History Main / RidiculousFutureInflation

* In ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'', which takes place in the year 2505, everything costs several billion dollars. Of course, the ridiculously bad economy is actually a plot point in the film. Assuming 3% inflation, prices should only be in the millions.
** Well... assuming just 4.3% inflation, prices WOULD be in the billions. That's exponential growth for you.
** It's also entirely possible that hideous inflation is an intentional choice rather than just poor economic mismanagement, so that everybody can be rich and amazed to have "millions of dollars". You really don't put it past the moronic future humans to do that?

* In the ''[[InNameOnly I, Robot]]'' movie this is used, but not to absurdity - [[ProductPlacement beers]] are shown to cost considerably more than they do now - US$48 for ''three'' bottles of beer [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture in 2035]].
** This might actually fall more into the category of accurate future inflation. With the exclusion of dive bars the cheapest you'd find a bottle of beer in a bar in a major US city in 2012 is $5 and $7-$8 is perfectly reasonable. $16 23 years later sounds very reasonable.

* During and after the American Revolution, paper money issued by the Continental Congress was proverbially worth nothing, mostly because the government had no effective powers and no assets to back it.

* The ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'' recently featured an article in its 400th issue, where a picture of a mock-up 800th issue cover was seen on one of the pages. The price "300 Euros" could be made out on the side.

* In very recent past, exchange rate for one U.S. dollar was about 1,500,000 Turkish liras. Six zeros have been removed from the currency since.

* In 1997 in Russia. Only three zeros got chopped instead of four, so for about a year there were neat, Soviet-like single-digit sums. Then came crisis of 98, and inflation struck again... It got much better recently, but inflation is still about 10% per year, so rumors of a new revaluation tend to hover around.

* 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 '''$13,708 in 2014.''' Put more simply, a thousand 2014 dollars is equivalent to '''''seventy-four 1800 dollars.'''''

* Neal Stephenson's ''SnowCrash'' is set after "megainflation," and characters refer to "one trillion dollars" the same way we would refer to 10. One character's net worth is given as several million dollars, "before megainflation," causing the main character to let out an amazed whistle. In fact, even ''billion-dollar bills'' are now good only for toilet paper, a practice the FBI is seen discouraging because it clogs the plumbing. The result has been the introduction of non-inflated currency such as Kongbucks, which have become the unit of exchange for larger transactions.

* The proposed film remake of TheSixMillionDollarMan, starring MarkWahlberg, will be called ''"The Six '''Billion''' Dollar Man"''.

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 were only 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.

* This trope may be the reason why in ''SecretOfEvermore'', the Omnitopian [[WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture Credit]] is the least valuable of the four currency (even compared to what the cavemen of {{Prehistoria}} are using).

* A 1976 ''SaturdayNightLive'' sketch titled "{{Jeopardy}} 1999" had dollar values in the Jeopardy! round ranging from $10,000 to $50,000. This is 400 times the actual {{Jeopardy}} clue values in 1976 ($25 to $125) and 100 times what the actual clue values turned out to be in 1999 ($100 to $500).

* In an episode of ''[[TheFabulousFurryFreakBrothers The Freak Brothers]]'' set in the future, an overdue parking bill is in the millions, Phineas tries to pay it with a billion dollar bill from his tiny change purse, but drops the bill which is too small to see.

* In the [=Y2K=] episode of ''KenanAndKel'' (set in the year 3000), prices have inflated into the millions range, with a few grocery items costing a whole backpack full of cash.
* Subverted in the episode "The Leap Back" on QuantumLeap. Sam suggests mailing the master code for the imaging chamber (which locked when he and Al cross-leaped), to his father's lawyer with $100 to ensure the man will follow the odd-but-specific instructions about mailing it to Sam on a specific day in the future(the day that Sam is actually ''at'' currently, but trapped in the imaging chamber). Al, who's still out of it from the Leap, suggests Sam is talking about the cost of postage.

