With silver trading at $230/lb and steel going for somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.20−.90 per pound (the range representing Chinese bulk commodity thru US small commercial quantity structural shapes), it would appear that the price ratio hasn’t changed much. (They are both metals...)
With silver trading at $230/lb and steel going for somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.20−.90 per pound (the range representing Chinese bulk commodity thru US small commercial quantity structural shapes), it would appear that the price ratio hasn’t changed much. (They are both metals...)
I am not a historian or an economist, but it seems better to compare steel to food: in 1500ish England, 8 pennies gets you 2 bushels of grain (i.e. 100 lbs; 3 month’s porridge)… or one axe head (1-2 lbs steel). (Though note that 16th century food prices are “weird”—it’s prior to refrigeraton, mechanization, chemical fertilizer, barbed wire...) http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Agprice.pdf http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html