CME Salaries

[Pyewipe Junction]

Reading the biographies of CMEs, I am always intrigued to know what their salaries would be worth today.

I understand the starting salary of Robinson on the GC was £2500 in 1902. That equates to around £1,000,000 in 2016.

I wonder what the others got (in 2016 money).

[65447]

Reading the biographies of CMEs, I am always intrigued to know what their salaries would be worth today.

I understand the starting salary of Robinson on the GC was £2500 in 1902. That equates to around £1,000,000 in 2016.

I wonder what the others got (in 2016 money).

Today's worth is not the straight monetary equivalent as you suggest, but the amount necessary to provide a similar standard of living.

The two are very different measures.

[kudu]

Today's worth is not the straight monetary equivalent as you suggest, but the amount necessary to provide a similar standard of living.

The two are very different measures.

I'm not sure what distinction you are trying to make. It's customary to make such comparisons using the Retail Prices Index. This doesn't extend back to 1902 and even if it did the longer the period taken the more approximate is the result because the products and services purchased would be so different. (Robinson would have had more servants than today's equivalent, for instance.) But these problems don't correspond to the distinction you make. I'm not sure what "straight monetary equivalent" means if it doesn't refer in some sense to the cost of maintaining a comparable standard of living, to the extent that a comparison can be meaningful over so long a period.

Kudu

[1H was 2E]

It's an interesting topic to try to relate living standards to salaries over a period of time.
With regard to indices, in the high inflation 70's one of my jobs as a clerk in HQ freight was to calculate the annual PVC increases. to explain; although customers had long term contracts for the conveyance of their traffic, the rate (in my case, of stone trains) was increased (Price Variation Clause) on the basis of movements in the Government produced indices; using one usually being based on wages (to reflect the increase in railway costs) and one based on producer prices (to reflect the customers ability to recover increases in costs increasing the price of their product) in a 50/50 or 60/40 proportion. There was a large variety of indices then available.
These exercises taught me what a minefield these indices are.
A general problem is that, because the percentage change is aggregated arithmetically, they only work if everything goes up. Probably best illustrated by a simple and extreme example, but the effect will always be there to a lesser degree. Suppose that in a retail price index there are only two items. One month, item A goes from £10 to £20 - increase 100% and item B goes from £20 to £10 - decrease 50%. The index will sum the changes (100 - 50 = 50) and divide by 2 to get the average (50 / 2 = 25). Inflation that month will therefore be plus 25%; even though, if you bought one of each item every month the total cost would be unchanged. I understand that RPI uses this method, but CPI compensates somehow.
Another distortion is from the choice of what's in the index. The contents constantly change - and one might have a cynical view of this. For RPI, when a new electronic gadget is introduced to the market, it's very expensive but prices soon fall. Such items are usually included as soon as they are marketed - the price may typically be £800, this soon drops to £200 and eventually to £50. This reduction in price counteracts the effect of energy bills constantly increasing even though most people don't buy the gizmo when it's £800 but know it will soon be £200, but cannot defer the purchase of essentials.
Really just saying there's no way to "scientifically" equate salaries over a long period of time.