[Sca-cooks] Revolts and economics was Spices for preservation of meats

[David Friedman]

>  > >In the Peasant's Revolt of 1381, the complaint was not about hunger, but
>>>about the quality of the bread.  It is essentially an economic complaint
>>>having to do with the landholders increasing their profits while
>>>suppressing
>>>wages.  The revolt was based on moral indignation rather than starvation.
>>>In fact, many of the 14th Century peasant revolts can be described as a
>>>primative form of labor negotation.  While there were periods of famine in
>>>the 14th Century, it should be noted that they don't generally coincide
>>>with
>>>the revolts.
>>>
>>>Economically, the Black Death reduced the workforce and increased
>>>individual
>>>wealth by inheritance in all classes of society.  A scarcity of labor led
>>>to
>>>rising wages to which the Statute of Laborers (1351) freezing wages was a
>>>political solution.  The fixed wage let the rising cost of living cut into
>>>the prosperity of the working class, which led to the forcible petition of
>>>the Crown by Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, John Ball and company.  Shortly after
>>>the rebellion, real wages rose swiftly until they reached a peak in the
>>>late
>>>15th Century that was not be be reached again until the modern period.
>>>
>>>You need to take Clark's figures in relation to the real wage.  During the
>>>period described, real wages were rising despite edicts like the Statute
>>>of
>>>Laborers.  And they are rather low when compared to the 17th, 18th and
>>>19th
>>>Centuries, when starvation wages were the norm.  It is an interesting
>>>study
>>>and I've saved a copy for further examination.
>>>
>>>The rise, peak and decline of real wages roughly correlates to the change
>>>from the Medieval climate optimum to the Little Ice Age, but whether this
>>>is
>>>casual or causal in indeterminate.
>>
>>  Perhaps I'm missing something, but the pattern you are describing
>>  doesn't seem to include a decline, unless your "rather low" in the
>>  last paragraph is a typo for "rather high." It sounds as though wages
>>  started rising due to population reduction, the trend was briefly
>>  held back by legislation, the attempt to hold it back was
>>  unsuccessful, and wages have trended up since then.
>>
>
>My apologies, I see my thoughts are completely unclear in this paragraph.  I
>was trying to point out that the percentage of the daily wage applied to
>various necessities was considerable lower in the 14th and 15th Century than
>the same percentages in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries.
>
>Real wages peaked in the 15th Century and began declining in the 16th
>Century, possibly due to inflation from the wealth flowing into Europe.

I don't see why inflation would have lowered real wages. You aren't 
talking about long term contracts measured in centuries, after all. 
If anything, I would think that inflation would have temporarily 
raised real wages, because feudal obligations were sometimes fixed in 
nominal terms and so would have had their real value reduced by 
inflation.

What might have lowered real wages was  population recovery after the 
plague. The plague sharply reduced the ratio of labor to land, which 
ought to have raised wages and lowered rents. As population 
recovered, that effect would have gradually disappeared.

>The
>decline continued through the 17th and 18th Centuries with real wages
>dropping lower than they had been in the 14th Century.  The 19th Century
>brought an increase in real wages, but they were still below their peak in
>the 15th Century until some time after 1860.
>
>>  I'm also puzzled by in what sense "starvation wages were the norm" in
>>  the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries." The latter part of that is a
>>  period of historically rapid population growth. The second half of
>>  the 19th century, at least, was a period of historically rapid growth
>  > in real incomes; I'm not sure of the earlier period.
>>
>>  Generally speaking, I suspect "starvation wages" like the modern
>>  "living wage" to be rhetoric, not objective description.
>  > --
>>  David Friedman (Cariadoc knows nothing about any of this)
>
>"Starvation wage" is certainly rhetorical.  I am using the term in reference
>to a period when cost-of-living surpassed wages.

I don't understand what that means. If cost-of-living is higher than 
income, you stop living. But by the end of the period you describe, 
it was a period of historically unprecedented population growth.

>While real wages were
>growing for most of the 19th Century, the cost of living did not decline in
>relation to wages until some time after 1860.

I don't understand that sentence. Real wages means wages adjusted for 
price changes--i.e. for changes in the cost of living. So if real 
wages were growing, that means that the cost of living was declining 
relative to wages.

>  I would also submit that the
>rapid population growth between 1700 and 1850 exacerbated the problem, by
>outstripping job growth.  I feel fairly secure in this supposition, based on
>Malthus's observations on population.  Without the disruption of
>technological advances to alter employment and accelerate job growth, the
>labor situation in the 18th and 19th Centuries would be just the obverse of
>the labor situation in the 14th Century after the Black Death.

I believe you may be confusing two quite different questions. One is 
"job growth." Over the history of the U.S. the number of workers has 
gone up by about two orders of magnitude, and by some odd coincidence 
the number of jobs has gone up by almost precisely the same amount, 
save for a few fairly brief periods. There isn't a fixed number of 
jobs out there--the market for labor follows the same principles of 
supply and demand as other markets.

What might happen, as I suggested above, is a change in the ratio of 
labor to other factors of production. If the population is growing 
faster than capital is accumulating and nothing else is changing, we 
would expect wages to fall and profits, i.e. the interest rate, to 
rise. In fact I think the opposite was happening during the 19th 
century; I don't know about the earlier period. If the population is 
growing and the land area is fixed, and nothing else is changing, you 
would expect wages to fall and rents to rise. The land area wasn't 
changing in the period we are discussing (within Europe--the settling 
of the New World represented an effective increase in land area, but 
we are considering the population of Europe) but the second 
agricultural revolution  sharply increased agricultural productivity, 
so it isn't clear what the net effect would be on wages.
-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/