Just a reminder, your average factory worker today can buy a pound of butter with only 20 minutes of labor, compared to only 100 years ago and that same amount of food would have taken 3 hours of labor to earn.
QT: https://qoto.org/@freemo/111550673521680041
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@freemo@qoto.org
@jaelisp a pound of butter in early 1900 was 70 cents. Your typical blue collar (factory) worker at that time made 25c an hour. So would take about...
@freemo Do you happen to know what the number was for say, 1975?
@freemo (Just because my understanding was that in the US and UK at least, the deregulation of Reagan and Thatcher has led to that gain going backwards since then)
@freemo That would be my hypothesis. Though I am frequently wrong. ;-)
My understanding is that the gains you speak of were largely won by organised labour. Deregulation of markets and weakening of trade unions since the 80s has demonstrably led to wider inequalities between workers and executives, which would suggest the gains in worker buying power should at the very least have slowed since then and possibly gone backwards.