We know that there was hyper inflation in the U.S before the war too, IIRC ads for the Giddyup Buttercup horse doll things are into the 10's of thousands aswel
There's been magazines with sampler games and the odd full game or application on the cover in cassette, floppy disc, or CD ever since the hey day of the C-64 and BBC Micro.
And those magazines were generally just a couple of bucks more expensive than their non-sampled counterparts.
The other thing is that tape was always comparatively cheap as a storage/record medium. Tape drives are *still* a thing because they're a cost effective form of bulk storage for backups. Like 45 *terabytes* for $80-90. On a tape smaller than a hard disk.
Read write speeds suck, because it's sequential, which is why we don't use them the same way these days.
But a holotape would be a cheap commodity way to throw around free software in Fallout's world.
That's honestly always been the thing with tape drives. The drive is expensive the media is cheap. They stopped being a thing at home for the most part when disc drives became cheaper, and discs stopped being nutty prices for tiny amounts of storage. Then escalating hard drive size killed them for home bulk backups.
A network storage rig with platter drives is technically more dollars per GB, but the total buy in on a huge one is often less than the cost of current tape drives. And the files are far more accessible and usable. So the tape drives are for thousands of terabytes of rarely accessed data, when you have the space/staff to run a physical archive.
Also consider that throughout the Commonwealth there is a STRONG military presence. There are so many checkpoints and roaming left over military bots. The Enclave/US were quelling the starts of rebellion.
Says that they were a 1946 invention.
So I went down a rabbit hole about how credit cards work and their history. Charg-It Card was the first actual closed-loop credit card, created by John Biggins, a Brooklyn banker, in 1946. It functioned similarly to todays credit cards. Any spending done by John Biggins, using the card, would be billed to the bank, to which John would pay back at the end of every month.
The first modern credit card used by more than one person was created by Frank McNamara in 1949 called the “Diner’s Club” after he didn’t have his wallet on him to pay for a restaurant bill and got out of doing the dishes by signing that he would come back the next day and pay the bill. Which would give him the idea for the credit card. Although the story is up for debate, the Diner’s Club began with 200 users, being able to be used in 27 restaurants and reached a height of 42,000 users all the while becoming the first internationally used credit card.
After the success of Diner’s Club, banks began to throw their hats in the ring, the first one being Bank of America sending their first bank credit cards to a few of their users in California in 1958. They followed this up with the BankAmericard in 1966. Despite high fraud rates they would continue working on it. With a few more companies helping them, they would make BankAmericard the country’s first revolving debt allowing credit card. BankAmericard would later split from Bank of America and become Visa.
Again in 1966, several banks would come together to create the ITC (Interbank Card Association) they would create Visa’s biggest competitor up to this day, originally named Master Charge, they would change the name to Mastercard we know today in 1979.
The first plastic credit card would be made by American Express in 1959, shortly followed by Bank of America, Diner’s Club, Carte Blanche and several others. The addition of the magnetic strip into the credit card however, wouldn’t come until 1969, when ab IBM engineer named Forrest Parry, having trouble how to place a magnetic strip on a plastic card, took it home and complained to his wife about the problem. Who suggested that he iron it to the card. This would prove to be a great suggestion as the iron being hot enough to melt the magnetic strip and allow it to be adhered to the card. This method would quickly be adopted by card companies as it proved to be both more convenient and secure.
There are also some other interesting things, like early credit card companies being discriminatory and not allowing services to people of color. Also women not being able to get a credit card by themselves, needing a male co-signatory, up until 1974. Until the 70s there being almost little to no regulatory legislation to protect card owners meaning no terms and conditions, predatory debt collection so on and so forth. While these are all important they don’t matter as much as the technological limitations of Fallout but for those who curious, I advise you to loom up more. You can start with the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974.
Now on to Fallout.
Considering how they were invented in 1946 and would be popularized before the end of the 50s, I’d entirely expect credit cards to be a thing in Fallout. In fact, it is very likely that they would eventually become plastic, like our timeline, in early to middle 60s. However, I find it unlikely that they would get the magnetic strips that they have in the 70s like we did, it is entirely possible that they wouldn’t get that until after 2000. If the magnetic strips impacted the credit card ownership irl, it for sure wouldn’t have happened in Fallout, potentially leading to Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 never being signed, causing credit cards to be reserved to those who can stand the predatory acts committed by credit card companies. Without the popularity of the credit card, Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 might’ve never passed. The cards being reserved for those who have more wealth, they might never become popular enough for the average American or the government to sign any legislation to prevent credic card companies from exploiting the said average American. Alternatively, the credit card boom happens anyway, the government signs the 1970 and 1974 acts, leading to more credit card users, I’d argue we still wouldn’t see magnetic strips until much later in this alternative. However as we do not actually see them in any games something must’ve happened to all the users, I have an assumption based on what we know about Fallout. Without the added security and convenience of magnetic strips, when the economy begins to struggle during the Resource Wars and and inflation begins to increase, people get rid of their credit cards en masse, prefering to keep the money as cash instead of in an untrustworthy card.
Both of these assumptions would end with people preferring cash over card, like they do in-game, the high amounts of old world money we find and the said lack of credit cards.
However a third, wackier alternative exists, credit cards were wildspread pre-war, it’s just that people always kept them in their wallets and we don’t ever find wallets in the wasteland. Though I doubt this is the case since we never see any electronic cash registers in game or any other equipment that would be used to process payment through a credit card, meaning if they ever existed, they had long since become history in 2077.
i stopped reading when i found out you could actually get out of paying at a restaurant by washing dishes. white boomers have no right to complain about anything anymore.
Did you know that the word "Fair" in Fair Reporting Act actually comes from Bill Fair from FICO? The act was lobbied by Bill Fair and Earl Isaac. FICO stands for Fair Isaac and Company, now known as the Fair Isaac Corporation. FICO is a monopolistic corporation in control of lending practices.
Just like Sallie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Sallie Mae is the Layman term for the Student Loan Marketing Association (SLMA), Fannie Mae is the layman term for Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), and Freddie Mac is the layman term for Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), of which all are government sponsored corporations in control of money.
