Anonymous asked: Do you know about what a gold dragon to U.S. dollars is? I saw the size of the income of a noble, and can't help but wonder how Westeros' 1% stacks up to ours. Estimates vary wildly, depending on how you calculate it - do you go by comparable price of goods (one dragon = one horse = $5,000), do you go by the price of gold (around $300-500, depending on the purity and weight of a gold dragon), do you go by rough equivalent incomes (5 dragon is a decent working class income is roughly around $6,000 per dragon)? It gets even more complicated when you consider changes in costs and standards of living over time. But, to do a bit of a quick and dirty calculation: Dunk estimates 3 dragons a year as a decent income for a smallfolk…with inflation over a hundred years say 5 gold a year by the time of ASOIAF. From estimates compiled of medieval English wages, I’d say the rough equivalent in pounds sterling is around 4 pounds a year, which converting from 1270 AD pounds to modern pounds and then from pounds to dollars works out to around $5,000 a year. This would give a rough figure of a dragon being worth about $1,000 today. So a good income for a smallfolk is less than half the U.S poverty line.Which means King Robert spent the equivalent of $90 million on the Hand’s Tourney. And that a household knight is probably earning the equivalent of $20-25,000 a year plus free room and board - which is around the salary of an experienced U.S Army Private.
