with productivity increases. If wages had increased at the same rate as productivity since Ford’s time, manufacturing workers today would likely be earning well over $100,000 per year.
The Big Picture
Simply adjusting for inflation gives us an equivalent of $39,000 per year, but taking into account the higher cost of housing, healthcare, and education, Ford’s wage in modern terms would need to be closer to $100,000+ per year to provide the same purchasing power and economic security that it did in 1914.
Ford’s $5/day was life-changing because it gave workers not just a living wage but a pathway into the middle class. Today, a job paying $39,000 does not offer the same opportunities for homeownership, savings, or upward mobility.
The fact that they have to convert the dollars to gold and then back to dollars again decades later in order to come up with this number tells you all you need to know about this “fact.” It’s designed to manipulate the reader. No math necessary.
That $5 per day came with highly invasive strings attached. From the Henry Ford dot org archives:
“Ford Motor Company established its Sociological Department in 1914. The department established rules and conditions that Ford employees had to meet to qualify for the company’s Five Dollar Day pay rate. Department officials monitored employees both at work and at home.”
“…Ford Motor Company instituted a wide-reaching corporate welfare program that opened up the most intimate and personal details of employee’s personal, family, and financial life to investigators from the Sociological Department. After the announcement of the $5 per day profit sharing plan in January 1914, Henry Ford wanted to ensure that employees…did not squander the funds. To this end, the Ford Sociological Department was created to investigate and monitor the personal and work lives of employees to the extent that investigators (later called Advisors) conducted home visits, checked bank deposits, and monitored children’s school attendance as well as divorce filings.”
Dumbasses who dont understand economics in this thread. You need to compare how he treated his workers relative to OTHER business owners. He paid them vastly more and essentially created the 40 hour work week. You can’t compare things today that he helped move toward against him directly..
Gold Standard suffocates economic growth unless you continue bringing in ever increasing amounts of gold either by mining or conquest. So it is highly unlikely if we stayed on Gold Standard we’d have been as successful as we were.
These kinds of comparisons are super dumb, the target audience is ignorant poor people who don’t understand inflation and will never having savings much less invest in any assets. What ultimately matters is purchasing power and while this may sound harsh and I appreciate the last few years of inflation have been tough on consumers, what really matters is wage growth vs inflation, IMO the ultimate metric is how many hours of work it takes to buy something. Is anyone seriously expected to believe that without the Fed the median American salary would be $142K/year but we’d be paying 1914 prices?
Rich people have assets, not cash. Always have, always will. So these gold bug fantasies that imply there are people out there who hoarded cash for a century only to wake up one day and find themselves rug-pulled by the Fed are totally disingenuous.
And of course, standards of living are way, way up! Do you seriously believe WOLF would go back and live in 1914 if he had the choice? We have cheap junk that the kings and aristocrats of the early 20th Century couldn’t even dream of.
The mathematics is fine, it’s the economics that’s the problem. Gold can’t provide you shelter, sustenance, entertainment, or almost anything else that’s actually useful, so why are we using that as a metric? Think about it, how many of Ford’s employees do you think invested 100% of their income into gold which they didn’t sell for a hundred years or more? Yeah that’s right: none. It’s meaningless.
Inflation is the proper tool for comparing income at different times – anyone seriously using some other arbitrary index is likely either completely clueless or trying to mislead you.
That must be an old article I just checked spot gold is $2900/oz and the workers in 1914 would have made enough to buy 82 oz of gold per year so the equivalent salary today would be $238k/year
There’s one leap of faith here that isn’t working. They’re using the price of gold instead of the consumer price index.
That’s not a completely insane thing to do. People have various problems with the CPI as a measure of inflation. Conversely, Gold has long been considered a pretty constant reference value. Meaning, one Troy ounce of gold would always buy a nice suit, whenever. Not the absolute top end but not a cheap factory deal either; a nice hand tailored suit. An ounce of gold would set you up with a real nice suit of clothes in 1862 or 1982 and it will still do that today. So it’s a perfectly reasonable definition of “constant value over time.”
Is gold currently overvalued? Perhaps. Because right now it wouldn’t quite take a full ounce of gold to buy yourself a suit. This is partly due to china’s innovations in low cost production, but that’s not the only confounding factor. The price of gold factors in some predictions of the future; it is often used as a hedge against inflation and it’s currently up a bit above its usual value.
So all the numbers are approximate and this is probably an overestimate but it’s within reason. Note also, the best paid union autoworkers aren’t making $142k but they’re also not working six days a week, and if they do work that much overtime their compensation won’t be too far out of line with that. The problem is at the bottom of the pay scale, as always.
Deeply stupid post from the OOP, or just intentionally misleading. The conversion to gold and use of gold’s value is a means to lie via statistics. The real value of the American dollar is not attached to gold and so the comparison falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny.
The caption also reveals the point of the post, to push an explicit political view against “central banks” and “big government”.
Also Ford was a nazi.
Gold value changes over time and especially in recent years it went up a lot. If you want to compare that salary to today’s, you should calculate inflation. There are many sites that can be used for this, the one I checked gave me this value $38,716.15
Not a great salary tbh
No. Simply put, the value of gold and the USD have inflated at different rates.
Any inflation calculator will tell you that $1560 in 1913 is now equivalent to $50k.
If someone managed to invest their entire yearly salary into 75oz of gold in 1913, it would be worth $142k now.
Henry Ford paid his workers very well for the time. He was also shortly after sued into oblivion by his stock holders so this kind of thing will not happen again. Was it the gold standard that screwed up, or the capitalist shareholders?
And to answer the actual question, close enough for government work, the actual total for 75oz of 24k gold would be $198928.89 according to an online calculator I found.
Todays price of gold is $2,910.50. x75 = $218,287.50
So yes, the math is off. Our situation is worse than what the OP indicated.
To put it in perspective, a milk man in 1950 could afford a car, a house, and to put his kids through college… on his salary alone.