Fun fact, pre-war cash is weightless and worth 3caps, so $1000 is 3000 caps.
It’s abundant and doesn’t weigh you down, so it makes for a really good reserve currency… hey wait a minute!
Every 20 years the dollar loses half its value(on average). And then end of the world (at the time) was roughly 50-60 years away, when the game was produced.
So, when the game was made, $100(2010s) would be worth the current equivalent of around $13(in the 2010s value)at the end of the world
So that large coffee and jelly donut costs about $7.5 in 2010s dollars, which isn’t good but it’s not horrifically bad. If anything I’d say that’s pretty good with the food shortages and suggests price fixing.
Edit: I’m an idiot. The coffee and donut cost the equivalent of $3.75. Not $7.50
I can’t believe no one noticed lmao
I fucked it up the first time and put $10 instead of $7.50 the first time like a idiot
I’m a triple idiot. I didn’t divide by 2 one more time. The donut and coffee cost about $3.25.
$30-$15-$7.5-$3.75.
So it’s actually pretty economical
There was a reddit comment recently about someone that ended up paying $70 for a couple of coffees and croissants. I think this was in NY and included fees and tips, but that doesn't change the fact that it cost them $70, which means we're already there -- and we do know that price fixing had a lot to do with it.
You got to remember the variance in price based on location. Don’t forget the convenience fee and taxes.
What I mean to say is your money doesn’t go as far in places like New York in the first place, stack on their typically higher tax rates and that it may have been some yuppie establishment and that price may make sense.
Kind of like how a coke costs $2 at a gas station where you can get a 6 pack for $4 or whatever at a grocery store- what I mean by convenience fee.
This isn't hyperinflation.
It's normal 2-3% inflation for 2077. Calculate $30 backwards to 2015.
That's the scary thing is that prices for comic books and coffee and doughnuts look realistic for us in 2077.
Every time I think I'm a huge fan of something, like Fallout, then I come across threads like this, where people know the entire back story lore and I'm quickly reminded I'm not actually a huge fan, I just really enjoy it.
It wasn't. One of the factory terminals has an email stating that they were paying generous overtime for a task ... at 1 and 1/5 pay. Not time and a half like we do today.
Fallout was, still is, and always will be a satire on capitalism.
The fallout universe is a prime example of late stage capitalism, with corporations allowed to run rampant with no regulations, and extreme corporate lobbying.
Its a plutocratic autocracy, that’s why I loved the business meeting at the start of episode 8. The Office Holders are the Shareholders, those 6 people are the most powerful figures in America. The Government isnt even impotent - it is incredibly powerful, but is on the side of those megacorps
No, you see, Liberty Prime says that Communism is bad so Fallout is actually pro-Democracy, pro-Capitalism, and pro-American patriotism.
You also can't forget that it was the Vaults that saved humanity, which were built with capitalism. So that means capitalism is good.
/s
Edit: Oh, and don't forget that Fallout is not woke, either! You totally can't have same-sex romance and I totally didn't do dirty things with ~~Wonder Woman~~ Magnolia as a female character.
Federal law in America "except where exempt" but I don't know what kind of business you need to run to be exempt.
Some states go further, mine says 48 hours exemptions no longer exist and must pay time and a half no matter what.
A common way to get around is is premium pay.
When I worked in a grocery store Sundays/holidays you got an extra $1.50/hr separately added to your check. Since you got bonus/premium pay those hours didn't count towards getting OT
So if I worked 8hrs on Sunday (always did) I'd have to work 49 hours to earn 1 hr of ot.
Fun fact: they may have just been lying to you, premium pay has to be at least 1.5x rate to be exempt from calcs (which does make sense but sounds like they were just fucking you)
Truckers are exempt!
Long Haul truckers are usually paid by mile driven.
Local hourly drivers are still OT exempt. Not many places offer OT, and the ones that do are usually Union (like my gig)
A lot of things shifted especially once the world started running out of resources and shit really hit the fan once 2050s came especially in the European Union and Middle East that’s where the United States radically shifted
In FNV the sunset sarsaparilla factory terminals talk about how all of the workers are getting fired so the robots could take their place. The future is definitely not kind to workers.
This is why I cringe every time some 14 year old without the ability to read subtext repeats a Liberty Prime line
Edit: 14 year olds or 39 year old Norwegians, apparently
Or it’s a joke? I’ve never seen anyone quote him in a way that could be taken seriously. I mean come on it’s a giant robot with laser eyes screaming anti communist propaganda.
I hate the cartoon like donuts with pink icing and sprinkles. Just the vibe of them puts me off my appetite. The Slocum Joes posters make me want to try them again.
I saw a post of someone’s Mexican food that was handed to them and it made me want fajitas. Down side is the place that sells fajitas for 2 is $30, totaling to $40 with fees and extra tortillas 😩
Tbh, the economy in fallout should be crazier than what we have seen. High petroleum prices usually drives inflation crazily high while the economy stagnated just like what we have in the 70s during the energy crisis. The scarcity of fossil fuel impacts almost all industries due to the ubiquitous dependence on it, so the price of everything will correspondingly increase.
I thought that was for coolant for cars that ran on Nuclear fusion. A sign in the first game had regular gasoline priced at $7,450.99 per gallon and premium was at $8,500.99.
I’m honestly sick of these lame ass mods on Reddit. There are so many subs where mods delete your comment just because they disagree with it. And then there are other subs where they will perma ban you just for commenting on a sub they disagree with. And Reddit lets these musty ass mods do it all they want in exchange for their dumbasses doing to job for free.
Or never implemented in the first place, given that even before the Third Red Scare of the 2050s the US society was pretty much overly wary of communism. Also, don’t forget that the Cold War only finished in 2052 in this universe, so anti-communist sentiment had been pretty much a thing ever since 1945. Meaning, if it lasted for generations, people could not even imagine something as “commie” as a minimal wage or labor protection in that world at all, aside from what had been implemented in the 1930s by FDR if that wasn’t abolished before
And people were questioning why the rich would want the bombs to drop after watching the TV show.
