pull down to refresh
But I think the point of their numerical argument is whether the poor making $30,000/yr today would swap with Mr. Darcy who by their metrics was earning an equivalent of about $15,000/yr.
I think the poors would swap with Mr. Darcy.
(Assuming I'm reading the chart correctly, which I'm not sure I am, given the strange footnote about 1798)
I don’t think that’s what they intend but the note is confusing.
Yeah I realized it might not be an adjustment to modern times, but some comparison between Dickens' and Austen's time? Threw me for a loop because people usually are adjusting to today's dollars
I see. I didn’t get why they were adjusting 1798 prices to 1843.
that's fair -- and unknowable, of course. There's also a novelty vs long-term consideration thing there... like, instantly most would swap just because of some aspect that catch their attention, right, but unclear they'd wanna stay there after a year or 5. But yea, generally good question to ask.
As for translating earnings, if you really must then find a local nominal anchor -- the price of [whatever] was X, an average daylabor made Y.
Or, as I suggested in a blog post long ago, make the equivalent of academic confidence intervals:
so, writing about Mr. Darcy's 10,000 a year, maybe say:
The girls marvelled at Mr. Darcy having 10,000 a year [earnings-translation: £487,000-£591,300-£2,767,000], what an astonishing gentleman!
Ugly and would never happen, but it's better than the implicit nominal bias ("oh, 10,000 pound isn't that bad, that's what I make in x weeks")
The evaluation of better would be something like whether people from the two eras would voluntarily swap places/situations with their counterparts. Let’s say counterparts are based on wealth distributions.
Obviously, most people today would not trade places. I suspect most people from 1843 would swap.
There’s no correct way to do these era comparisons but it’s hard to understand the past without doing something. How do you think we should put historical earnings into perspective?