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0 pointsSamBam3y ago0 comments

Where can you rent on ~$50 a day, and still have money left over for food and car payments (necessary for that job), let alone things that a regular worker could afford in 1900?

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IanCal3y ago

You may be heavily overestimating lifestyles in 1900.

Here's a very interesting book written in the early 1900s looking at families with a father in solid employment, ~~renting for~~ (edit - living on) about 1 pound a week in London. They're poor, but not the poorest - not in the workhouses.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58691/pg58691-images.ht...

Regardless of precise lines, I recommend reading this as an actual look (mixture of descriptive prose and figures & stats) at life for people of the time.

luckylion3y ago

I also recommend Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier for a report on workers in northern England in the 1930s and their living conditions (and the second part on why Socialism isn't being embraced in the UK, but that's a different topic). I'm pretty sure that's also easy to achieve today.

xyzelement3y ago

A regular worker hasn't seen a car in 1900 and lived in a tenament with 4 generations crammed into a room. You can afford that on 50 a day if you wanted to live that way. That's my point, we don't want to live that way so we work more.

SamBamOP3y ago

You literally said "work as an Uber driver," which is why I said car payments. They're necessary for the job.

If you want to keep it in 1900's-speak, I could say "afford the payments on the overalls you need at the factory," but the idea would be ridiculous because the factory would provide the overalls.

xyzelement3y ago

Oh gotcha lol ok. Change that to "drive THREE hours Uber using someone else's car and give them a third of the pay for the use of the car" if that helps you connect to the idea better

phonescreen_man3y ago

Pretty much most of northern England, outside London a lot of people get by on 18k a year salaries

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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IanCal3y ago

You may be heavily overestimating lifestyles in 1900.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58691/pg58691-images.ht...

Regardless of precise lines, I recommend reading this as an actual look (mixture of descriptive prose and figures & stats) at life for people of the time.

luckylion3y ago

xyzelement3y ago

SamBamOP3y ago

You literally said "work as an Uber driver," which is why I said car payments. They're necessary for the job.

If you want to keep it in 1900's-speak, I could say "afford the payments on the overalls you need at the factory," but the idea would be ridiculous because the factory would provide the overalls.

xyzelement3y ago

Oh gotcha lol ok. Change that to "drive THREE hours Uber using someone else's car and give them a third of the pay for the use of the car" if that helps you connect to the idea better

phonescreen_man3y ago

Pretty much most of northern England, outside London a lot of people get by on 18k a year salaries

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse