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

[David Friedman]

>  > 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.
>>
>
>However, I believe that the average standard of living was generally
>held to have declined in that period, as more and more people needed to
>provide their food needs by buying them. This may, of course, be a myth.


I think so. That certainly wasn't the conclusion T. S. Ashton reached 
in his book on the industrial revolution. I'm not up on more recent 
research, but my impression is that the bottom line is "more 
complicated, but Ashton's conclusion is mostly correct." Hayek's 
_Capitalism and the Historians_ has an interesting discussion of how 
the myth came about.
-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/