The History of Wages

What is one to do when the price of food (and everything else) is increasing and there is practically no salary, when a general of a famed army receives a monthly salary of 50 Deutch Marks (according to the official exchange rate), while the average salary stands at around 15 DM and the public is alarmed because a bank employee receives 200 DM.

To make an inapposite comparison: workers in a Swedish factory are paid 38 and their German colleagues 42 DM - per hour! No-one now remembers how people lived and what they ate 600 or 3600 years ago. The documents that have survived to this day show that, even then, most free citizens, slaves or serfs lived if not better, then definitely not worse than the workers and citizens of Serbia and Montenegro. Not to mention the patricians, gentry and nobility.

All citizens of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have for some time now been caught up in a time machine, which existentially and economically first rapidly transposed them from the 20th to the 15th, then to the 1st century A.D., and, after a brief rest in ancient times for technical reasons, flung them to the darkness of pre-history, to the time of trading bear skins for axes, to life in caves and human sacrifices to insatiable totems.

We would do well to contemplate what awaits us while we are still where we are - for, the world has long ago lived through and described what awaits us as regards salaries. What transpires from its experience is that 10.5 million of us are living in greater poverty than the mourned proletariat of England of the mid-1800's, when 20% of workers' families in the industrial centre of Oldham lived below the existential minimum. Now, in 1993, merely 20% of FRY citizens are living above the existential minimum and these 20% are not living off their salaries.

Over 200 years ago, Adam Smith gave a suitable definition of the standard of living - he said it was a possibility to live without feeling ashamed and humiliated. There is no doubt why most people here now feel humiliated.

The current Yugoslav standard of living stands somewhere between the living standards of the ancient Egyptian empire and mediaeval Britain. A Greek mason, a Roman butcher and a mediaeval British carpenter earned more than their Yugoslav colleagues today. Why not mention the modern German worker, since everything here is calculated in German marks anyway - a worker in Germany, with two children and unemployed wife, earned an average of 2,800 DM a month early this summer, while his Serbian colleague earned 190 times less. These 15 marks - received in the national currency, of course - were supposed to feed the worker's family 30 days, with the daily cost of food standing at 10 DM. This means - earn 15, spend 300 - great!

At the moment this text is written, a Belgrader can buy the following with these 15 DM in dinars - some 15 bottles of beer, ie, seven or eight liters of it. On the other hand, 4,500 years ago, an ancient Egyptian employer gave his proletarian 15 liters of beer a month in addition to the salary in kind.

During the XX Dynasty, 3,200 years ago, a worker employed by a Pharaoh in the Nile valley monthly received 4 sacks (76.8 kg each) of cereals, one and a half sack of barley and 8.4 kg of fish to feed himself and his family. He also received 5kg of bread flour a day, not to mention the free 75-square-meter living quarters. And don't forget the beer free of charge!

Some centuries later, in the Socrates era, a qualified carpenter in Athens daily earned 1.5 drachmas (which would equal 15 DM today, according to a German economist). A craftsman was able to earn 12 minas a year, which equals 1,200 drachmas (ie, 12,000 DM). Ordinary workers (slaves and free men alike) earned one obol per day, ie 1.5 marks.

This means that an Athenian slave earned an equivalent of 40 marks a month 2,400 years ago, or two and a half times more than his proud and unbending colleague in a Serbian factory or office in the summer of 1993.

A kilo of cheese cost 1.3 DM in V B.C., while three small sausages and a liter of real wine cost 8 pfennigs. This means that a worker in ancient Greece could buy 480 liters of wine for his monthly salary, which is, indeed, much more than the 7-8 liters of tepid local beer which must be drunk on an empty stomach. The ancient Greek was at least able to throw some sausages and cheese on the side.