samghebre: Compensation
I agree that compensation shouldn’t be added on top of our consumer purchases but surely we can’t just disregard compensation altogether when trying to figure out how what is going on with regards to living standards?
re:Measuring living standards
What sort of index or measure do you think is the best indicator for telling use about improvement in living standards?
re:Concerning the Sowell quote
I’m not sure I understand your first point:
“You’re quote by Sowell illustrates why economists look at real wages and per capita income. If you look at real wages there is evidence of stagnation.”
From that quote I read that he disagrees that there has been any stagnation and that the reason economists claim that there has been economic stagnation is that they look at household income instead of tracking individuals. I tried to look to the source data from the graph on
“Real Average Hourly Earnings January 1964-October 2005” from the link you gave me which took me to this site:
http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2005/12/are_workers_los.html
From there I saw that the data was from Bureau of Labor Statistics but I couldn’t open the data because I didn’t have the program you need to open the data.
However if the data turns out to be on household income then wouldn’t Sowell be right that there has in fact not been any stagnation since the 70’s?