On Friday, September 8, 2017 at 5:27:11 AM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 7 Sep 2017 23:24:15 -0700 (PDT), Doug Landau
wrote:


As for wealth disparity, I can remember when a doctor made a house
call.... for $2.00 :-) To be honest I never paid a doctor $2.00 to
make a house call but I remember being sick and the doctor coming and
my folks talking about $2.00. Granted, I was just a kid but my salary
was eleven cents a week for milking the cow six evenings a week. And
slopping two hogs.

But in a more serious vein, what is "wealth disparity"? Is it that you
make more money then I do? I'm fairly sure that you do as you seem to
be still working and I'm retired. Should I be rushing around waving my
arms in the air shouting Unfair! Unfair!

The concept that a bloke who starts a business selling bootleg records
out of the trunk of his car, for example, is not entitled to
everything he can make, or the guy, not even a collage graduate, that
starts up a little two man business that grows because they can
provide a service, is not entitled to his earnings, seems wrong to me.
--
Cheers,

John B.

Paradise. We used to -dream- of digging ditches ... would've been looxury to oos.

As for wealth disparity, I can remember when a doctor made a house
call.... for $2.00 :-)

We had to work at mill 14 hours/day for 8p/month!

My father used to pay someone to mow the field and the
rest of the haying was done by hand.
When OUR dad got home he'd beat us around the head with a broken bot'l!

S.CNR.

So much for sarcasm.

But I doubt it was 8p/month as in mid-1860s manual laborers in London
received 3s. 9d. for a 10-hour day - 6 day week. An engineer I suspect
that the U.S. term would be "mechanic"' made 7/6 (= ?110 pounds/year).
A bit earlier a mill worker (fabric) was paid 33/8 per week in 1833.

And, what you don't seem to mention was the cost of living in the same
period.

In about 1898 my grandfather and his wife "moved to town" and he
worked for a dollar a day as a carpenter. I once asked my grandmother
how they could have gotten along on a dollar a day (I was making 50
cents an hour after school and weekends) and she said, that it wasn't
a bad wage when bread cost 3 cents a loaf.

Yeah but try telling that to the young people of today. Will they believe you? Nooooooooooo


The point was that simply listing a number and saying. "Wow! A lot" or
"Yuck! So little" is meaningless, as it is only "lot" or "little"
relative to costs.

My Grandfather's dollar a day wasn't bad wages as he could buy 33
loaves of bread with it. In a similar discussion someone said that in
his part of California bread was 6 dollars a loaf so a modern salary
to equal my grandfather's wages' buying power might be $199.00, or
about $25/hour.


How about his phone bill, how much was that?