army1987 comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong

63 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 January 2007 03:46AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 22 December 2013 09:07:15AM 0 points [-]

in today's money

What do you mean by that exactly? How many burgers could the median worker in 1950 buy with their hourly wage, and how many can the median worker today buy with theirs?

Comment author: passive_fist 22 December 2013 09:35:11AM 0 points [-]

That's a very very complex (and controversial!) topic because 'median worker' or 'median household' is not well-defined. Many households during that era were single-income (not nearly as many as popular opinion would suggest, but still far more than today). There's also the fact that there were more married couples and more children than today. You also have to consider that food hasn't made up the bulk of household expenditures during modern times. Today food accounts for 10-15% of the average family's living expenses, and from the limited information I was able to find, it was about 30% in 1950.

To answer your question, I honestly don't know.