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Old 09-27-2018, 08:23 AM   #9
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Conversation Rate of G$ To Real World Dollars

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Not really, as you could not have maintained a Status 0 lifestyle on $600 a month in the 2000s in the USA. Right now, my fiance and I spend $3600 a month on a Status 0 lifestyle, living in a small apartment in a small city ($1200 a month on rents and utilities, $1200 a month on food, insurance, cell phones, and transportation, and $1200 a month on taxes and miscellaneous expenses), so that is $1800 per month per adult. At the very least, that suggests that a $3 2018 to $1 GURPS conversation.
That's an issue not with GURPS prices but with GURPS definitions of Status and cost of living.

If you look at the GURPS rules on wealth, TL, and pay rates, an Average job at TL8 is defined to earn $2600/month. Even if you figure a third of it goes for taxes, the remaining $1700/month is more than enough to support a Status 1 lifestyle, or for a married couple who both have such jobs, a Status 2 lifestyle. (All of this is based purely on amounts in GURPS$, by the way; I'm not even looking at real world purchasing power.) So by GURPS rules the average person either is Status 1-2, or has money vanishing into expenses that don't count as cost of living. If you wanted a treatment of Status that was a closer fit to the modern United States, you'd need to have cost of living for a given status be proportionate to the pay scale for the TL.
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