History Main / RidiculousFutureInflation

* ''The Jaunt,'' a Creator/StephenKing short story, inverts this. The eponymous teleportation technology makes petroleum-powered transportation virtually obsolete and makes oil drilling [[ScienceMarchesOn on Mars]] viable, so gasoline is only a few cents a gallon.

* Oh, Franchise/{{Neopets}}. Their inflation has been compared to Germany's after WWII.

* Averted in ''TheWitcher'', where one character mantions that whenever a party of adventurer tries to slay a dragon, there's always some magician nearby, and said magician ''always'' has connections to the Goldsmiths and Jewelers Guild or some large bank. Indeed, [[SarcasmMode no one has ever heard of an inflation in their world]].

* A huge problem in the South during the AmericanCivilWar, due to the Confederate government simply printing more money to pay for the war. As one politician put it: "You bring your money to market in a basket, and bring home what you buy in your pocketbook." An additional problem was that the CSA's currency was redemption-based, with the theory that a few years after the war, one could turn it in for 'hard' currency. Thus, when the South was defeated, the money became 'As worthless as a Confederate bill'.

* Inverted in ''[[VideoGame/PuttPutt]] Travels Through Time''. Putt Putt can TimeTravel to the Old West and get a salary of 5 cents for helping out a train, which can buy him one gummy candy. In Medieval Times, the same nickel can buy him a ''full suit of armor'' for one puzzle, in a time when metal would be very expensive. In the 22nd century, Putt Putt expresses concern that he can't afford a small battery, but the shopkeeper Ms. Electra mollifies his concerns by telling him there's no money in the future, so he can take it for free.

[[folder:Comic Books]]

In real life, it is a possible, but not very likely scenario, especially in a Fiat currency system. First, in modern economic science inflation isn't even seen as something inherently bad. As long as the average income also multiplies, the inflation would do little harm. Deflationary periods are usually tied with ''recessions'' rather than booms. Deflations only were beneficial in commodity currency systems free of debt, such as the gold standard or Lincoln greenbacks. However, if the creation of money is based on loans, such as the Fractional Reserve System that the Federal Reserve operates under and bank credits that we have now, then this is very likely. Printing money en masse as credits and bailouts with interest can create rapid inflation, and rapid deflation can cause a sharp decrease in the money supply to pay back that debt with interest, causing defaults, unemployment, and stockholders selling off worthless investments. This was theorized to be one of the causes of TheGreatDepression.

Second, governments can sometimes simply revalue their currency when the numbers get too unwieldy, by creating "new" dollars or whatever, worth 1,000 or whatever of the old dollars. Except that governments usually leave that to the central banks. This revaluing is usually only for hyperinflation - they don't do much about "normal" inflation - for example, they aren't going to change things so that that newspaper in the 1980s that cost 40 cents and now costs $1.50 costs 40 cents again - ditto that 20-cent bag of candy that now costs about $2. Although, likely when numbers become ridiculously high for a chocolate bar, then new currencies will arise and gradually shift to their use for sake of convenience, with the older currencies likely kept in record (so that they're still valuable).

The portrayal of runaway cumulative inflation in fiction probably peaked from 1973 through 1982, the annual inflation rate in the U.S. never fell below 6% and often reached double-digit percentages. To this day, there's been no consensus as to what caused this period of "stagflation." The "Nixon Shock" of 1971, when President Richard Nixon took the US Dollar off the remaining vestiges of the Gold Standard allowing the Federal Reserve to have no restrictions in printing and loaning money as debt, was a highly likely cause. For all we knew at the time, this high inflation rate might continue indefinitely. Thus, many fiction writers painted a picture of the future with $15 cups of coffee by the year 2000. (Insert joke about Starbucks' prices here.)

* ''ComicBook/MortadeloYFilemon'': In "Los mercenarios" the main characters obtain 100 000 "percebos" (fictional coin of Percebelandia) They think they can get more than one million pesetas (a fortune in the moment of the album), but thanks to a sudden devaluation only obtain 17.50.[[note]]This, for the non familiarized with the former Spanish coin, is less than 15 dollar cents, not a lot of money, even in 1975 when the album was published.[[/note]]

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' averts this - with Fry's $4 billion in his account (saved over 1000 years, of course) is enough to make him independently wealthy, and getting a $300 tax rebate is a big deal.

* In ''Warlords of the 21st Century'' a.k.a ''Battletruck'', the opening scene features an abandoned petrol/gas station with a faded sign reading, "GAS FOR LESS - ONLY $59.99 A LITRE - WHILE IT LASTS". Justified in that the film takes place in a MadMax-style dystopia where [[TerminallyDependentSociety dire oil shortages]] have led to WorldWarIII.

* In a future arc of {{SSDD}} one character remarks that $2 million won't get you a candy bar, of course it was an economic crisis that messed up their world.

* In ''[[VideoGame/SimCity SimCity 2000]]'', the cost of a newspaper goes up over time. It starts at a penny in 1900. By the time you play into the 24th century, a newspaper is $5.

*** Another consequence is that a common unit for the large amounts of money in modern Japan is "man", which is Japanese for 10,000 and, so it's naturally worth 10,000 yen (~$99 in mid-2014). So your rent is twenty man, your wage is about fifty man, and your car has set you back for 1000 man.

* Make your own with ''[[http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ The Inflation Calculator]].'' Simple experiment: what was a thousand dollars worth in 1800? What cost $1,000 in 1800 costs '''$12,653 today'''. Put more simply, a thousand 2011 dollars is equivalent to '''''eighty 1800 dollars'''''.

[[/folder]]

* Oh, {{Neopets}}. Their inflation has been compared to Germany's after WWII.

* Based on RealLife, JamesBond, when in France at the beginning of ''On Her Majesty's Secret Service'' likes to think of the money in his pocket in old francs because that makes him feel richer, while counting his expenses in new francs to make them seem smaller.

* In ''Film/TheRunningMan'', a cost of a single can of pop from a pop machine is $5. Which you had to pay for in quarters, because [[TechnologyMarchesOn they didn't have automatic dollar-bill reading machines]]. [[FridgeLogic Or dollar coins, apparently.]]

* In ''JenniferGovernment'', a pair of Nike Mercurys (the book is absolutely ''not'' WritingAroundTrademarks) cost a few thousand dollars, which is treated to what would be in current money around one hundred or so. The time period of ''Jennifer Government'' is a little unclear. The only date given "'96" which could be any century, and WordOfGod has it that (contrary to what the disclaimer in the book says) it's set in an [[AlternateUniverse alternate present]] that has a royally fucked up economic and political environment.

* The ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' games tend to transpose centuries worth of inflation into the prices you have to pay in the Animus. For example, the first sword you can get in ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'' costs £2250 in 1754, which is considerably more money than most people in that time period would see over the course of their entire ''lives'' (£10-15 per year was a fairly good wage for working class people at the time), and still much more than a comparable sword would cost today.

!!Examples

*** Incidentally, this is why you can occasionally find pennies from the 1950s in your pocket change, but dimes and quarters stop abruptly at 1965 (the first year with the cupro-nickel sandwiches).