Blue Jeans as Commodity Money

One day my body stopped having so much metabolism and the pairs of blue jeans I owned, mostly indigo blue made of stretchy cotton for extra luxury, stopped fitting me comfortably. It was high time to donate them to someone who could wear them and enjoy them. Long gone were the days of the 26-inch waist.

My first pair of jeans I owned in the U.S. bore the Wrangler label and were relatively cheap, twenty dollars. On the black market, people living under impoverished communism had to pay $150 for the same pair if they wanted to own it, or exchange it for other goods and services. The proletariat were all poor working people, making around 800 lei per month, which translated into $67, at the pegged exchange rate imposed by the Communist Party of 12 lei to a dollar.