*** Spending a little time studying [[http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart Historical Gold Prices]] is enough to send you scurrying for the refineries. As of October 2015, an ounce of gold is twelve hundred dollars. Twenty years ago, it was six hundred. In comparison, six hundred 1995 dollars is equivalent to ''nine hundred and fifty 2015 dollars.'' It could be said that that jagged line reminiscent of a series of earthquakes isn't indicative of gold's instability, but the dollar's.

*** Spending a little time studying [[http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart Historical Gold Prices]] is enough to send you scurrying for the refineries. As of October 2015, an ounce of gold is twelve hundred dollars. Twenty years ago, it was six hundred. In comparison, six hundred 1995 dollars is equivalent to ''nine hundred and fifty 2015 dollars.''

* The Donald Kingsbury science-fiction short story "To Bring In The Steel" (''Analog'' Magazine, 1978) has the female protagonist stop by [=McDonald=]'s for a quick twenty-five dollar hamburger. (At the time of publication, a 'burger at Mickey D's was about 40¢.)

** To give you an idea of just ''how'' ridiculous this number is: if you could buy ''one atom'' of hydrogen for one pengő -- just one atom -- you [[HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure could fill the]] {{Hindenburg}} for twenty-five forints. (And, at 2010 exchange rates, that would run you a little over 12¢ US, less than a tenth of a euro.)

* Early on in the history of the ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}}, 30th-century teenager Chuck Taine [[HistoryMarchesOn pays fifty cents for a bottle of soda pop.]] A reader asked about such a high price in the letter column, and the editor explained about Ridiculous Future Inflation. (Chuck didn't even get to enjoy his insanely expensive soft drink, as he [[TheFool accidentally]] swallows a SuperSerum, that turns him into Bouncing Boy.)

* ''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. Of course, it's shown in the first episode that society has collapsed and been rebuilt several times since Fry put that money into his account, so it is possible that somewhere along the way, the government corrected for any inflation.

* The Donald Kingsbury science-fiction short story "To Bring In The Steel" (''Analog'' Magazine, 1978) has the female protagonist stop by [=McDonald=]'s for a quick twenty-five dollar hamburger.

* A 1976 ''SaturdayNightLive'' sketch titled "{{Jeopardy}} 1999" had dollar values in the Jeopardy! round ranging from $10,000 to $50,000. This is 100 times what the actual clue values were on {{Jeopardy}} in 1999 ($100 to $500).

* Subverted in the episode "The Leap Back" on QuantumLeap. Sam suggests mailing the master code for the imaging chamber (which locked when he and Al cross-leaped), to his father's lawyer with $100 to ensure the man will follow the odd-but-specific instructions about mailing it to Sam on a specific day in the future(the day that Sam is actually ''at'' currently, but trapped in the imaging chamber). Al, who's still out of it from the Leap, thinks Sam is talking about the cost of postage.

:: This exchange strongly suggests that the cost of a stamp in Sam and Al's "present' time period (the late 1990s) is in the ballpark of $100; that would be a rate of inflation of 40,000% in less than a decade!

:: This exchange strongly suggests that a stamp in Sam and Al's "present' time period (the late 1990s) costs in the ballpark of $100: that would be a rate of inflation of 40,000% in less than a decade!

** In a very weird pseudo-inversion, the deflation in these games with the bottle cap currency gets to near ridiculous levels. A nuclear powered laser minigun in the Fallout games costs... ''five thousand'' bottle caps. The collapse of the economy after the war made things that before would cost thousands upon thousands of dollars? Now $11.66 in today's money, and that's only going off of scrap prices!

* Parodied in ''The Book What I Wrote'' (Eddie Braben's book about Creator/MorecambeAndWise) in which his reminiscing about 1950s Britain is accompanied by helpful footnotes such as "[[OldBritishMoney A shilling]] is worth about a hundred billion pounds in today's money".