Conversation Rate of G$ To Real World Dollars

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by whswhs

This is the first time I've ever heard that there was such a thing as a "generic currency sign"—and I'm a professional copy editor and have edited a lot of economic papers and books. Did the sign even exist when GURPS 1/e was written?

Apparently so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_sign_(typography)

Everybody keeps talking about "modeling," but the only thing GURPS is set up to do is define the basic units of income and expenses of a character. There's no economic model there. If you want to create a character in retirement, give them an Independent Income instead of a job. Done. Taxes? Subsumed into the Cost of Living. Debt? There's a disadvantage for that.

GURPS money is a very low-resolution affair; it's not set up to handle specifics. Nor should it be, in my opinion. That is, at most, matter for an optional supplement for people who want that sort of thing.

[Black Leviathan]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

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.

Bear in mind that you're above the mean cost of living in America. The same apartment, transportation, phone food and insurance in rural Kentucky could cost you half as much. The equivalent living cost in a poorly industrialized rural section South American City would cost you about 1/6th as much. My mother has a three bedroom 6000 SQ foot hacienda with a large yard in Mexico that costs half my one-bedroom apartment costs me and she could have a live-in cook for what I pay for groceries. Just an example that Lifestyle costs are the average but not the norm for a game world.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

Bear in mind that you're above the mean cost of living in America.

No, he really isn't. Finding real cost of living is a bit rough, but for example this gives a median gross rent (rent+utilities) of $869 in 2005. Now, some of those will be two-bedroom, but that's probably outweighed by the average status of renters being low (due to a higher percentage of home owners at higher status), and cost of living really has to include food as well, which at status 0 is not negligible (it's not well defined, but the USDA 'thrifty' food plan is the basis for SNAP, which is most certainly status -1, and in 2005 was $145; status 0 presumably includes some prepared food and eating out and should easily be twice that). We should probably also include health insurance (about $330/mo in 2005), as well as other incidental expenses such as transportation and telecommunications, and total looks to be in the $1800/month range.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by whswhs

This is the first time I've ever heard that there was such a thing as a "generic currency sign"—and I'm a professional copy editor and have edited a lot of economic papers and books. Did the sign even exist when GURPS 1/e was written?

I see the symbol all the time, but it's never in a currency context. MS Word uses it to mark table formatting, and I'm sure it has other uses.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by whswhs

This is the first time I've ever heard that there was such a thing as a "generic currency sign"—and I'm a professional copy editor and have edited a lot of economic papers and books. Did the sign even exist when GURPS 1/e was written?

Yes; it was invented in 1972 for the ISO 646 extensions to ASCII. That said, since it explicitly means "a currency of some sort" as opposed to "one specific currency", I don't think it's appropriate here.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

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.

This is highly variable as some small cities the above would be considered very expensive. For example, when I lived in Las Cruces, NM I was able to pay $300 a month on my 15 year mortgage, utilities at $150 month, transportation was $40 a month, food was $200 if I properly paced myself, and was making just over $1000 (before income tax) through out the 2000s and into the 2010s.

[AlexanderHowl]

The majority of the US population lives in or near cities with similar or higher costs than I have given. Look at the residents of the US megalopolises (77% of the population), and the costs that I gave is probably low to average.

[Andreas]

The cost of living is the minimum you need to pay to mantain your status. Thus basing it on the lower part of the range of prices for rent etc. seems appropriate.

It definitely does not seem like a good idea to base it on median real world spending. Plenty of people spend a lot of money on things which don't help their status much.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Andreas

The cost of living is the minimum you need to pay to mantain your status. Thus basing it on the lower part of the range of prices for rent etc. seems appropriate.

Cost of living is typical, not minimum (see B265), and its useful purpose in the game is to sweep a bunch of routine stuff under the rug.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Cost of living is typical, not minimum (see B265), and its useful purpose in the game is to sweep a bunch of routine stuff under the rug.

It also says "your typical expenses" rather than the typical expenses of a statistically average person in the setting. For adventurers who typically only care about the adventure, spending the minimum on abstracted non-adventuring things required to not get penalties seems appropriate.

That is also an interpretation which is supported by the mechanics of cost of living.