I have been doing some research into my family history and discovered how big inflation has been in my lifetime and since my grandfather was born in 1893. My grandfather Frank (and his father William) invested 100 pounds in 1917 in flight training so that he could get out of the trenches of WWI. Fortunately the war ended in November 1918 before he was deployed because the average lifetime of an active duty pilot was 3 weeks. (His experience in the trenches was so bad that he though 9 months out of them was a good deal even with the high odds on active duty flying)

Anyway I did some research and 100 pounds in 1917 is approx 5200 pounds now - quite a sum to invest...

I found the inflation rate for each year at
http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk-inflation-price-conversion/
Though looking at the table at that site they had about 50% inflation in the first three years of the war... so if the 100 pounds was savings from before the war started that would be 8000 pounds now.

Reviewing the inflation rate, prices have gone up 15 times since I was born and 96 times since Frank was born. That is times, not percent! So 1500% and 9600% official price increases. That is quiet an amazing shift in wealth from one group of people to another group... Most of which seems to have been in the last 90 years.

And these are only the official inflation rates, which have had the statistics cooked for the last 20-30 years to reduce the official rate. So really a higher loss in paper money's value.

Seems to me that there are some vested interests in having inflation (and even wars to help create it) in order to shift money from one group of people to another. Something worth considering in our current economic crises...

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