system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why are the values of most major currencies so similar?

The US Dollar, Euro, British Pound, Australian Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Singapore Dollar, and Swiss Franc all occupy a range in value from about $0.70 to $1.40 USD.

Why are the values of these currencies so similar, and why do certain other currencies like the Yen and Rupee have values orders of magnitude less?
gpt
It's just history.

For example, the Euro has its roots in the "European Unit of Account", which was just basically an accounting tool to make things easier for inter-european trade, etc. The EUA was defined as 1 EUA = 1 USD. Why? Because that's just easy. And that was carried over to the European Currency Unit and later the Euro. That's why the value of the Euro and the USD are still roughly the same.

Lots of other currencies have similar pegs. The pound for example was pegged at 1 Pound = 4 USD in 1940, after the war the Pound experienced several devaluations and it ended up at 1 Pound = 2 USD. It went up and down in value a bunch more times until it landed at where it is nowadays.

For Japan, the currency used to be worth a lot more, back in the 1870's, but it experienced several episodes of inflation. 

But ultimately, none of this is necessarily particularly meaningful. It in of itself doesn't convey information about actual purchasing power and things like that. 

I mean, 110 Yen are about the same as 1 USD, but if someone who earns $10 an hour in the US would earn 1100 Yen an hour in Japan given everything else is the same and these 1100 Yen buy the same amount of goods as 10 USD, then it's just a bigger number. Literally that's it. It's like if you would start counting things in cents instead of dollars, that doesn't make you any richer or poorer, it just means you have two extra zeroes.