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.
I don't think you are correct. Just using raw absolute poverty isn't a measure that a supporter of government social investment and economic equality would accept.
When you say "what we care about" the we might work in the context of libertarians/classical liberals who may or may not read Lesswrong . com but that we wouldn't include the original tweeter or the people amplifying the tweet.
I think it's pretty unlikely that this is what the person who started all of this off was getting at? They shared an update saying it was just sloppy research: https://mobile.twitter.com/drchristhompson/status/1472039474901049346 And I haven't seen anyone sharing it adding commentary along these lines.
1axioms ofdominion
https://mobile.twitter.com/necromanzee/status/1472702108931694599
There are other examples but this was a pretty prominent reply. Plus many tweets don't give their opinion directly on the question as this one does.
The tweet you are linking seems to be pointing out that deflating by wages and deflating by prices are different things, but I don't see it giving an opinion? Perhaps this is me not really understanding Twitter?
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.)
Comment via: facebook