Mark Perry has posted some interesting comparison of how prices
have plummeted between 1958 and 2012 when measured in terms of
the hours of work required to purchase items. He concludes that
today's consumer working at the average wage of $19.19 would
only have to work 26.6 hours (a little more than three days) to
earn enough income ($511) to purchase a toaster, TV and iPod.
The equivalent products (in terms of their basic function, not
their quality) would have required 4.64 weeks of work in 1958.
In short, the "time cost" of these items has massively declined
by 86% in less than 5 decades. Similarly, Perry calculates that
measured in the amount of time working at the average hourly
wage to earn enough income to purchase a washer-dryer
combination, the "time cost" of those two appliances together
has fallen by 83%, from 181.8 hours in 1959 to only 31 hours
today. What if we applied this kind of analysis to health care?
The results are quite interesting. In 1958, per capita health
expenditures were $134. This