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

Volker Bach carlton_bach at yahoo.de
Sun Dec 3 22:07:31 PST 2006


Am Montag, 4. Dezember 2006 09:01 schrieb 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.

If it is nothing but a myth, we would be at a loss to explain the worsening 
nutritional status found in cemetery excavations, the worsening ratio of 
unskilled wages to bread prices, and the steady decline in the variety and 
qualityof institutional food in that period. Of course that data says nothing 
about the how or why, but it appears that the huge increase in standards of 
living between 1850 and 1900, at least in Germany, was preceded by a steady 
erosion between 1500 and 1800. 




	
		
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