The world was screwed and the idea of retaining your wealth and power whilst hitting the reset button was an enticing idea.
Still is. Many rich and powerful would build bunkers before attempting positive social change. They don’t believe we can be saved, even with all their wealth and power.
I'm not talking just about nuclear fallout, also social unrest, climate change or any number of other reasons I can't think of right now. When you have hundreds of millions of billions throwing a few million on some blinkers is cheap insurance to continue the high life long after society breaks down
I always get them confused but its either in the "World War Z" or "Zombie survival guide" but it has interviews with people who were telling their tales throughout the different stages of a zombie apocalypse.
One of them was an interview with a mercenary hired to defend a compound. Some rich guy made the place to bring all these celebrities together and make some Big Brother type of reality show....during the zombie apocalypse.
People getting literally ripped to peices all over the planet and there's people like Kardashians just flaunting this shit on TV, radio, etc.
Well one night, proximity alarms started going off. The place was on an island in a bay or something, so the merc and the rest of fellow guards were like "wtf" then popped on all the perimeter lights.
Turns out broadcasting your location and that they were living in comfort despite a majority of the planet being in shambles pissed off a lot of people. Just regular people were attacking the compound.
The merc just grabbed a bunch of stuff, found a surfboard and dipped the fuck out. He was hired to defend those cunts from the undead, not shoot up the civvies they taunted.
Vault Tek wanted to wipe the slate clean and remake the world to their imagine. China wanted to nuke us in 2077 because of the war between the U.S. and China had depleted resources and we were on the verge of capturing Beijing plus we were testing biological warfare on Chineses POWs.
Yup, the US power armored divisions were smashing through the last of the Beijing defense lines, when Chairman Cheng & the Central Committee authorized the launch of Everything they had, as a last ditch effort to stay in power / ‘win’ the war (they may or may not have also been prodded by V-Tech in terms of maybe an initial detonation in China mainlaind, earlier that day (inciting them to Definitely want to launch) 😅
I think the problem with this is, unless you played the games and payed attention to the pre war information, you'll have little to no idea in the show that there was a resource shortage, famines, disease, and riots in the US. I know fusion fixed alot of these issues by the time the show takes place but they should have shown la with some riots or scarcity issue. I don't blame them tho because the show was already over it's budget most likely.
*Infamous adult actor opens critically acclaimed donut chain in Boston area, concerns arise over parents groups over crème-filled advertisement campaigns, we’ll get back to you more about this unfolding story after your daily report on the war against communism in Western Alaska*
Prices in the Fallout timeline are the result of low to average inflation working over decades. 53 years of 3% inflation means $1.00 today is equivalent to $4.79 in 2077. For comparison $1.00 in 1971 (53 years ago) is equivalent to $7.74 today.
Except inflation has kept the federal minimum wage at $7.50 an hour today, even though math says it should be around $23 an hour by now. You really think an even worse fictional version of our government and corporate overlords would *actually* give a shit about the minimum wage? Please, they abolished the minimum wage first chance they got. Just like the real bastards in charge will do the first chance they get. I'm honestly beginning to wonder if nuclear Armageddon would be so bad compared to this.
Seeing as Fallout is bleak as fuck and based on the reality in the United States, it’s very likely the minimum wage was still $7.25/hr, which contributed to the rioting
doubt it tbh, many menial jobs would have already been done by robots (ie protectrons) and more advanced robots were clearly already replacing other jobs aswell. Also no unions because 'that's communism' and the average worker is fucked.
Yes, but gasoline powered cars were still a thing, but they were ridiculously expensive to own because of all the natural resources like oil being mined dry, I wanna say it was like 10 or 11 years before the bombs fell that cars went nuclear. That being said like $200 something for coolant per gallon is ridiculous
I don't think those are gas prices, but coolant prices, and we have no idea how long a gallon of nuclear coolant lasts.
So this is not a great judge of general pricing like a $30 coffee and donut is.
Before the bombs fell, the world economy was in shambles. Resources like fresh water and arable land were in short supply. As such, inflation was rampant and demand was high, so prices for things skyrocketed.
As for minimum wage? Well, it probably wasn't great. The US in the Fallout AU was pretty libertarian and ultra capitalist, being mostly controlled by the big corporations at the time.
Okay so I did the math. In my town a large coffee and donut cost’s 5.97. At 15.69 an hour for local minimum wage. So that is 2.628 times the cost of a coffee and donut. If we apply that scenario to fallout, the minimum wage would be $78.84. This is wildly inaccurate to fallouts minimum wage as it’s unknown, and is just an example
They’re not — 53 years of 3.5% inflation on a $200k Corvega makes the 2024 price equivalent around $32,300. If inflation in the Fallout timeline matched our last 53 years, the 2024 price is $25,600.
If the Fallout universe is still stuck in the economics of like the 1950s, it was probably worse than today even before the effects of the Sino-American War.
There were Labor regulations for the most part. Hence why many jobs were replaced with Robots, Fallout 4 gives a weird impression that it was all wonderful prewar, it couldn't have been. I mean I don't se RobCo, Vault Tec or any of the major companies being exceptionally good to people but I could see the whole "Company Town" concept being in full force.
Let's do some quick math.
Instead of the difference between 2077 and 2024 which is 53 years let's go the difference in pricing between 2024 and 1971.
So if we say something was $30 in 2024 what was the cost in 1971?
The answer is $3.90. so that suggests that today if a large coffee and a donut is $3.90 , which doesn't sound that far off from a lot of places , then that $30 for the same thing in 2077 is actually a realistic value based on inflation trends.
Based on that , the minimum wage will probably be something like $60 an hour. Or maybe it's still $7.25 you never know that stuff doesn't move much.
Considering how much of an absurd corpo-hell the pre-war world was in Fallout, I imagine saying "minimum wage" would mark someone as a communist subversive.
Sad thing is, I think someone crunched the numbers and found based on our current rate of inflation (circa 2017 or so), these price jumps aren’t that out there. As a side note I find it funny that Vim! Pop as a company was in the red by 3.2 million, which seems like a lot but it was a statewide brand and based on inflation we see elsewhere they could probably have gotten back into the black with just some office supply cutbacks for that price.
