This fourth edition of The Value of a Dollar records the actual prices of thousands of items that consumers purchased from the Civil War to the present, along with facts about investment options and income opportunities. --from publisher description.

Examines the economic growth of the United States since the Civil War, arguing that the rate of growth between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated and that a number of issues are further stagnating the already slow rate of productivity growth. "In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel,...