I wrote last year that today’s Americans are much richer than their parents and grandparents (and the gap becomes even more enormous when comparing with earlier generations).
But the data I cited almost surely understate the improvement in living standards.
That’s the core takeaway of a new book, Superabundance, authored by Marian Tupy of the Cato Institute and Professor Gabe Pooley from Brigham Young University in Hawaii.
The book is filled with an immense amount of data and analysis, all of which shows that life is getting better. For purposes of today’s column, we’re going to highlight some fascinating numbers about the “time price” of various goods.
The authors explain that the “time price (TP) denotes the amount of time that a person needs to work in order to earn enough money to be able to buy something.”
In simple terms, this calculation shows how many hours we had to work to buy something in the past compared to how many hours we have to work to buy the same thing today.
For some items, such as food, there’s enough long-run data to see how
the “time price” has changed over the past 100 years. The bottom line
is that there’s been an amazing increase in our purchasing power..........To Read More....
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