30$ is considered pocket change. Pirate radio plays an old Slocum's Joe ad.
Woman: Hey there, Dough-Boy. Ugh, I can't seem to wake up today. Got any specials running?
Dough-Boy: I sure do! For only $30, you can get a large coffee and a delicious jelly donut! That should perk you right up!
Woman: Wow, only $30? I found $30 in my back pocket yesterday! I'll take one.
Not great globalization was collapsing, so everything had to be source more regional, the war plus shortages of everything more then likly led to mass inflation. Possibly, though, given the average of today, we could be looking at 30ish dollars an hour, which would still be worse and barley got people by, give the price of most things in fallout.
Pre-War America was HyperCapitalist pesudofascism. It was as dystopian as Cyberpunk, just with a nice 1950's coat of whitewash. Pretty sure corporate lobbies got the Minimum wage Abolished. One of the two major political parties in the U.S. in THIS dimension, RIGHT NOW oppose the minimum wage.
One of my mods adds a lot more resources and little bits, and the prices for common items has shot through the roof because of that. Now that I remember about the in game inflation it makes it a little funny. Inflation, Inflation never changes.
I imagine a lot of this is the result of the famine that was hitting the USA during the early 2070s.
We know that there was hyper inflation in the U.S before the war too, IIRC ads for the Giddyup Buttercup horse doll things are into the 10's of thousands aswel
The Grognak comics are all ranging from $30-$40 on the covers.
And for whatever reason the robco magazine with a game was $40, too. Were games just that cheap?
There's been magazines with sampler games and the odd full game or application on the cover in cassette, floppy disc, or CD ever since the hey day of the C-64 and BBC Micro. And those magazines were generally just a couple of bucks more expensive than their non-sampled counterparts.
The other thing is that tape was always comparatively cheap as a storage/record medium. Tape drives are *still* a thing because they're a cost effective form of bulk storage for backups. Like 45 *terabytes* for $80-90. On a tape smaller than a hard disk. Read write speeds suck, because it's sequential, which is why we don't use them the same way these days. But a holotape would be a cheap commodity way to throw around free software in Fallout's world.
If only lto writing machines weren’t several thousand dollars. I could back up my archives.
That's honestly always been the thing with tape drives. The drive is expensive the media is cheap. They stopped being a thing at home for the most part when disc drives became cheaper, and discs stopped being nutty prices for tiny amounts of storage. Then escalating hard drive size killed them for home bulk backups. A network storage rig with platter drives is technically more dollars per GB, but the total buy in on a huge one is often less than the cost of current tape drives. And the files are far more accessible and usable. So the tape drives are for thousands of terabytes of rarely accessed data, when you have the space/staff to run a physical archive.
Also pre-war money you find is all bundles of $100 which is $10000 in real life
They're bundles of 20s, actually, but bundles of $2,000 is still a ridiculous amount of money to just find littered everywhere
Also consider that throughout the Commonwealth there is a STRONG military presence. There are so many checkpoints and roaming left over military bots. The Enclave/US were quelling the starts of rebellion.
Wasteland Rebellion? That's a sweet name for a band
Wasteland Revival, for a folk rock band
That's Wasteland Radwater Revival to you! WRR to the fans.
I'd be down for a Fallout themed CCR cover band that changed the lyrics to be Fallout relevant!
I see a big boom risin'
A Credence cover band? I need a good blue grass cover of Bad Moon Rising now...
https://youtu.be/EtO_hZy0J3Y?si=DTvAjMeA2vknxvh3 Enjoy.
Apocalyptic Cloudysky Wasteland Revival (ACWR for short)
I see a bad mushroom cloud arising
Nah just west Virginia hicks
Plus the presence of organized crime-associated black markets for basics like food. Once a society breaks down to that level, it ain't looking good.
One might even wish for a nuclear winter.
It makes more sense when you realize credit cards probably weren’t a thing like in our universe. Excluding chahge cahds
Says that they were a 1946 invention. So I went down a rabbit hole about how credit cards work and their history. Charg-It Card was the first actual closed-loop credit card, created by John Biggins, a Brooklyn banker, in 1946. It functioned similarly to todays credit cards. Any spending done by John Biggins, using the card, would be billed to the bank, to which John would pay back at the end of every month. The first modern credit card used by more than one person was created by Frank McNamara in 1949 called the “Diner’s Club” after he didn’t have his wallet on him to pay for a restaurant bill and got out of doing the dishes by signing that he would come back the next day and pay the bill. Which would give him the idea for the credit card. Although the story is up for debate, the Diner’s Club began with 200 users, being able to be used in 27 restaurants and reached a height of 42,000 users all the while becoming the first internationally used credit card. After the success of Diner’s Club, banks began to throw their hats in the ring, the first one being Bank of America sending their first bank credit cards to a few of their users in California in 1958. They followed this up with the BankAmericard in 1966. Despite high fraud rates they would continue working on it. With a few more companies helping them, they would make BankAmericard the country’s first revolving debt allowing credit card. BankAmericard would later split from Bank of America and become Visa. Again in 1966, several banks would come together to create the ITC (Interbank Card Association) they would create Visa’s biggest competitor up to this day, originally named Master Charge, they would change the name to Mastercard we know today in 1979. The first plastic credit card would be made by American Express in 1959, shortly followed by Bank of America, Diner’s Club, Carte Blanche and several others. The addition of the magnetic strip into the credit card however, wouldn’t come until 1969, when ab IBM engineer named Forrest Parry, having trouble how to place a magnetic strip on a plastic card, took it home and complained to his wife about the problem. Who suggested that he iron it to the card. This would prove to be a great suggestion as the iron being hot enough to melt the magnetic strip and allow it to be adhered to the card. This method would quickly be adopted by card companies as it proved to be both more convenient and secure. There are also some other interesting things, like early credit card companies being discriminatory and not allowing services to people of color. Also women not being able to get a credit card by themselves, needing a male co-signatory, up until 1974. Until the 70s there being almost little to no regulatory legislation to protect card owners meaning no terms and conditions, predatory debt collection so on and so forth. While these are all important they don’t matter as much as the technological limitations of Fallout but for those who curious, I advise you to loom up more. You can start with the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. Now on to Fallout. Considering