Re: The Value of the English Pound in the 1890's
Dave Postles (pot@leicester.ac.uk)
Tue, 24 Oct 1995 18:19:05 +0000
Not willing to plunge into the math but the equivalents for 1890 and 1990
are what we might call "naive historical statistical literalmindedness"
as the base value of U.S. and British currency has fluctuated wildly
against each other so I would say the enterprise is wholly doomed. It is
better to consider the relative value of poor people's wages today and
then but only in Britain. Any other comparison is prone to being off
wildly from anything true or useful when it comes to differing economies,
currencies, standards of living, the cost of essential goods, etc. I am
not a social or economic historian so it might be I have little faith in
this enterprise and your initial problems of comparison would only be
correctable through some very complex mathematics I suspect.
sean farrell moran
oakland university
moran@oakland.edu
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