andrewducker | (Reply)

From:

I liked the article on the economics of Jane Austen.

(I think it missed something when calculating Darcy's wealth. It back solved the capital value of his £10,000 a year, mentioned that he also owned an estate but then didn't add the value of the estate to his capital invested in government debt. I think.)

The comparison of wealth over time interests me greatly. It gets in to the questions of what are we measuring when we measure wealth? What is money? What is inflation? How do we account for changes in technology when dealing with inflation.

The usual comments, Darcy might be in the top few hundred richest people in the UK in 1815 but he has zero access to smallpox vaccination, if he wanted to go to visit Australia it will take a year or two, he can only ever listen to live music.

He also lives in a country where famine and plague are not uncommon and where there is not much pooling of risk through social insurance or socialised health care. Which is not a good country to live in.