One thing that might be missing from your calculation is that "one median-family-year of work" meant "about one person working" in 1940 but means "about two persons working" in 2022.
As economies develop, goods become cheaper and services become more expensive. If you visit rural Peru, a massage is roughly the same price as two gatorades - or 3 liters of clean drinking water. Shoe shining is 1/10th the price of a 1 liter bottle of clean water.
Contrast this with the US where a service like a massage would be >100x more expensive than a liter of clean drinking water. The same pattern holds true with other services such as shaves/haircuts etc.
Also lots of the project ingredients were not really market commodities. There could have been a lot more exchange of money involved if eg there had been a market for weapons grade uranium/plutonium or moon rockets and staff had been paid FAANG salaries.
(There's of course a big opportunity cost in employing the best physicists and biggest r&d investments in nukes - eg solar energy and grid storage could have been here decades earlier in an alternative scenario.)
> So, the inflation figures under represent the cost by a factor of 3.5 over those 80 years.
But this is not inflation per se, it's what's counted as “economic growth”: the median family in 1940 had a much lower standard of living than the one in 2024.
But of course sorting what's inflation and what's relevant economic growth is highly subjective: some things like cars and housing have literally inflated (they are enormous now compared the what they looked like even 40 years ago) and that's usually counted as economic growth, but is it really? In some way it is: having a bigger house is nice. But in other way it's not: do you really need that much space when you're older and the children left long ago? And sometime it's actually a net loss: living 30 kilometers away from work and depending on a car for everything is not a gain.
Same for electronics: computers are much, much faster than they used to be in 2000, so the statistics counts that as economic growth. And it is, you couldn't do modern AI on 2000 hardware, or physics simulations for industry and all. But at the same time, for the average consumer, the gain in speed has been eaten by software consuming more and more resources. Sometimes from sheer laziness (there's literally no reason for Windows to be this slow) but sometimes it's a bit more ambiguous: today's video games couldn't run on hardware from 20 years ago, and I remember being very happy to see the graphics improve during my teenage years so it's not entirely pointless. But at the same time, it's not as if video games were more fun or enjoyable now than they were 20 years ago: the consumer surplus from video games is basically the same no matter the quality of the graphics, so maybe it shouldn't be counted as growth at all.
The measure of “real” economic growth (and the measure of inflation) depends a lot on how you weight these things (it's called “hedonic adjustment”) and as we've seen, it's very difficult, and fundamentally subjective. And I wish statistics agency provided a measure of CPI without hedonic adjustment in addition to regular CPI (like they already do multiple variants of CPI depending on the basket of goods that's taken into account).
In 1944, the USD was pegged to gold at $35/troy oz. The current spot price of gold is $2300/troy oz. 1 troy oz of gold in 1944 = 1 troy oz of gold in 2024.
This gives the price of the Manhattan Project as $131 billion in 2024 dollars.
That seems to subtly assume that a century of technological progress hasn't changed the value of what a family can produce. That is pessimistic given that computers were maybe the greatest leap forward in technology related to engineering design.
A Manhattan project should be much more achievable today than it was in the WWII era.
I understand what you're getting at, but equating wage inflation with price inflation would be a mistake that would lead to some nonsensical results.
That is, if you only look at wage inflation, it would mean that you can never factor in productivity improvements to how much more people can buy with their money.
Measuring inflation by salary is misguided, since real wages are not fixed as is clearly demonstrated by an honest rise in purchasing power. Food is a much smaller portion of income is a trivial way to see the dramatic changes.
Inflation is not underestimated by a factor of 3.5 over that time, as can be checked by nominal prices of a suitable basket of goods, which is the definition of inflation.
The US was much poorer back then. Much lower standard of living. So wages were also much lower even inflation-corrected. Also there was a war going in and people were drafted and had no choice but to work for a minimal salary. I think that explains a lot of it.
The whole country had a mission, and the overwhelming feeling was that the US along with the Allies were in a conflict for survival, that without winning the war the existence of the US would not be possible. On December 6th 1941 public opinion leaned towards isolation from the “European” war. On December 8th 1941 Congress voted unanimously sans 1 vote to declare war against Japan. It is hard to overstate the fervor that immediately swept over the whole country. People are willing to endure the most demanding trials given the proper circumstances; at times the most realistic course of action is to do what once seemed impossible.
They really weren't cheap. The costs were just pushed to the future. It's estimated that it will take between $16.8 billion and $550 billion to clean up the Hanford site. The Santa Susana facility where Apollo rockets were tested is going to cost billions to clean up (there are other things contributing to the cost there).