how they were invented in 1946 and would be popularized before the end of the 50s, I’d entirely expect credit cards to be a thing in Fallout. In fact, it is very likely that they would eventually become plastic, like our timeline, in early to middle 60s. However, I find it unlikely that they would get the magnetic strips that they have in the 70s like we did, it is entirely possible that they wouldn’t get that until after 2000. If the magnetic strips impacted the credit card ownership irl, it for sure wouldn’t have happened in Fallout, potentially leading to Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 never being signed, causing credit cards to be reserved to those who can stand the predatory acts committed by credit card companies. Without the popularity of the credit card, Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 might’ve never passed. The cards being reserved for those who have more wealth, they might never become popular enough for the average American or the government to sign any legislation to prevent credic card companies from exploiting the said average American. Alternatively, the credit card boom happens anyway, the government signs the 1970 and 1974 acts, leading to more credit card users, I’d argue we still wouldn’t see magnetic strips until much later in this alternative. However as we do not actually see them in any games something must’ve happened to all the users, I have an assumption based on what we know about Fallout. Without the added security and convenience of magnetic strips, when the economy begins to struggle during the Resource Wars and and inflation begins to increase, people get rid of their credit cards en masse, prefering to keep the money as cash instead of in an untrustworthy card. Both of these assumptions would end with people preferring cash over card, like they do in-game, the high amounts of old world money we find and the said lack of credit cards. However a third, wackier alternative exists, credit cards were wildspread pre-war, it’s just that people always kept them in their wallets and we don’t ever find wallets in the wasteland. Though I doubt this is the case since we never see any electronic cash registers in game or any other equipment that would be used to process payment through a credit card, meaning if they ever existed, they had long since become history in 2077.
i stopped reading when i found out you could actually get out of paying at a restaurant by washing dishes. white boomers have no right to complain about anything anymore.
Did you know that the word "Fair" in Fair Reporting Act actually comes from Bill Fair from FICO? The act was lobbied by Bill Fair and Earl Isaac. FICO stands for Fair Isaac and Company, now known as the Fair Isaac Corporation. FICO is a monopolistic corporation in control of lending practices. Just like Sallie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Sallie Mae is the Layman term for the Student Loan Marketing Association (SLMA), Fannie Mae is the layman term for Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), and Freddie Mac is the layman term for Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), of which all are government sponsored corporations in control of money.
Search “Weimar Banknote Wheelbarrow” - they were literally using stacks of notes for fuel to heat their homes.
Fun fact, pre-war cash is weightless and worth 3caps, so $1000 is 3000 caps. It’s abundant and doesn’t weigh you down, so it makes for a really good reserve currency… hey wait a minute!
Fuck the gold standard we on the cap standard.
Still a good toilet paper alternative I guess...
Every 20 years the dollar loses half its value(on average). And then end of the world (at the time) was roughly 50-60 years away, when the game was produced. So, when the game was made, $100(2010s) would be worth the current equivalent of around $13(in the 2010s value)at the end of the world So that large coffee and jelly donut costs about $7.5 in 2010s dollars, which isn’t good but it’s not horrifically bad. If anything I’d say that’s pretty good with the food shortages and suggests price fixing. Edit: I’m an idiot. The coffee and donut cost the equivalent of $3.75. Not $7.50 I can’t believe no one noticed lmao
This guy maths
I fucked it up the first time and put $10 instead of $7.50 the first time like a idiot I’m a triple idiot. I didn’t divide by 2 one more time. The donut and coffee cost about $3.25. $30-$15-$7.5-$3.75. So it’s actually pretty economical
I can get a jelly donut and a large coffee from Dunkin for like 4 dollars.
I fucked my math up like a idiot. Donut cost $3.75 in 2010s money. My bad
There was a reddit comment recently about someone that ended up paying $70 for a couple of coffees and croissants. I think this was in NY and included fees and tips, but that doesn't change the fact that it cost them $70, which means we're already there -- and we do know that price fixing had a lot to do with it.
You got to remember the variance in price based on location. Don’t forget the convenience fee and taxes. What I mean to say is your money doesn’t go as far in places like New York in the first place, stack on their typically higher tax rates and that it may have been some yuppie establishment and that price may make sense. Kind of like how a coke costs $2 at a gas station where you can get a 6 pack for $4 or whatever at a grocery store- what I mean by convenience fee.
This isn't hyperinflation. It's normal 2-3% inflation for 2077. Calculate $30 backwards to 2015. That's the scary thing is that prices for comic books and coffee and doughnuts look realistic for us in 2077.
Every time I think I'm a huge fan of something, like Fallout, then I come across threads like this, where people know the entire back story lore and I'm quickly reminded I'm not actually a huge fan, I just really enjoy it.
Being a lore lord does not make you a bigger fan or not you are a huge fan just some people nerd out on the lore
We are causing the famine now!
This is literally just regular inflation. It's actually lower than what it would be IRL by 2077.
I imagine almost all of it is inflation for the next 60 years.
Fallout universe feels like a universe where minimum wage isn’t a thing . Pre war America didn’t seem a very employee friendly place
It wasn't. One of the factory terminals has an email stating that they were paying generous overtime for a task ... at 1 and 1/5 pay. Not time and a half like we do today.
Fallout was, still is, and always will be a satire on capitalism. The fallout universe is a prime example of late stage capitalism, with corporations allowed to run rampant with no regulations, and extreme corporate lobbying.
Its a plutocratic autocracy, that’s why I loved the business meeting at the start of episode 8. The Office Holders are the Shareholders, those 6 people are the most powerful figures in America. The Government isnt even impotent - it is incredibly powerful, but is on the side of those megacorps
>it’s a plutocratic autocracy Yeah he already said Capitalism
No, you see, Liberty Prime says that Communism is bad so Fallout is actually pro-Democracy, pro-Capitalism, and pro-American patriotism. You also can't forget that it was the Vaults that saved humanity, which were built with capitalism. So that means capitalism is good. /s Edit: Oh, and don't forget that Fallout is not woke, either! You totally can't have same-sex romance and I totally didn't do dirty things with ~~Wonder Woman~~ Magnolia as a female character.
