English Prices and Wages: 1209-1914

1209-1914 English prices and wages

A massive spreadsheet of price and wage series.

Inflation and Inequality

Will Wilkinson has argued that if you want to understand how inequality has changed over time, you can’t use a single inflation index. The rich and poor buy different things.

This is strikingly true when you compare the 14th century to today. Average consumption then might have been 60% on food, 20% on clothing, and 5% on domestic servants. However, when we look at the median consumer, halfway between the top and the bottom, spending on domestic servants was probably close to zero.

The top 1%, in contrast, might spend 30% of their much larger income on food for their immediate family, 10% on clothing for the same, and 25% on servants.

For those bundles of goods, inflation would be about 500 times for the median household, 800 for the average household and 1800 times for the rich.

Unskilled wages, benefiting from increased productivity in a mechanized world, increased about 6,000 times.

Now of course, the bundle of goods consumed by both has changed, but Broda's research suggest that the rich still spend a greater share of their income on high inflation goods than the poor.

Using a single inflation index overstates the gap in welfare between the rich and the poor.

And perhaps as important, by the material standards of 1380, everyone reading this is rich. It's not just that the price of a lot of things has come down relative to our incomes, it's that we can have some of them at all. We can have coffee and orange juice for breakfast instead of beer. We can eat a potato instead of bread.

Chocolate!

And we can watch this:



And this:



Oh, and we have Google Books at our fingertips. Dead actors will perform for us. We can see auroras on Saturn and the glint of sunlight on Kraken Mare.

Living in a world where Cate Blanchett can make movies I like to watch instead of spending her time spinning thread or doing embroidery enriches me much more than her having $48 million dollars makes me feel poorer.

John Scalzi Reviews Atlas Shrugged

As a pulpy, fun read about an unrealistic world that could never happen, I give Atlas Shrugged a thumbs up.

and

All of this is fine, if one recognizes that the idealized world Ayn Rand has created to facilitate her wishful theorizing has no more logical connection to our real one than a world in which an author has imagined humanity ruled by intelligent cups of yogurt.

But read the whole thing.

When I was reading her Anthem, the moment when suspension of disbelief became death by hanging occurred when the hero and his love interest, fleeing a distopian future socialist society, come upon an abandoned house in the woods. It is recognizable to the reader as a Frank Lloyd Wright design. And the roof didn't leak.

Update: Scalzi has been unable to resist the temptation to imagine a world in which humanity is ruled by an intelligent cup of yogurt.

A Gift from the Culture, if you will.

Bleg: Gloves for Gauntlets

Does anyone have a source for living history quality gloves suitable for the inside of a 14th c. hourglass gauntlet? I'm thinking particularly of the shape of the thumb seam and absence of visible machine stitching.

Auroras on Saturn

From Astronomy Picture of the Day

A Deer Made from Typewriter Parts

Sweet and elegant.

More about the artist, Jeremy Mayer, here.

NASA Funding Alert

From the Space Access Society
And the Space Frontier Foundation

Here are the key points: If the House votes in favor of the Senate's authorization bill for NASA, the bill can go to the president's desk for signature. If the House votes for its own version, there will be further delays while the two bodies reconcile their differences.

Second, the House version, while less bad than it was, is a worse bill than the Senate version. There's less money for commercial crew and cargo and robotic exploration.

U.S. Human Spaceflight, Obama, and the Political Process.

Recently, I read two arguments that Obama has “in fact, pulled us almost entirely out of the manned space effort.” And that for “what he has spent on do-gooder social garbage, we could walk again on the moon”.

I think both opinions are wrong.

To the first, remember that Obama inherited a Program of Record (PoR) that would, at the funding levels authorized before he entered office, have retired the space Shuttle in 2010, ISS in 2015, and then spent billions of dollars to develop the government owned and operated Ares I launcher that essentially duplicated the payload capacity of the existing Delta IV.

The Augustine Commission estimated that the PoR would allow NASA astronauts to return to low earth orbit (LEO) around 2018-2019 in a NASA capsule atop a NASA launcher. In the interim, U.S. crewed access to LEO would depend entirely on the Russian Soyuz launcher and spacecraft.

In contrast, Obama’s NASA proposed to have the government purchase astronaut seats to orbit in privately owned spacecraft atop commercial launchers, much as NASA launches unmanned spacecraft today. The Augustine Commission estimated that this might provide U.S. access to LEO one or two years before the PoR.

As to the second argument:

Government funding doesn’t work that way.

Yes, it’s technically true that if your least favorite government program costs $5 billion a year, canceling it would make those funds available for your most favorite program.

However, Congress probably doesn’t share your preferences.

Suppose that Congress has a sudden spasm of civic rectitude, and discovers that they can spend $5 billion less a year, on programs that you don’t approve of.

How much of those savings will flow to increased funding for NASA?

Not much, I suspect.

Are You a U.S. Citizen Who Cares About Human Space Flight?

If not, skip this post.

If yes to both, please consider calling your Representative in the House of Representatives to oppose HR.5781, the House NASA Authorization bill. Immediately.

Here is more on why and how.

Science!

An awesome, beautiful animation of asteroid discoveries, 1989-2010.

Notice how the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit. Most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons.

A laser stabbing into the star-spattered sky.

A metrocontextual science map showing scientific disciplines over time in the format of a subway map.

The alarming snakebot.

A cyborg fly controls a mobile robot.

I for one welcome our sock-pairing robotic masters.

The thrilling adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, Victorian crimefighters! And their exhibit at the Museum of the History of Science, lovingly illustrated by the talented Sydney Padua.

And speaking of steampunk, here is a rather sinister artificial arm. One of the few times wearing a black leather glove makes you look less creepy.

And Lady Clankington's Cabinet of Carnal Curiosities, and her Little Death Ray.

Which would be even more steampunky if it was powered by a tiny steam engine.

This blog post brought to you by the steampunk bee.