Several of my friends have been sharing screenshots of this Twitter post:
Time for your annual reminder that, according to A Christmas Carol,
Bob Cratchit makes 15 shillings a week. Adjusted for inflation, that's
$530.27/wk, $27,574/yr, or $13.50/hr.
Most Americans on minimum wage earn less than a Dickensian allegory
for destitution.
A Christmas
Carol came out in 1843. The Bank
of England Inflation Calculator, which incredibly goes back to
1209, estimates £1 in 1843 is equivalent to £130 in 2020.
Since there were 20 shillings to the pound, 15s/wk in 1843 makes
£98/wk in 2020. Cratchit would have been working six days a week
at perhaps ten hours a day, so we get £1.63/hr or $2.15/hr. The
post gave $13.50/hr; where's the factor of six coming from?
There are multiple ways to figure inflation. The most common one, and
the one I use above, is purchasing power: what can you buy with your
£? While I can't replicate Thompson's number exactly, I think
he's instead using using labor value: how many hours of someone's time
can you buy? 15s/wk in 1843 is, deflated by the cost of labor, £611/wk
in 2020, or $807/wk. For a 60hr week that's $13.45/hr.
The problem is, no matter how much richer we get, using the cost of
labor to adjust worker pay for inflation will always show that workers
are paid the same amount. It's saying "Cratchit was paid X% of a
typical wage for 1843, which you can think of as if he were
paid X% of a typical 2020 wage, which is $13.45/hr." This sort of
adjustment makes sense if you're trying to understand the
social position of the Cratchit family, but since what we care about
here is their absolute level of poverty, purchasing power is the right
measure.
A lot of it might be hedonic treadmill stuff but some of it is basically a complexity tax. And of course some people look at relative poverty to some degree.
Basically the average person has access to cheaper and safer, if not always healthier, food than a Dickens character could ever dream, even cheap apartments are superior in almost all ways.
But the requirements to function effectively in modern society are quite a pain complexity wise. You probably need at least a cheap cell phone, you probably need to own or have access to a computer with capabilities around the $500 laptop range. Transit is a bit geographically varied as a problem but is similar to other such stuff.
Basically what you can buy is way up but so is what you "need" to buy. Humans are intensely social and while you don't have to go full "keep up with the Jones family" there is strong pressure to be somewhat close to comparable people. Also for kids they are far more susceptible to comparison psychologically.
You could always dispute the validity of the view of the people sharing the tweet regarding "needs" vs "wants". But that is distinct from them being incoherent/inconsistent in their claims vs the facts internally.
Several of my friends have been sharing screenshots of this Twitter post:
It's wrong, but it's wrong in an interesting way!
A Christmas Carol came out in 1843. The Bank of England Inflation Calculator, which incredibly goes back to 1209, estimates £1 in 1843 is equivalent to £130 in 2020. Since there were 20 shillings to the pound, 15s/wk in 1843 makes £98/wk in 2020. Cratchit would have been working six days a week at perhaps ten hours a day, so we get £1.63/hr or $2.15/hr. The post gave $13.50/hr; where's the factor of six coming from?
There are multiple ways to figure inflation. The most common one, and the one I use above, is purchasing power: what can you buy with your £? While I can't replicate Thompson's number exactly, I think he's instead using using labor value: how many hours of someone's time can you buy? 15s/wk in 1843 is, deflated by the cost of labor, £611/wk in 2020, or $807/wk. For a 60hr week that's $13.45/hr.
The problem is, no matter how much richer we get, using the cost of labor to adjust worker pay for inflation will always show that workers are paid the same amount. It's saying "Cratchit was paid X% of a typical wage for 1843, which you can think of as if he were paid X% of a typical 2020 wage, which is $13.45/hr." This sort of adjustment makes sense if you're trying to understand the social position of the Cratchit family, but since what we care about here is their absolute level of poverty, purchasing power is the right measure.
(Thanks to Marcus for pointing this out.)
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