主题：【原创】闲话水浒外篇 - 关于北宋货币的购买力 -- 无斋主人

I know nothing on this topic. But I once studied how much one pound in Jane Austen's novels worth today's money. The usual estimate I read is about 1:25, which is based on the calculation of inflation rates.

However, this rate can cause some problem. In "Pride and Prejudice", Darcy's annual income is 10,000 pounds, which is about 250,000 pounds in today's money. It is still a lot of money, but does not seem to justify the awe and obesequiousness it produced on Mrs. Bennett. In "Sense and Sensiblity", the three Dashwood sisters and their mother lived on 500 pounds which means 12,500 pounds in today's money and just above the poverty line. But in the book, they still employed two servants and lived in a beautiful cottage. In Trollop's novel "The Claverings", a curate had an annual salary 70 pounds, which will mean starvation in today's money.

The problem with this method is that GDP per capita increases greatly over the last 200 years. The method based on inflation rates only measures how much one pound 200 years ago can buy today. But in reading a novel, sometimes we are more interested in the relative scale, that is to say, what is the position of 10,000 pounds in a nation's income distribution. In this case, I think 1 pound in 1800=100 pounds today is a better formula. It gives us a better idea how rich a person was relative to his countrymen.

Now return to ShuiHu. I think the price of rice can be used to calculate the inflation adjusted rates, and explain the prices of chicken and alchol. As to Song officials' income, or the 五两银子 武松 gave 郓哥, a rate adjusted by the rise in income may be more appropriate.