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

[Terry Decker]

Real wages means wages adjusted for inflation against a baseline wage so 
that an accurate comparison can be made.  Real wages can be used to create a 
ratio with the cost of living adjusted for inflation to give some idea of 
the relative prosperity of any group that can be isolated from the data. 
When the cost of living exceeds the real wage by a significant percentage, 
the average wage earner is usually losing ground economically.

While real income is often used as an equivalent of real wages, it actually 
covers income from all sources and is trickier to determine.  For example, 
monies earned from criminal activity are income, but they don't usually show 
up in official figures unless they can be laundered.

Bear

> 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.
> The use of the term 'real income' here may indicate this-- I'm not
> familiar enough with the terminology of economic history being used. The
> value of food products or raw materials produced within the consumer
> unit, if measured as income, could be measured two ways: the value for
> selling purposes or the replacement value. There have been times and
> places in history where first-level producers were required to sell
> agricultural products at a much lower price than socially comparable
> consumers could buy them.
>
> -- 
> -- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net