Currencies aren’t inherent weaker or stronger. They are arbitrary. The actual numbers don’t mean anything.
What matters is how they change overtime. So a currency that drops by 15% vs major partners compared to last year is probably a bad sign. For a currency to drop that much shows a reduction in demand for goods and services from that country.
But here’s the thing. That is at least partially a self correcting problem. Your currency drops, now suddenly its cheaper for people importing your goods in their currency to buy your stuff, and it’s cheaper for them to come to your country for vacations and so on. Which will increase demand for your currency and raise its value.
Now, you absolutely can after more advanced effects. Inflation can be different in each country, so maybe inflation is 15% in country A and 0% in country B, but if wages are rising at least to match inflation in country A, the people there aren’t getting poorer as such, but any money that have that isn’t invested is being eaten away. It’s not a sign that the economy is weak or strong that you have slightly different inflation to a partner country, the same applies to 0.15 or 1.5%, as well as it does 15%. 15% would be a lot of inflation though, and that is usually a sign of some other issue.
Japan doesn’t have “change.” This is why their numbers are so large.
In the USA we have dollars and cents. 100 cents is 1 dollar. 5 dollars is 500 cents.
Japan has Yen. That’s it. 500 Yen is 500 Yen.
It would be like everything in the USA costing cents. Soda would be 129 cents.
Japanese Yen is roughly 1/100th of a dollar. When you compare the Yen to the Cent, you see the Yen and Dollar are very close in value
Well lower currency value does mean that you’re getting poorer, since everything that you’re importing from other countries is suddenly more expensive.
So if you’re just producing and consuming domestically, then you’re not affected by the value of your currency. But if you import a lot of stuff from other countries, then you’re getting poorer. However that could potentially be off-set by exporting stuff to other countries.
Japan is, or used to be mostly an exporting nation. That’s how they got their economy going. Other countries can buy stuff cheaper from Japan, which would bring an unfair competition to their domestic producers. But since exporters are a minority, only a minority of exporters will benefit from lower currency value.
Answer: Because the number itself is sort of arbitrary. If you made a million dollars a day but a house cost a billion dollars you’d be worse off than if you made a dollar a day but a house cost $100.
What you really want to look at is what’s informally called “the big mac index” where you take a good that’s fairly standardized (in this case a medium big mac meal) and you look at how long it takes at the Median income to earn enough to pay for it. That’s a much better way to track how “rich” a country is
When I was a teen, gas was under $1/gallon, BUT…minimum wage was under $2
That being said, a young couple could find a crappy starter home and buy it.
I didn’t think the economy was “great” at the time, but…dear lord it was so much better than now.
You could buy a new Toyota 4-cylinder for under $2000, so the monthly payment was affordable.
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