Venezuela’s Cash Is Now Worth Less Than Currency in ‘World of Warcraft’

fortune.com

I get it's just a joke, but people making comparisons like this is a pet peeve of mine.

1 USD is 110 Yen, but you'd be paid (for the sake of the argument) 110 times as much Yen as USD. What matters is the changing relative purchasing powers of the currency in your bank account.

Fun fact that shows that the number itself doesn't really matter - France revalued the Franc in 1960, making 100 "old" Francs worth 1 "new" francs. People weren't suddenly 100 times poorer.

Absolutely true what you say. I feel the same way.

Now in the case of Venezuela the minimum salary (July 2017) is 97531 BsF. The (black market) US Dollar is at 14760BsF per USD (as of today).

So basically the Venezuelan minimum wage now is a bit more than 6USD a month.

And just like you mention in France, Venezuela also removed 3 zeros from the currency about 10 years ago. So today's min wage would be at the many millions :(

But, in the Venezuelan case, they are poorer because runaway inflation is destroying the relative purchasing power that your are talking about.

This isn't really interesting unless we know the absolute value of all the money in circulation in each system.

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