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comparative economies
Oct. 3rd, 2007 07:50 pmDoes anybody know of work done that compared current economies to historical ones? I know I've seen stuff around comparing how many hours a serf from the middle ages had to work for his food and housing compared to the present day, but darned if I can find it.
What I was wondering was, if one were to take the US GNP or something, and see what the average worker made as a percentage of that, and compared that to historical values. Um, like if the average minimum wage worker makes .01% of the US GNP, how does that compare to the percent of GNP that a medieval serf would have made? Or compared to the average pre-contact Native American, or the average farmer of China's Han Dynasty -- I just wonder how we'd compare.
What I was wondering was, if one were to take the US GNP or something, and see what the average worker made as a percentage of that, and compared that to historical values. Um, like if the average minimum wage worker makes .01% of the US GNP, how does that compare to the percent of GNP that a medieval serf would have made? Or compared to the average pre-contact Native American, or the average farmer of China's Han Dynasty -- I just wonder how we'd compare.