I’ve heard stories from people who have worked at Hanford, and it seems like a lot of that money is being squandered. Excess caution, basically everything is radioactive waste, and just overall wasteful spending for decades.
When you’re under the gun, bang for buck is crucial. When you have a relatively fat, wealthy and lazy society (compared to WWII and even the post-war 60’s) all the costs go up. Eg you could build roads or railways or ships back then. Now there are 100’s of rules, lobbyists everywhere and everyone wants their cut. Financial incentives matter far more now, since survival has been (temporarily) taken care of.
Manhattan is technically just the R&D component, the full Manhattan is the trillion+ US has spend on building out the nuclear force and 1T+ more it will spend to modernize in next 30 years.
It is noteworthy that Wikipedia gives as cost for the Artemis program a total sum of US$93+ billion (2012–2025).
It is a bit difficult to compare, because NASA shuffles around cost, and the plan is that Artemis will do way more (moon base) than Apollo. But Apollo seems to have been not only a technological marvel, but exceptionally well managed?
Regarding Manhattan project it has this mythical quality (the name alone is cool), but the Russians had the a-bomb only 4 years later and smaller countries (South Africa) are able to achieve it too.
Or did it simply benefit being done in a time where the critical components were less valuable? After all, projects like Apollo reveal to us new uses for materials, people, etc. so they tend to become more valuable afterwards.
Regarding the Manhattan project: you can't compare the cost of research and developing a novel device vs the cost of developing the same device using stolen secrets.
I think the Manhattan project had a lot of consideration towards making it economical. (and huge government programs weren't quite so common back then) Plus, I think things that were returned/recycled weren't counted against the total. e.g. the $600 million worth of silver they borrowed to make calutrons, because there was a copper shortage.
Economy was not really a consideration. The project developed two different bomb designs (plutonium and uranium) in parallel. They tried three different paths to fissile material: gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic separation for uranium and reactors for plutonium.
The government can switch to being really efficient and less corrupt when it's under the barrel of a gun and needs to fight for survival. See WW2 US or present day Ukraine.
Less so after decades of unchallenged safety and prosperity where it switches to nepotism and rent seeking as the default MO.
Everything about the official inflation calculation is almost totally borked in terms of generating useful information. Like, information that would be useful for someone doing something real, like future historians or Zombie FDR.
There's probably dozens of mechanisms at work to explain "why??!!", but the root cause is - like so many other damn things in America - financialization, from its birth post-1972 with vehicles like EUROBOND, to its "pedal to the metal" moment with all the liquidated commie national assets, to the craptacular commodity runup crisis courtesy of Bush II wrecking the Levant and West Asia. Oh, right, and the financial system ending in 2008. When we seamlessly blended up - legally - private with public risk. Oh yeah. Sixteen years ago.
Anyway, financialization. We don't account for money supply accurately, they're dynamic with price indices now, blabbity blabbity blah blah, 1962 dollars were probably worth waaaayyyyyyyyy more than we think they were.
There is no number of 1962 dollars that could buy you an electric car, HPV vaccine, or Nintendo DS, which means they're worthless if you want to buy those things.
(Since you can't time travel from 1962 to a point where those existed. If you just waited for them, then presumably you've kept them in an interest-bearing account in the meantime, and so the value of the dollar doesn't apply.)
They weren't cheap, money just still had value back then.
What's bizarre is how few people understand how currency has become devalued since its separation from the gold standard, and even more so in the last 5 years. These are the same fools who put their money into "high yield" savings accounts giving them 3% when official inflation is >5%.
londons_explore|1 year ago
A fairer way to look at it is how many years of the average citizens salary is it.
The manhattan project was $2B in 1944, or 121,000 median-family-years of work using salary figures from the 1940 census.
Apples stock buyback was $110B in 2024, or 122,910 median-family-years of work using figures from the 2022 census.
So, the inflation figures under represent the cost by a factor of 3.5 over those 80 years.
maratc|1 year ago
lumost|1 year ago
Contrast this with the US where a service like a massage would be >100x more expensive than a liter of clean drinking water. The same pattern holds true with other services such as shaves/haircuts etc.
fulafel|1 year ago
(There's of course a big opportunity cost in employing the best physicists and biggest r&d investments in nukes - eg solar energy and grid storage could have been here decades earlier in an alternative scenario.)
littlestymaar|1 year ago
But this is not inflation per se, it's what's counted as “economic growth”: the median family in 1940 had a much lower standard of living than the one in 2024.