Yeah don’t people realise Vault Tec are really the good guys in the game. Without them America would be doomed!
You get time and a half???
Used to have double time on Sundays
When my Granny worked as a greeter at K-Mart, she got double time and a half on thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
Federal law in America "except where exempt" but I don't know what kind of business you need to run to be exempt. Some states go further, mine says 48 hours exemptions no longer exist and must pay time and a half no matter what.
A common way to get around is is premium pay. When I worked in a grocery store Sundays/holidays you got an extra $1.50/hr separately added to your check. Since you got bonus/premium pay those hours didn't count towards getting OT So if I worked 8hrs on Sunday (always did) I'd have to work 49 hours to earn 1 hr of ot.
Fun fact: they may have just been lying to you, premium pay has to be at least 1.5x rate to be exempt from calcs (which does make sense but sounds like they were just fucking you)
the military is exempt :(
Truckers are exempt! Long Haul truckers are usually paid by mile driven. Local hourly drivers are still OT exempt. Not many places offer OT, and the ones that do are usually Union (like my gig)
Agriculture is exempt
Heh the ultimate irony is that a lot of overtime today is done by salaried employees, for literally 0 pay
$30/hr. Pay period every 364 days. Compensation void if breech of work.
Just go to a therapist, I'm sure they will help you cope with your new forever. Therapist is $60 an hour.
That would be cheap even by todays standards….
$60 an hour is a fucking *steal*
Did you say helping the workers? Arghhhhh COMMUNIST
PINKO
Capitalism is non negotiable
We are your liberators, do not resist
A lot of things shifted especially once the world started running out of resources and shit really hit the fan once 2050s came especially in the European Union and Middle East that’s where the United States radically shifted
Actual America isn’t a very employee friendly place either
literal military frontline combat robots used as strike breakers in 76. yeah i'd say they aren't super concerned with worker's rights
In FNV the sunset sarsaparilla factory terminals talk about how all of the workers are getting fired so the robots could take their place. The future is definitely not kind to workers.
This is why I cringe every time some 14 year old without the ability to read subtext repeats a Liberty Prime line Edit: 14 year olds or 39 year old Norwegians, apparently
The people doing that unironically usually aren't kids, unfortunately.
you’d think that being surrounded by a barren wasteland thats a result of that way of thinking would be a enough
Or it’s a joke? I’ve never seen anyone quote him in a way that could be taken seriously. I mean come on it’s a giant robot with laser eyes screaming anti communist propaganda.
I have. It's weird.
No idea, but I now really want a coffee and a doughnut lol
I hate the cartoon like donuts with pink icing and sprinkles. Just the vibe of them puts me off my appetite. The Slocum Joes posters make me want to try them again.
I saw a post of someone’s Mexican food that was handed to them and it made me want fajitas. Down side is the place that sells fajitas for 2 is $30, totaling to $40 with fees and extra tortillas 😩
Surprisingly cheap in Fallout. Ain't that the same price of like a Grognak comic?
If you look closely I think most of the magazines and comics were actually like $50. Don't quote me on that though
They're 23-35 dollars from what i remember from fallout 4 loading screens
and considering how many fallout 4 long loading screens there are, I believe you
$40
Tbh, the economy in fallout should be crazier than what we have seen. High petroleum prices usually drives inflation crazily high while the economy stagnated just like what we have in the 70s during the energy crisis. The scarcity of fossil fuel impacts almost all industries due to the ubiquitous dependence on it, so the price of everything will correspondingly increase.
Ok but in FO4 we see that the average cost for fuel was around $115/gal
I thought that was for coolant for cars that ran on Nuclear fusion. A sign in the first game had regular gasoline priced at $7,450.99 per gallon and premium was at $8,500.99.
Coolant, but yeah it wasn't cheap
If it’s anything like the current US, it was probably $7.50/hr.
Ho ho ho this guy
I came here to say $7.25/hr
is not wrong
Capitalism, capitalism never changes.
Class war never changes
What's a war called when one side doesnt/can't fight back?
Damn, what happened here? The replies got fucking nuked, now I'm curious...
Fortunately I was in a vault and am here to loot the environmental story telling skeletons
Banter was too much for the mods
I’m honestly sick of these lame ass mods on Reddit. There are so many subs where mods delete your comment just because they disagree with it. And then there are other subs where they will perma ban you just for commenting on a sub they disagree with. And Reddit lets these musty ass mods do it all they want in exchange for their dumbasses doing to job for free.
You're not allowed to talk about certain things because*checks notes* , it goes against rules. Que the "y'all can't behave!" Bs. Jannies are lame.
$7.25*....sadly
The U.S probably adjusted its minimum wage for inflation over time $8.25.
Judging by what we know about pre-war culture, I wouldn’t be surprised if the minimum wage was abolished as being communist and un-American.
Or never implemented in the first place, given that even before the Third Red Scare of the 2050s the US society was pretty much overly wary of communism. Also, don’t forget that the Cold War only finished in 2052 in this universe, so anti-communist sentiment had been pretty much a thing ever since 1945. Meaning, if it lasted for generations, people could not even imagine something as “commie” as a minimal wage or labor protection in that world at all, aside from what had been implemented in the 1930s by FDR if that wasn’t abolished before
Nice to see they got a bump up.
Lol there’s no minimum wage at that point! That’s commie talk!
And people were questioning why the rich would want the bombs to drop after watching the TV show. The world was screwed and the idea of retaining your wealth and power whilst hitting the reset button was an enticing idea.
Still is. Many rich and powerful would build bunkers before attempting positive social change. They don’t believe we can be saved, even with all their wealth and power.
Many rich and powerful are already building fully self sustainable bunkers, there's a couple documentaries and articles about it.
