Real Money Pays

In modern times, what can a day's wage buy? What can a common worker purchase with their daily pay?

In the US, working 10 hours at $10-$20/hour, a worker earns $100-$200 a day. 

Now, what can that buy?

A pint of beer costs $4-$12.

A ready-to-eat chicken, almost $10.

Housing commonly costs anywhere from $20-$50 or even $75 a day.

After a chicken, a beer, and a night's rest, (including taxes, insurance, fees, and taxes on fees) our worker constantly feels compelled to work another day as he has used half (and some days, all) of his pay on essentials. 

Yet that same daily wage buys 40–80 grams of silver. For 4,000 years before paper money, wages were paid in silver grams:

• Ancient Babylon (2000 BCE): ~2.1g/day

• Classical Athens (400s BCE): ~4.3g/day (1 drachma)

• Roman Empire (1st–3rd CE): ~3.8g/day (denarius)

• Medieval England (1300s): ~2.1–2.8g/day

• 1880s United States: 25–50g/day (1–1.5 Morgan Dollars)

Over the last 120 years, US dollars have morphed from silver coins to Silver Certificates (dollars could be readily exchanged for silver) to Federal Reserve Notes (fiat currency, loosely commodity-backed).

The types of goods have changed and the relative purchasing power fluctuates over time and across communities. What has stayed remarkably constant though, has been a common worker's daily wage paid out in hard money. 

In stark contrast lies the relative purchasing power of the US dollar as it has evolved from silver coins, to silver certificates, to federal reserve notes.

Now, $100 can buy only $1 silver coin from 1900. 

Therefore, the cost of labor, priced in silver, stayed nearly constant for over 4,000 years while the US dollar has been debased 99% over the course of 120 years.