We see that Mr. Bennet is able to support a home of himself, his wife, and five daughters, and we can see that his home and material possessions inside of it are quite fortunate. Would he be perhaps a millionaire by today's standards? How much would one pence, shilling, or pound sterling be worth in today's currency? How much then would 2000 pounds perhaps translate to?
Also, why does Mrs. Bennet always refer to him as "Mr. Bennet," and not by his first name, even as they are married with children? Is this historically usual or is it a showing of character?
I know this is not a forum regarding novels, however I feel that these questions are more geared towards a historical forum, so please forgive me if they're wrongly placed.
There's a conversion table over here that's fairly accurate for all the incomes within Austen's novels.
It's important to note that part of the angst surrounding the Bennetts' wealth has to do with inheritance, rather than income. Mr Bennett's income comes from the land he owns, which makes a good amount and (as you pointed out) can support him and his wife and daughters well during his life. However, the estate has been legally entailed away from the female line, meaning his daughters cannot inherit it -- it will go to the next male relative, Mr Collins, when Mr Bennett dies. This is why Mrs Bennett was so upset that Elizabeth wouldn't marry Mr Collins (the estate would stay in their immediate family that way), and why it was considered such a success for Charlotte Lucas to marry him. The crucial financial tension in the novel is that Mrs Bennett and their daughters will have very little to live on when Mr Bennett dies. Upon his death, they have no rights to the land or its incomes. Mr Bennett could have saved money from his income and invested it, and given that money to his daughters in his will (like Georgianna Darcy, or the young woman with 50,000 pounds Mr Wickham goes after), but he has not done so to any great extent. Each of the daughters is expected to get a small inheritance, but not enough to let them live off of the interest the money would earn and leave the capital untouched, so it would be spent down to nothing quickly if they had no other means of support. As a result, they need to marry men who have enough money of their own to support a wife and family. Their husbands might also be expected to bear all or part of the financial burden of supporting Mrs Bennett and any unmarried sisters.
TL;DR: The Bennetts' financial problem isn't that they're poor, it's that Mrs Bennett and the Bennett daughters will inherit very little when Mr Bennett dies. Their best bet for future financial stability is thought to be marrying financially independent men (or for at least one of them to marry a man willing and financially able to support Mrs Bennett and any unmarried sisters).
To the mods: I'm not sure how to cite this, as I believe this is all details from the text of Pride and Prejudice itself, but I'll be glad to try to find additional citations for anything you think needs it.
hi, there have been a few posts on Jane Austen novels regarding income
re Mr Bennet specifically Were the contents of entailments, wills, inheritances, &c. as openly known by the family in 18th century Britain as it seems in the books of Jane Austen?
in today's money Where did Jane Austen's characters get their money?
other posts which may be of tangential interest
Given the economics of this sort of thing are not trivial, I put together what I think is a slightly more scientific response to this.
Start with this calculator: http://www.measuringworth.com/exchange/
If you plug in 1810, Pounds, 2000, and 2013 (reason for this in a moment) you'll get that the mean was £174,000 with a range from £112,000 to £230,000
You can then use a historic exchange rate calculator like this one and plug in a date for 2013. 2013 is the latest year they have data for, so I just used the last day of the year: http://www.x-rates.com/historical/?from=USD&amount=1&date=2013-12-31
...this shows that at the end of 2013, the exchange rate of GBP to USD was 1.657413. If we then take the values in Pounds from above we get:
Mean of $288,389 with a range from $185,630 to $381,204
Personally I think that would be a more specific answer economically.
This thread was actually quite interesting, especially how financial things like entailment really worked. I knew it had something to do with the passing on of property, but it really makes one wonder why wouldn't a person of "respectable income" be really conscientious about making sure his female family members were provided for? My mother (b. 1928) used to tell me that it wasn't so long ago that a woman owned nothing; her husband owned it all and he could throw her naked into the streets if he wanted to. She (rightly) used this to encourage me to take typing and shorthand in school so I'd always have a skill to fall back on, but in reality, could this really happen?