Purchasing Power
Categories: Econ, Financial Theory
In the Golden Age of Times Past, a nickel bought you a candy bar. You had the power to purchase twenty candy bars with one dollar. Now a Big Hunk costs you a big chunk of change: say, $1. So the purchasing power of a dollar declined from then to now.
Purchasing power is a measure of how much one unit of currency buys in a certain place or time compared to what it buys elsewhere or, uh, elsetime.