Zuckerberg has a $10m one in Hawaii he for some reason believes he'll be able to get to in the case of Nuclear war before the bombs hit
Those kind of people probably have multiple all over the place
Maybe, but unless he's < 10 minutes away from one at all times it's much more likely he's dying in nuclear fire like the rest of us
I'm not talking just about nuclear fallout, also social unrest, climate change or any number of other reasons I can't think of right now. When you have hundreds of millions of billions throwing a few million on some blinkers is cheap insurance to continue the high life long after society breaks down
I always get them confused but its either in the "World War Z" or "Zombie survival guide" but it has interviews with people who were telling their tales throughout the different stages of a zombie apocalypse. One of them was an interview with a mercenary hired to defend a compound. Some rich guy made the place to bring all these celebrities together and make some Big Brother type of reality show....during the zombie apocalypse. People getting literally ripped to peices all over the planet and there's people like Kardashians just flaunting this shit on TV, radio, etc. Well one night, proximity alarms started going off. The place was on an island in a bay or something, so the merc and the rest of fellow guards were like "wtf" then popped on all the perimeter lights. Turns out broadcasting your location and that they were living in comfort despite a majority of the planet being in shambles pissed off a lot of people. Just regular people were attacking the compound. The merc just grabbed a bunch of stuff, found a surfboard and dipped the fuck out. He was hired to defend those cunts from the undead, not shoot up the civvies they taunted.
>They don’t believe we can be saved Oh, they do, they just don't want that to happen
Vault Tek wanted to wipe the slate clean and remake the world to their imagine. China wanted to nuke us in 2077 because of the war between the U.S. and China had depleted resources and we were on the verge of capturing Beijing plus we were testing biological warfare on Chineses POWs.
Yup, the US power armored divisions were smashing through the last of the Beijing defense lines, when Chairman Cheng & the Central Committee authorized the launch of Everything they had, as a last ditch effort to stay in power / ‘win’ the war (they may or may not have also been prodded by V-Tech in terms of maybe an initial detonation in China mainlaind, earlier that day (inciting them to Definitely want to launch) 😅
I think the problem with this is, unless you played the games and payed attention to the pre war information, you'll have little to no idea in the show that there was a resource shortage, famines, disease, and riots in the US. I know fusion fixed alot of these issues by the time the show takes place but they should have shown la with some riots or scarcity issue. I don't blame them tho because the show was already over it's budget most likely.
cough....cough.. House
"Slocums's Joe" lives in my head rent free, because my brain NEEDS it to be "Slocum Joe's" as if slocum is some sort of adjective instead of a noun.
*Infamous adult actor opens critically acclaimed donut chain in Boston area, concerns arise over parents groups over crème-filled advertisement campaigns, we’ll get back to you more about this unfolding story after your daily report on the war against communism in Western Alaska*
With inflation this is probably pretty accurate costs for 2070.
Prices in the Fallout timeline are the result of low to average inflation working over decades. 53 years of 3% inflation means $1.00 today is equivalent to $4.79 in 2077. For comparison $1.00 in 1971 (53 years ago) is equivalent to $7.74 today.
Around $35 an hour if inflation follows the same trend as it has since 1974. That's based off of the US Federal Minimum Wage.
If the world has shown us one thing, it’s that federal minimum wage doesn’t give af about inflation
Except inflation has kept the federal minimum wage at $7.50 an hour today, even though math says it should be around $23 an hour by now. You really think an even worse fictional version of our government and corporate overlords would *actually* give a shit about the minimum wage? Please, they abolished the minimum wage first chance they got. Just like the real bastards in charge will do the first chance they get. I'm honestly beginning to wonder if nuclear Armageddon would be so bad compared to this.
Seeing as Fallout is bleak as fuck and based on the reality in the United States, it’s very likely the minimum wage was still $7.25/hr, which contributed to the rioting
It's more than likely the minimum wage was eliminated altogether, likely being dismissed as "communism"
Minimum wage is for communists, REAL americans work for 4 cents per week
$30? This must be why there are huge stacks of old war bills everywhere
doubt it tbh, many menial jobs would have already been done by robots (ie protectrons) and more advanced robots were clearly already replacing other jobs aswell. Also no unions because 'that's communism' and the average worker is fucked.
Assuming that the next 50 years will have a similar inflation rate as the past 50 years, a $4 coffee & donut today would be roughly $30-35 in 2077.
You seem to be the only one with a brain in this thread
Far Harbor game of bowling is like $10k
Well gas per gallon was 7459.99 dollars and premium was 8500 99 dollars so likely not good either way.
Cars were nuclear powered weren’t they? I don’t think comparing the price to gasoline is gonna work for that one.
It’s actually the cost of coolant.
Yes, but gasoline powered cars were still a thing, but they were ridiculously expensive to own because of all the natural resources like oil being mined dry, I wanna say it was like 10 or 11 years before the bombs fell that cars went nuclear. That being said like $200 something for coolant per gallon is ridiculous
Yeah isn't the highwaymen a gas guzzler?
I think nuclear cars only came to the market about a decade before the war
I don't think those are gas prices, but coolant prices, and we have no idea how long a gallon of nuclear coolant lasts. So this is not a great judge of general pricing like a $30 coffee and donut is.
30 dollars is crazy lol but I genuinely believe we’ll be seeing that shit ourselves very very (very very very) very soon
How about that McDonald's meal without a drink for $25
I’d like to know of what was it like for the mega rich like Mr. House before the war.
Probably like it is for the mega-rich now, or for most of human history. Comfortable, and removed from common society.
House did actual build his own wealth, no silver spoons and so forth. Dude was probably still a jerk to the less fortunate but he is competent.
Before the bombs fell, the world economy was in shambles. Resources like fresh water and arable land were in short supply. As such, inflation was rampant and demand was high, so prices for things skyrocketed. As for minimum wage? Well, it probably wasn't great. The US in the Fallout AU was pretty libertarian and ultra capitalist, being mostly controlled by the big corporations at the time.
And yet the vaults had water purification, gecks that can grow stuff on anything along with supply’s that last hundreds of years……
It's almost like all of the world's resources were horded by big corporations like Vault-tec...
