Wealth & Poverty Review Ice vs. Electricity
Originally published at Gale Pooley's SubstackIn 1925, households kept food cool with iceboxes—wooden insulated cabinets chilled by a block of ice. Depending on size and quality, they typically cost between $15 and $50. With entry-level workers earning about 25 cents an hour, a $35 icebox carried a time price of 140 hours.
Today a 4.4-cubic-foot mini-fridge at Walmart sells for about $184. Entry-level workers in limited-service restaurants earn roughly $18.75 an hour, bringing the time price down to just 9.8 hours.
For the time it took a worker in 1925 to earn the money for one icebox, a worker today can buy 14.3 mini-fridges.
The 1925 ice box didn’t actually come with any ice. The price of a 100-pound block of ice in 1925 was typically 25 cents, and this could double during “ice famines” caused by mild winters. At 25 cents an hour, a 100-pound block of ice would cost one hour of earning time, and would generally last for three to seven days. If the ice block lasted five days that would be a time price of 12 minutes a day.
The Walmart mini-fridge requires 269 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year, or 0.74 kWh per day. Residential electricity runs around 12 cents a kWh, so a year’s supply of electricity will cost $32.28, or 1.72 hours for entry level workers. Spread out over the year, this would require 17 seconds a day.
For the time it took a worker in 1925 to earn the money to buy ice cooling for a day, workers today get 43 days of electric cooling.
Electric refrigerators entered American homes in 1927 when G.E. introduced the iconic “Monitor Top,” named for its resemblance to the USS Monitor, a Civil War armored warship. The unit sold for $525. With entry-level workers earning 25 cents an hour, the time price came to an extraordinary 2,100 hours. Today the Walmart mini-fridge costs 9.8 hours. The time price has fallen by 99.53 percent. For the time it took a worker in 1927 to earn enough money for one electric refrigerator, a worker today can buy 214 mini fridges—a stunning increase of 21,300 percent in refrigeration abundance, compounding at 5.62 percent a year.
U.S. population has tripled from 116 million in 1925 to 348 million today. For every one percent increase in population, personal refrigerator abundance has increased 106 percent (21,300% ÷ 200% = 106).