Jim Ulvog

Found an incredibly helpful explanation of the radical change in the standard of living over the last 100 years. It is an explanation of the change in the price of eggs provided by Prof. Russell Roberts in his book The Price of Everything. I’ve been discussing this book in the last several posts starting here and most recently here and here.

A challenge I have had when looking at history, particularly the Civil War, is trying to relate salaries or costs from back then to today. It’s one thing to say a soldier made $10 a month or a skilled laborer made $100 a month or a set of uniforms cost $17 or a barrel of flour went from this price to that price in the South. However, I can’t relate that to anything.

How do those prices compare to now? Adjusting for inflation doesn’t really work. Comparing those prices to the cost of an ounce of gold or an ounce of silver helps a little, but that brings in distortions from inflation that we have seen in the last 30 years along with the odd things in today’s economy.

How about using a comparable job to buy a comparable product then and now?

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Continuing with the idea that today we have lots and lots of servants –

I’m a CPA. That involves working with lots of numbers and doing thousands of calculations. I print lots of documents and send them to my clients. I’ve hired a lot of servants for my business. (more…)

Got to thinking about Russell Roberts’ comment in The Price of Everything that today poor people have servants.

Realized I have lots and lots of servants in my life. Here are a few: (more…)

I have discussed Russell Roberts’ book, The Price of Everything, here, here, and here. At one point in the book, he suggests that today even poor people have servants.

As a way of measuring increasing standard of living in the last hundred years, the main character in his book compares a rich guy served dinner at a restaurant by a waiter today to a rich guy 100 years ago served dinner by a servant.

As a starting point, consider one of Prof. Roberts’ comparisons: the rich guy back then had an expensive, fancy watch while the servant had no watch. Today, the rich guy has an exquisitely expensive, fancy watch, while the waiter has an inexpensive digital watch.

Which do you suppose keeps better time and requires less maintenance?

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