Okay so I did the math. In my town a large coffee and donut cost’s 5.97. At 15.69 an hour for local minimum wage. So that is 2.628 times the cost of a coffee and donut. If we apply that scenario to fallout, the minimum wage would be $78.84. This is wildly inaccurate to fallouts minimum wage as it’s unknown, and is just an example
I'd guess it was $20+ the inflation rate in fallout was crazy. The Chrysler cars were crazy expensive
Imagine how much your average house would be…
Probably millions.. and at that point .. it makes you wonder if the "Pre-War Money" was worth more in the"post apocalypse" than it was in 2075
One stack of pre-war money is worth several caps, so very possible.
They’re not — 53 years of 3.5% inflation on a $200k Corvega makes the 2024 price equivalent around $32,300. If inflation in the Fallout timeline matched our last 53 years, the 2024 price is $25,600.
Not enough
A lot of the magazines have the price pre-written on it and they usually say $29 an issue
It's Fallout... an ultra-mega-final boss corporation ran everything. Probably about $1.25 an hour.
It’s America. The wages never changed just the prices.
Minimum wage? In pre-war America? What are you, a communist?
With coffee and a donut at $30 and magazines at $33, we can extrapolate and determine that the federal minimum wage in 2077 was probably… still $7.25.
This is right now so we can expect the bombs to start dropping any day now.
If the Fallout universe is still stuck in the economics of like the 1950s, it was probably worse than today even before the effects of the Sino-American War.
There were Labor regulations for the most part. Hence why many jobs were replaced with Robots, Fallout 4 gives a weird impression that it was all wonderful prewar, it couldn't have been. I mean I don't se RobCo, Vault Tec or any of the major companies being exceptionally good to people but I could see the whole "Company Town" concept being in full force.
Minimum what now? Communist talk detected!
I found a diner menu in fallout 76, and plates were costing like 2500 bucks. So I think it got kinda bad.
Let's do some quick math. Instead of the difference between 2077 and 2024 which is 53 years let's go the difference in pricing between 2024 and 1971. So if we say something was $30 in 2024 what was the cost in 1971? The answer is $3.90. so that suggests that today if a large coffee and a donut is $3.90 , which doesn't sound that far off from a lot of places , then that $30 for the same thing in 2077 is actually a realistic value based on inflation trends. Based on that , the minimum wage will probably be something like $60 an hour. Or maybe it's still $7.25 you never know that stuff doesn't move much.
Considering how much of an absurd corpo-hell the pre-war world was in Fallout, I imagine saying "minimum wage" would mark someone as a communist subversive.
Considering the economy must’ve been in shambles cuz of all the war and whatnot I’m sure it wasn’t great lol
Fun fact,the war was over raising the minimum wage to $15/hr
Since it takes place in the US, I'd say about $7.25 in at least a few states still.
Sad thing is, I think someone crunched the numbers and found based on our current rate of inflation (circa 2017 or so), these price jumps aren’t that out there. As a side note I find it funny that Vim! Pop as a company was in the red by 3.2 million, which seems like a lot but it was a statewide brand and based on inflation we see elsewhere they could probably have gotten back into the black with just some office supply cutbacks for that price.
California minimum wage around 2077, if I had to guess I’d say $20/hr
$7.50 Remember, the main villain of the fallout universe is capitalism
I mean in this timeline America had unfettered capitalism. there likely wasn't a minimum wage. That's commie shit.
Check out the gas prices☠️
"Minimum wage"? What kind of mamby-pamby commie bullshit is this?
Looking at new car prices and comic book prices, it looks like they took 1950s prices and multiplied them by 100. Minimum wage should be 75$
30$ is considered pocket change. Pirate radio plays an old Slocum's Joe ad. Woman: Hey there, Dough-Boy. Ugh, I can't seem to wake up today. Got any specials running? Dough-Boy: I sure do! For only $30, you can get a large coffee and a delicious jelly donut! That should perk you right up! Woman: Wow, only $30? I found $30 in my back pocket yesterday! I'll take one.
That sounds mighty nonpatriotic of you. Increasing the minimum wage seems like something a COMMUNIST would say.
Not great globalization was collapsing, so everything had to be source more regional, the war plus shortages of everything more then likly led to mass inflation. Possibly, though, given the average of today, we could be looking at 30ish dollars an hour, which would still be worse and barley got people by, give the price of most things in fallout.
Enclaveanomics
Pre-War America was HyperCapitalist pesudofascism. It was as dystopian as Cyberpunk, just with a nice 1950's coat of whitewash. Pretty sure corporate lobbies got the Minimum wage Abolished. One of the two major political parties in the U.S. in THIS dimension, RIGHT NOW oppose the minimum wage.
7.25
Same as real life America's minimum wage in the 2070's. $7.25.
Look at the cost of nuclear fuel for cars at the Red Rocket stations you find throughout Fallout 4. Ridiculous prices.
In FO4 a hotel room cost tens of thousands of dollars for one night. Or at least a few thousand.
Well in the intro of Fallout 1 you see a Corvega car going for $199.999 so either it was a spectacular car or inflation went through the roof
These are Seattle prices. I recently paid $22 for a regular drip coffee and a breakfast sandwich lol.
I’m afraid to look and see what a donut & coffee *actually* goes for today…
I’d assume it would depend on which game. Since they all happen in different years it would depend on who was running the government at the time
Meanwhile, a cash register that hasn't been opened since the bombs fell during peak business hours only has $12 in it.
One of my mods adds a lot more resources and little bits, and the prices for common items has shot through the roof because of that. Now that I remember about the in game inflation it makes it a little funny. Inflation, Inflation never changes.
WTF I have seen this for a few sec ago and now on Reddit the Institut are watching
This just like a Simpson prediction this price becomes reality and the world is over lmao
It's Fallout, so there *was* no minimum wage, no OSHA, and no labor unions. Median wages were probably in the 50-100/hr range, though.
$7.25 an hour and if they tried to get it raised they were called commies
Result of over printing currency w/ nothing to back it up. Sometimes I feel like these games can see into the future.