A friend shared these interesting infographics with me:
 |
| How much does it cost to be Batman in real life? |
 |
| How much does it cost to be Spider-man in real life? |
 |
| How much does it cost to be the Hulk in real life? |
 |
| How much does it cost to be Superman in real life? |
So it seems that even our favorite superheroes are not immune from the ravages of time--and inflation. Looks pretty bad, doesn't it? But how bad, exactly? How much inflation have our justice friends suffered through in the past several decades?
Say, P is the price of a certain product now, and Px the price of the same product x years ago. The compounded average annual change in price of the product--i.e., the inflation rate with respect to the product--is:
[(Px/P)^(1/x)] - 1
Let's try applying this formula to some of the items in the infographics above (since we can only use the formula for the prices of the same item, we can't use it for Batman's expenses and Spider-man's residence expense, for example).
Superhero
|
Item
|
Px
|
P
|
From
|
To
|
(Implied)
Inflation |
Spider-man
|
Suit
|
193
|
265
|
1962
|
2013
|
0.62%
|
Spider-man
|
Date
|
780
|
3,299
|
1962
|
2013
|
2.87%
|
Hulk
|
Undergrad
|
11,080
|
183,560
|
1962
|
2013
|
5.66%
|
Hulk
|
PhD
|
25,430
|
190,420
|
1962
|
2013
|
4.03%
|
Hulk
|
Psychologist
|
7,852
|
15,600
|
1962
|
2013
|
1.36%
|
Hulk
|
Clothing
|
450
|
4,160
|
1962
|
2013
|
4.46%
|
Superman
|
Apartment
|
800
|
24,000
|
1938
|
2013
|
4.64%
|
Superman
|
Eyeglasses
|
10
|
95
|
1938
|
2013
|
3.05%
|
Superman
|
Suit
|
30
|
1,510
|
1938
|
2013
|
5.36%
|
Superman
|
Subway fare
|
36
|
1,344
|
1938
|
2013
|
4.94%
|
Given that the inflation rate in different parts of the world has behaved this way since 1986 (have purposely excluded the 50% jump in prices in the Philippines in 1984):
And you hear statistics like these from CHEd:
The national average increase in school fees is P194.62 or by 7.58 per cent, according to CHEd.
Cost-wise, being a superhero may not be so bad, after all. Large changes in price over a long period of time may seem much at first glance, but really reasonable upon closer inspection.
Although it's also perfectly understandable to interpret this as "reasonable annual changes in price translate to insane price differences over a long period of time." It's just a matter of perspective, really. And compounding completely playing tricks with our minds.