You Are Given £40,000 A Year, and A One Way Time Machine

[AB Editor]

Afternoon,

Little thought experiment stolen from: http://timharford.com...-to-be-a-millionaire/

(Currency adjusted)

You are given £40,000 a year for the rest of your life, and access to a time machine. The time machine can only go to 1900 and it is a one way trip only. The money is the same if you use the time machine or not, so travelling back to 1900 will allow you to support a mansion and servants.

Would you take the trip in the time machine or not?

[Hopkirk]

What, voluntarily go through two world wars?

... and probably no houmous.

You cannot be serious.

[Old_Geezer]

Having to lose the medical advances alone is enough to say no. That is presumably unaffected by taking more folk back. If I had been able to pop back when "necessary" that would be a different matter. In fact I'd like to pop forward to 2124 instead ;-)

[woofgang]

no and no

[jackthehat]

Can I send the first £40,000 back *in* the time machine to my Great-Grandparents, accompanied by a list of Grand National winners from 1900 to the present day?

[Tilly2]

I would happily go back to1974, for very personal reasons. Don't even want the money. Just take me back please.

[petal54]

I'd like to get to know my grandparents,but,as my parents were not born nor 1 grand mother 'til 1900,would this be possible?

[gsr600]

just take me back to the time before MOBILE phones were invented, or as someone suggested 1976 when i was 21 and single ahhhh bliss - lol.
you could burn a lot of fuel in a V8 for £40k

[craft1948]

I'd go back to about 1964..............then I could make the same mistakes all over again.

[ChuckFickens]

I would imagine I could pretty quickly earn much more than 40k a year in 1900. There may be a few slight changes in the history books where things got invented earlier though.

[Greedyfly]

Nope, not a chance.

[jno]

if I'd been born 100 years earlier, I'd have died much younger than I am now, even before I got carted off to the Somme. Antiobiotics saved my life.

The extra money in those days would have allowed you to employ people to do things you can now do much more quickly on your own (delivering messages to relatives rather than phoning them, or hunting through the British Library rather than clicking on Wikipedia), so there might not have been much net gain. More rooms in your house, but harder to heat and light them (gas lights and no double glazing?).

However, moving to a future where £40,000 is still enough to buy a gel that makes all my teeth grow back and my stomach vanish is quite appealing. Though of course I might perish in an interglactic war between Mars and Zorg.

[excelsior-1]

i would go back without hesitation.

nothing here for me.

that was the time of 'gentlemen' and i would fit right in.

[cassa333]

I would go back with my family but as well as the money I would want to take a few reference books and notable events calendar of big sporting results and important financial events of crashes and booms on the stockmarket. Things like that

I would take plenty of antibiotics and pain killers and decent soap and tooth paste & tooth brushes.

In fact it would have to be a warehouse of stuff to make life healthy.

[Bambiagain]

If I took 25 people with me, all the young(ish) men would probably be dead in under 20 years. No way.

[megfitz]

I'd go back to1950 to talk to my mum ,she died the following year when I was 4. Maybe the money would have helped her be diagnosed earlier.