I think something modern times should emphasize more than ever is that what matters is the lifestyle of the people. Here's [1] a fun graph I just threw together. That's real GDP/capita and real wages graphed alongside each other, both indexed (at 100) to the start date when real median earnings began being measured by by the Fed, which is 1979. Since 1979 real GDP/capita is up 117% while real wages are up 12%.

And if you consider that modern times has far more necessary expenses that often involve rent (internet, computing devices, etc) then it's quite likely that real median wages are down since 1979 in terms of how much money the average person has left to themselves at the end of each month. Even without these adjustments it's likely that real wages today are lower in absolute terms than they were in the 50s as by 1979 inflation had already started getting out of control.

The point of this all is that I don't think the numbers mean much of anything. And that's assuming you could even reliably measure them - you cannot. Go back into reconstructing 19th century data and earlier and you're going to rely on assumptions where the degree of uncertainty is much higher than the differences over time you're trying to assess. So I think far more informative than numbers are personal accounts. How did people live? Of course there's a literacy bias there, but even such accounts will shed light on the illiterate.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1QHEN

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klodolph 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We have more necessary expenses, but the cost of computers, phones, and phone plans is so low. The expensive stuff is rent, transportation, food, childcare, and healthcare.

If a historian is going to uncover personal accounts from 2026, then they’ll be full of people who are struggling to make ends meet but are still drowning in a sea of inexpensive consumer electronics.

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Retric 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wow, being that deceptive implies your argument is false.

You imply there some something different around that date, but only show data prior to that date for one of those lines. WTF.

Dig a little deeper and the median wage is calculated by literally asking people roughly what they make and changing the methodology in 1994. Health insurance alone is a big difference in the ratio of people’s nominal wages and their actual incomes between those dates.

	▲	somenameforme 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		1979 is when the Fed began collecting median wage data. Here [1] is inflation data since 1947. You can see that 1979 was well into the funny money inflation era. The reason this is relevant is that it's impractical to literally lower wages - that's going to turn your labor force hostile like nothing else. But with inflation this is suddenly very easy to do - just give people a 2% 'raise' and they're content enough. Some might even be happy, even though that's generally a direct pay cut, thanks to inflation. Real wages started becoming grossly detached from other metrics in society once inflation started going wild, and I don't think it's just a coincidence. In any case this is why it's very reasonable to think that real wages were even higher prior to 1979. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL