How much does $82 million spent in 1981 equal to in today's dollars?

Question

Looking to find the conversion formula or "tool" to figure the difference between:

1st conversion request: $ 82 million in 1981 vs. 2006

Couple of factors: public bonds sold to finance project, rural mountains of Colorado, water works project - flood control & water storage, owner/operator - municipality, Army Corp of Engineers oversight.

2nd conversion request: $ 101 million in 1985 vs. 2006.

Couple of other factors: public bonds sold to finance project; locale - Boise, ID; hydro-electric power plant(revenue generator); secondary function to water works project - flood control & water storage, owner/operator - municipality, Army Corp of Engineers oversight, etc.

I'm currently working on $ 333M const. project; city of San Francisco is client/owner once complete.

It would be great if any of you could help figure out the difference in value to the different projects here. Very curious.

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

it depends on a lot of facts
One of this facts is the economical process in the society.
that is in some countries, there is no real investment. In this case the opportunity to buy an object becomes less and less as the time passes.
For example
In my country it was possible to by an apartment on the river within the end of 70's for only 40 000 units of money, within these days you would buy this apartment for 2 000 000 units, that's 5000% times the price at that time.
It was amazing because the unit of money is now only 10% against the US dollar. If we apply this fact we see that the US dollar is the power is now only 1/5 its power at that time. that $82 million 1n 1981 is equivalent to $410 million dollars now. In Fact this is not absolutely true because some objects does follow this direct method of calculation, new technologies may change the value of the objects. For example: How much money will you pay for Pentium(1) PC?
Will you pay the same amount for a Video cassette manufactured 30 years ago: etc...
However there are many measurements to study the raise in the prices and to evaluate the power of purchase. These methods are studied in economy
and business sciences. The problem is still more complicated than you think. The foundation of the chaos theorem began by a question very close to yours.
Best wishes

Answer 2

Check out this link for a conversion table
http://oregonstate.edu/Dept/pol_sci/fac/sahr/sahr.htm

Using the 2006 conversion factors (based on 2005 CPI),
the $82M 1981 vs 2006 is $182M in 2006 dollars
the $101M in 1985 vs 2006 is $189 in 2006 dollars

Answer 3

I'm glad that someone provided a CPI link other than the commerce department. I can learn something in this forum after all. :-)