acpme_IHB
New member
the other day someone was talking about how the white man screwed the native americans when they purchased the island of manhattan for $24 worth of silver and trinkets in 1626. i recall once reading an analysis of what $24 would be worth in today's dollars but couldn't find the link again. so i simply compounded the numbers myself and this is what i came up with.
assuming these annualized returns, the value of the $24 in 2004 would be:
6% $88.3 Billion
7% $3.1 Trillion
9% $3.4 QUADrillion (i had to look up what 15 zeros was... never had to use a number this big!)
i could only find the total tax assessment of manhattan land in 2004 (note that this is the assessed value, not the mkt value)
$169 Billion
assuming the land value is only 25% of the total real estate value, that comes to:
$676 Billion
if you use mkt values instead of assessed values, and include the mkt caps of all manhattan-based businesses, i'm
this is really back of the envelope and you could tweak this in a hundred different ways. manhattan mkt values instead of assessed values, include the mkt value of all manhattan-based businesses. then you have some historians who say the value of the traded trinkets was more like $72.
but you could make a pretty good case that the europeans overpaid for manhattan!
assuming these annualized returns, the value of the $24 in 2004 would be:
6% $88.3 Billion
7% $3.1 Trillion
9% $3.4 QUADrillion (i had to look up what 15 zeros was... never had to use a number this big!)
i could only find the total tax assessment of manhattan land in 2004 (note that this is the assessed value, not the mkt value)
$169 Billion
assuming the land value is only 25% of the total real estate value, that comes to:
$676 Billion
if you use mkt values instead of assessed values, and include the mkt caps of all manhattan-based businesses, i'm
this is really back of the envelope and you could tweak this in a hundred different ways. manhattan mkt values instead of assessed values, include the mkt value of all manhattan-based businesses. then you have some historians who say the value of the traded trinkets was more like $72.
but you could make a pretty good case that the europeans overpaid for manhattan!