But of course sorting what's inflation and what's relevant economic growth is highly subjective: some things like cars and housing have literally inflated (they are enormous now compared the what they looked like even 40 years ago) and that's usually counted as economic growth, but is it really? In some way it is: having a bigger house is nice. But in other way it's not: do you really need that much space when you're older and the children left long ago? And sometime it's actually a net loss: living 30 kilometers away from work and depending on a car for everything is not a gain.
Same for electronics: computers are much, much faster than they used to be in 2000, so the statistics counts that as economic growth. And it is, you couldn't do modern AI on 2000 hardware, or physics simulations for industry and all. But at the same time, for the average consumer, the gain in speed has been eaten by software consuming more and more resources. Sometimes from sheer laziness (there's literally no reason for Windows to be this slow) but sometimes it's a bit more ambiguous: today's video games couldn't run on hardware from 20 years ago, and I remember being very happy to see the graphics improve during my teenage years so it's not entirely pointless. But at the same time, it's not as if video games were more fun or enjoyable now than they were 20 years ago: the consumer surplus from video games is basically the same no matter the quality of the graphics, so maybe it shouldn't be counted as growth at all.
The measure of “real” economic growth (and the measure of inflation) depends a lot on how you weight these things (it's called “hedonic adjustment”) and as we've seen, it's very difficult, and fundamentally subjective. And I wish statistics agency provided a measure of CPI without hedonic adjustment in addition to regular CPI (like they already do multiple variants of CPI depending on the basket of goods that's taken into account).
scrlk|1 year ago
This gives the price of the Manhattan Project as $131 billion in 2024 dollars.
roenxi|1 year ago
A Manhattan project should be much more achievable today than it was in the WWII era.
hn_throwaway_99|1 year ago
That is, if you only look at wage inflation, it would mean that you can never factor in productivity improvements to how much more people can buy with their money.
SideQuark|1 year ago
Inflation is not underestimated by a factor of 3.5 over that time, as can be checked by nominal prices of a suitable basket of goods, which is the definition of inflation.
MattGaiser|1 year ago
So it isn’t that inflation is underestimated. The average family truly is richer. Far more house. Far more car. Far more and better food.
moneywoes|1 year ago
wkat4242|1 year ago
ipnon|1 year ago
ChrisMarshallNY|1 year ago
dehrmann|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
doug_durham|1 year ago
virtuallynathan|1 year ago
SJC_Hacker|1 year ago
richardw|1 year ago
4death4|1 year ago
adtac|1 year ago
maxglute|1 year ago
ralfd|1 year ago
It is a bit difficult to compare, because NASA shuffles around cost, and the plan is that Artemis will do way more (moon base) than Apollo. But Apollo seems to have been not only a technological marvel, but exceptionally well managed?
Regarding Manhattan project it has this mythical quality (the name alone is cool), but the Russians had the a-bomb only 4 years later and smaller countries (South Africa) are able to achieve it too.
randomdata|1 year ago
Or did it simply benefit being done in a time where the critical components were less valuable? After all, projects like Apollo reveal to us new uses for materials, people, etc. so they tend to become more valuable afterwards.
throwaway44773|1 year ago
jimbobthrowawy|1 year ago
egl2021|1 year ago
dontreact|1 year ago
DrNosferatu|1 year ago
1oooqooq|1 year ago
Rinzler89|1 year ago
Less so after decades of unchallenged safety and prosperity where it switches to nepotism and rent seeking as the default MO.
It's all cyclic.
MilStdJunkie|1 year ago
There's probably dozens of mechanisms at work to explain "why??!!", but the root cause is - like so many other damn things in America - financialization, from its birth post-1972 with vehicles like EUROBOND, to its "pedal to the metal" moment with all the liquidated commie national assets, to the craptacular commodity runup crisis courtesy of Bush II wrecking the Levant and West Asia. Oh, right, and the financial system ending in 2008. When we seamlessly blended up - legally - private with public risk. Oh yeah. Sixteen years ago.
Anyway, financialization. We don't account for money supply accurately, they're dynamic with price indices now, blabbity blabbity blah blah, 1962 dollars were probably worth waaaayyyyyyyyy more than we think they were.
astrange|1 year ago
(Since you can't time travel from 1962 to a point where those existed. If you just waited for them, then presumably you've kept them in an interest-bearing account in the meantime, and so the value of the dollar doesn't apply.)
moosemess|1 year ago
What's bizarre is how few people understand how currency has become devalued since its separation from the gold standard, and even more so in the last 5 years. These are the same fools who put their money into "high yield" savings accounts giving them 3% when official inflation is >5%.