Changing Times, Changing Prices
... or why Agatha Christie could afford to hire two servants, but not buy a car.
It boils down to an economic principle first elucidated by William Baumol. Although not all jobs enjoy the same increases in productivity from automation, the wages of the jobs that aren't so affected are pulled up by the increase in productivity of the jobs that are because employers have to pay competitive wages.
For instance, the productivity of a worker in the auto industry has been increased enormously by automation. It's most obvious in the manufacture, but even in automotive service shops, the use of powered tools such as pneumatic socket drivers speeds up all kinds of repair tasks as compared to using hand tools. As a result, each mechanic in a shop can service a lot more cars in a day (on average, since tasks are apt to vary in complexity, and some tasks, like diagnosing a tricky problem, are much less amenable to being sped up by automation).
By contrast, work that involves personal services (child care, health care, etc.) isn't so amenable to automation, for obvious reasons. Often attempts to use technology to improve productivity in these fields is resisted because it reduces the interpersonal element of the service. However, to get good workers, employers in those fields have to pay sufficiently high wages to be competitive with those fields that have benefited from automation. This drive is somewhat reduced in fields that are as much a calling as a job (which is why writers and other creatives have not seen that much of a benefit from this process). So increases in productivity in some fields will raise pay in most other fields.
As the author of the article notes, this is further complicated by the difficulty in comparing manufactured goods across such a span of time as 1919 to the present. The car that Agatha Christie and her husband considered simply Out Of Reach was less durable and less reliable than the cars of the present, not to mention lacking features that simply hadn't been produced in those days. Furthermore, whole categories of consumer goods have developed in the decades since: televisions, personal computers, etc. No amount of money could've bought what had yet to be invented and manufactured.
Furthermore, the digital revolution, driven by the integrated circuit, has transformed the consumer goods that were available in those days. The telephone is the most obvious -- the telephones that were available at the time of the Armistice would've been involved a large device permanently attached to a wall, connected to the telco offices with wires, and required the assistance of an operator at the telco office to place a call. Today the average person's phone is a hand-held computer about the size of a checkbook (remember those?) which uses a broadband modem and VoIP software to make calls over a cellular wireless network. Wired phones are almost entirely confined to office settings, or legacy phones people keep because their service is bundled with TV and Internet.
This is why measuring the change in the value of money over long spans of time can be very difficult. Even when talking about very basic things like food and clothing, one must be careful to examine where those things have changed, and particularly where something that is common today simply wasn't available, or was available only to the very wealthy or as a Very Special Treat. (Even as late as the 1940's and 50's, oranges and bananas were rare treats in the Midwest, and the gift of an orange could be a major plot point in a children's novel).
It boils down to an economic principle first elucidated by William Baumol. Although not all jobs enjoy the same increases in productivity from automation, the wages of the jobs that aren't so affected are pulled up by the increase in productivity of the jobs that are because employers have to pay competitive wages.
For instance, the productivity of a worker in the auto industry has been increased enormously by automation. It's most obvious in the manufacture, but even in automotive service shops, the use of powered tools such as pneumatic socket drivers speeds up all kinds of repair tasks as compared to using hand tools. As a result, each mechanic in a shop can service a lot more cars in a day (on average, since tasks are apt to vary in complexity, and some tasks, like diagnosing a tricky problem, are much less amenable to being sped up by automation).
By contrast, work that involves personal services (child care, health care, etc.) isn't so amenable to automation, for obvious reasons. Often attempts to use technology to improve productivity in these fields is resisted because it reduces the interpersonal element of the service. However, to get good workers, employers in those fields have to pay sufficiently high wages to be competitive with those fields that have benefited from automation. This drive is somewhat reduced in fields that are as much a calling as a job (which is why writers and other creatives have not seen that much of a benefit from this process). So increases in productivity in some fields will raise pay in most other fields.
As the author of the article notes, this is further complicated by the difficulty in comparing manufactured goods across such a span of time as 1919 to the present. The car that Agatha Christie and her husband considered simply Out Of Reach was less durable and less reliable than the cars of the present, not to mention lacking features that simply hadn't been produced in those days. Furthermore, whole categories of consumer goods have developed in the decades since: televisions, personal computers, etc. No amount of money could've bought what had yet to be invented and manufactured.
Furthermore, the digital revolution, driven by the integrated circuit, has transformed the consumer goods that were available in those days. The telephone is the most obvious -- the telephones that were available at the time of the Armistice would've been involved a large device permanently attached to a wall, connected to the telco offices with wires, and required the assistance of an operator at the telco office to place a call. Today the average person's phone is a hand-held computer about the size of a checkbook (remember those?) which uses a broadband modem and VoIP software to make calls over a cellular wireless network. Wired phones are almost entirely confined to office settings, or legacy phones people keep because their service is bundled with TV and Internet.
This is why measuring the change in the value of money over long spans of time can be very difficult. Even when talking about very basic things like food and clothing, one must be careful to examine where those things have changed, and particularly where something that is common today simply wasn't available, or was available only to the very wealthy or as a Very Special Treat. (Even as late as the 1940's and 50's, oranges and bananas were rare treats in the Midwest, and the gift of an orange could be a major plot point in a children's novel).