Feb 26 2008
The price of a beer in Zimbabwe: $4,813,277 and rising, FAST!
Published by Jason Welker at 9:41 am under
Technorati
Flickr
del.icio.us
Ice Rocket
WikipediaPrice of a bottle of beer in Zimbabwe – Worldometers
Check this out… Our favorite African basket-case economy is now experiencing 150,000% inflation! Zimbabwe’s new $10,000,000 bill will buy you two beers.
Powered by ScribeFire.
About the author: Jason Welker is a teacher at Zurich International School in Switzerland, where he teaches Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Economics. Jason was an international school student in Malaysia before studying economics at Seattle University then earning his Masters in Education. He calls Seattle and Northern Idaho home. In addition to maintaining an economics wiki and this blog for economics student and educators, Jason also gives presentations on using Web 2.0 tools in education at workshops and conferences around the world. His economics wiki won the 2007 "Best Educational Wiki" award from the "EduBlog Awards". Related posts:
Teachers!
Submit your Econ questions here. Replies will be posted to the blog
I didn’t think 150,000% was possible…that’s just scary.
Wow. That’s just.. chucklable.
I just scoff-laughed.
Anybody know what denominations their currency comes in? I’d love to feel like a rich man with a giant wad of cash every time I pulled out money to buy a drink.
Also, lawl.
Zimbabwe issues 10 Million Dollar Note
…Never mind.
Can i get that in 10s and 20s please? also, I imagine finding change for a beer that’s $4813277 would require some awesome arithmetic skills…BOO MATH! HOORAY BEER!
This is a sad result for what was once known as the “bread basket of Africa”. This is what happens where a nationalist government seizes land from the former colonists who knew how to use it and disperses it to the clueless native masses. All the once-arable farmland is now going to waste. it’s a shame.
I wonder what would happen if through some economic miracle the exchange rate of the Zimbabwe’s currency appreciated against that of the US and all Zimbabweans literally became multi millionaires. Oh, well; wishful thinking.
Our econ teacher brought this to our attention today, and it’s quite a shock. We’ve seen prices go up here, but not like this (in our lifetimes, that is). For example, it’s now over $3.50 for a gallon of milk (for the good brands). Imagine seeing that sky rocket like the beer in Zimbabwe.
Wow cash must be worthless, the paper used in making it must be worth more than the cash itself haha.
In my knowledge,this type of situation only occurs during war time, when the government is desperately in need of money and start to print money massively
all i can say is, sucks to have a bad leader
LOL. This is a type of government failure. Everyone owns 10 millions dollars, it seems like everyone is loaded; however, the “wealth”, the purchasing power is only worth two beers. This is a very depressing situation to occur in a economy. This is a result of inflation.
This is a type of government failure. Everyone owns 10 millions dollars, it seems like everyone is loaded; however, the “wealth”, the purchasing power is only worth two beers. This is a very depressing situation to occur in a economy. This is a result of inflation.
Hmm, i wonder how much zimbabwe dollars equal 1 u.s. dollar. Like Tim said, if a product was not a conventient price with zeroes trailing at the end, the cashier would need extremely fast hands to hand out change, and at the same time trying not to piss off the people waiting in line. If a beer is 5 mil, i wonder how much a house or a car is.
Foolish is all I can say. Absolutely foolish. It really doesn’t even take an introductory course to realize that the bills themselves AREN’T WORTH ANYTHING unless they’re backed by SOLID value. Printing more and more bills only causes massive inflation, and you’d think Mugabe would know better by now..
That’s crazy. Mr Welker mentioned this in class, discussing how the president of Zimbabwe simply produces more money whenever the country needs it. If inflation has increased so much, there must be a rather low “demand” for money. And I thought Germany’s bread-for-a-barrow-of-cash was bad…
Like what previous posts above me mentions this is quite merely simply a illusion of having such an amount in numerical terms. However this plays no effect what so ever in the purchase of goods in the nation since it is proved worthless compared to other currencies.
Isn’t the Zimbabwe government aware that the money that it’s producing is worth nothing…? Okay, the article says that the official exchange rate is 1 USD = 30,000 ZWD, but on the black market it is 1 USD = 1,500,000 ZWD. And these exchange rates are “grossly inaccurate” because there are constant dramatic changes. The price control body should really do something to halt the sharp price increases..
I actually laughed hard and long when I read this. Obviously, the nominal wage seems huge compared to the average American’s wage. However, because the REAL wage is, in fact, VERY low, it results in the misleading idea that a 10,000,000 bill can get you a lot.
Perhaps this was due to the spiral effect as Mr.Welker mentioned in class, in which income rises which cause the cost of production to rise which means price rises for the product and its a continues cycle.
Does anybody know if people can use checks? Imagine if someone like Bill Gates goes there and decided to buy a car(highly unlikely), and he couldn’t write a check. Imagine the amount of cash he would need.
I’m sure to many Zimbabweans’ surprise, being multi-millionaires isn’t nearly as fun as it should be.
That’s not good :/ …
Yeah I read that members of a country club would buy their beers before they played their game of golf because by the time their game ended the drinks would be like over a thousand dollars more. Haha, it is really just ridiculous. I have no idea how anyone could live like that.
Wow…at this rate, I wonder how fast the government is going to have to reprint their bills. I remember the example I heard in class on how people would rush to buy food in the morning of pay day before prices rise again in the afternoon…except this is just multiplied by thousands. Talk about being worth nothing.
Okay. I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cry here. What has the world come to. Oh but if i lived in Zimbabwe i would DEFINITELY cry. Haha but the $10,000,000 bill is kind of funny. So what exactly is the exchange rate? How much USD would it cost for a beer?
wait…so wages don’t change as fast as inflation right? that stinks. this reminded me of a photo of a man carrying stacks of money on baskets on either side of his bike…it was during war time i believe.
wow, must be cool to hold a 10 million dollar bill but then again it must suck to have like no purchasing power with it. = =
Hahaha, in response to Tim’s post, the opportunity cost of finding the correct change down to the dollar is greater than the change itself. The situation is pretty dire. With each new issuance of a bill, the whole population has to stand in line at the ATM or bank for hours just to get new bills. And yes, sticky wages does come into effect here I think.
This is one situation where saving does not help an economy… you can watch money depreciate in your hand by hundreds of dollars an hour… Germany faced a similar problem after the World Wars, especially World War II, and the German economy recovered, so it is possible to pull out of hyperinflation, but is it possible to do so without someone purposely “fixing” the economy? Can it correct itself over time or is it an endless cycle?
The huge inflation in the country only reduced its the dollar value significantly. The inflation eventually depreciates the purchasing power of each dollars, just like what happened in Zimbabwe!