The Davises have 300 Galleons in their vault, and they do not seem to be especially poor or especially wealthy. If Harry has 130 times the wealth of an average family, that sounds like a reasonable sum for the circumstances stated.
It’s worth noting that we don’t really know to what extent bounties would have been placed on Voldemort. For one thing, it seems like the international community couldn’t give a toss about the fate of Britain, and British wizards seem to have spent their time cowering in terror and believing that Voldemort was invincible, rather than financing mercenary warfare.
The Davises have 300 Galleons in their vault, and they do not seem to be especially poor or especially wealthy. If Harry has 130 times the wealth of an average family, that sounds like a reasonable sum for the circumstances stated.
It’s hard to compare, yes. But if you want to compare with the Davises and Potter fortunes, it doesn’t sound like 40k is all that much.
For example, if we wanted to compare bounties, we could compare Voldemort to Osama bin Laden’s federal bounty of $25 million; googling, the median net worth of an American household is something like $90,000, which gives us a Muggle multiplier of not 130x but 277x. If the Davises really are average (median) then with a Muggle multiplier the bounty on Voldemort might be as high as 113k galleons*. Then presumably you’d have the Potter family fortune of unknown thousands but let’s round to 7k and then 120k total—that’s 3 times what Harry actually has.
Of course, one can make assumptions which would erase a difference of 300% but you see why I might wonder if Harry did actually receive the bounties.
* Which if anything sounds low to me—Lucius shocks people by demanding 100k for Hermione just for attempting to kill Draco, but it seems plausible they would not be shocked by something like 10k—and Voldemort doesn’t just attempt to kill one person, he kills dozens, hundreds, thousands, and multiple Noble House members. The Order, a subaltern organization unapproved of by Magical England, is able to raise 100k all on its own for its own operations. And so on.
Muggle America is also some hundreds of thousands of times more populous than wizarding Britain. That does change some things when it comes to ratios of that sort.
My median income figure was from ~2009; combined with the bounty not being inflation-adjusted, this implies this nominal ratio is an underestimate of the real ratio.
Wizards are specifically described as not engaging fractional-reserve banking, which implies that any real estate is bought without debt with saved-up funds; hence, we would also expect to see savings reflected in wizard vaults and the Davises in particular unless we think they already bought a property (in which case the 300 galleons would then become a massive underestimate, yes).
No fractional-reserve banking does not imply this—there could be lenders (whether goblins or wizards) with a large supply of their own gold which they use to make loans. Or landowners could sell property with a “rent to own” payment plan. Fractional-reserve banking is only necessary if you want to lend someone else’s gold.
I was not using implies in the logical deduction sense. Not having fractional-reserve banking eliminates a massive source of capital which could be used for mortgage lending and ceteris paribus will reduce such lending, does it not?
It’s worth noting that we don’t really know to what extent bounties would have been placed on Voldemort. For one thing, it seems like the international community couldn’t give a toss about the fate of Britain
Well, so far as the international community consists of other governments. There may have been plenty of concerned foreign citizens.
True, but we see not a single foreign finger being lifted to help magical Britain—and with wizards, individuals can be as influential as governments. Compare Dumbledore and magical Germany (though admittedly he had a clear personal stake in stopping Grindelwald). Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and all that.
The Davises have 300 Galleons in their vault, and they do not seem to be especially poor or especially wealthy. If Harry has 130 times the wealth of an average family, that sounds like a reasonable sum for the circumstances stated.
It’s worth noting that we don’t really know to what extent bounties would have been placed on Voldemort. For one thing, it seems like the international community couldn’t give a toss about the fate of Britain, and British wizards seem to have spent their time cowering in terror and believing that Voldemort was invincible, rather than financing mercenary warfare.
It’s hard to compare, yes. But if you want to compare with the Davises and Potter fortunes, it doesn’t sound like 40k is all that much.
For example, if we wanted to compare bounties, we could compare Voldemort to Osama bin Laden’s federal bounty of $25 million; googling, the median net worth of an American household is something like $90,000, which gives us a Muggle multiplier of not 130x but 277x. If the Davises really are average (median) then with a Muggle multiplier the bounty on Voldemort might be as high as 113k galleons*. Then presumably you’d have the Potter family fortune of unknown thousands but let’s round to 7k and then 120k total—that’s 3 times what Harry actually has.
Of course, one can make assumptions which would erase a difference of 300% but you see why I might wonder if Harry did actually receive the bounties.
* Which if anything sounds low to me—Lucius shocks people by demanding 100k for Hermione just for attempting to kill Draco, but it seems plausible they would not be shocked by something like 10k—and Voldemort doesn’t just attempt to kill one person, he kills dozens, hundreds, thousands, and multiple Noble House members. The Order, a subaltern organization unapproved of by Magical England, is able to raise 100k all on its own for its own operations. And so on.
Muggle America is also some hundreds of thousands of times more populous than wizarding Britain. That does change some things when it comes to ratios of that sort.
Also, is that $25 million in 1991 dollars (year the book’s taking place) or 2011?
The reward was posted in 2001, and was unmodified for inflation until it was taken down in 2011.
My median income figure was from ~2009; combined with the bounty not being inflation-adjusted, this implies this nominal ratio is an underestimate of the real ratio.
That muggle net worth includes property values that would not be reflected in the Davis vault.
Wizards are specifically described as not engaging fractional-reserve banking, which implies that any real estate is bought without debt with saved-up funds; hence, we would also expect to see savings reflected in wizard vaults and the Davises in particular unless we think they already bought a property (in which case the 300 galleons would then become a massive underestimate, yes).
No fractional-reserve banking does not imply this—there could be lenders (whether goblins or wizards) with a large supply of their own gold which they use to make loans. Or landowners could sell property with a “rent to own” payment plan. Fractional-reserve banking is only necessary if you want to lend someone else’s gold.
I was not using implies in the logical deduction sense. Not having fractional-reserve banking eliminates a massive source of capital which could be used for mortgage lending and ceteris paribus will reduce such lending, does it not?
It’s probably worth comparing it to “the entire war chest” of the OOTP, 100k galleons.
Edit: ah, you did that.
Well, so far as the international community consists of other governments. There may have been plenty of concerned foreign citizens.
True, but we see not a single foreign finger being lifted to help magical Britain—and with wizards, individuals can be as influential as governments. Compare Dumbledore and magical Germany (though admittedly he had a clear personal stake in stopping Grindelwald). Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and all that.