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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3510851" data-attributes="member: 4937">The 1sp/day daily wage is an artifact of 1st edition.&nbsp; That in turn is an artifact of Gygax's medievalism.&nbsp; It doesn't make any since within the larger framework of D&amp;D economics.The problem is that D&amp;D has always assumed a gold peice standard in the value of goods (and PC wages!).&nbsp; Normally, the fact that laborers earn 1sp/day while wealth is generally weighed in gp doesn't really matter, but when it does matter it becomes game breaking.&nbsp; The problem is that a PC can leverage the labor market, buying an enormous ammount of labor at very low prices.&nbsp; When that happens, the realistic thing is wage inflation, because if that doesn't happen you end up with the PC leveraging highly undervalued labor and breaking the economy.&nbsp; If wage inflation does happen, then then you end up settling with a gold peice standard anyway.&nbsp; In other words, the base price is wrong in context.&nbsp; If you actually set price by supply and demand, you toss out the base price.Another way that it is wrong is that anyone with minimal ranks in a craft or profession skill can earn average 10 times the rate of unskilled labor.&nbsp; This actually creates a greater disparity between the lower and middle classes than the already large wage disparity which existed in the real world between peasant farmers and craftsman, which was more like 3-5 times unskilled wages.I'm not an expert here, but my understanding is that baring a few exceptional cases of coin scarcity or surplus, the exchange rate of 1 oz gold = 20 oz silver held fairly steady for thousands of years (before the mechanical mining of silver).&nbsp;&nbsp; Relative abundance or scarcity of silver to gold might effect that, but I'm fairly sure those are short term phenoms.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3510851, member: 4937"] The 1sp/day daily wage is an artifact of 1st edition. That in turn is an artifact of Gygax's medievalism. It doesn't make any since within the larger framework of D&D economics. The problem is that D&D has always assumed a gold peice standard in the value of goods (and PC wages!). Normally, the fact that laborers earn 1sp/day while wealth is generally weighed in gp doesn't really matter, but when it does matter it becomes game breaking. The problem is that a PC can leverage the labor market, buying an enormous ammount of labor at very low prices. When that happens, the realistic thing is wage inflation, because if that doesn't happen you end up with the PC leveraging highly undervalued labor and breaking the economy. If wage inflation does happen, then then you end up settling with a gold peice standard anyway. In other words, the base price is wrong in context. If you actually set price by supply and demand, you toss out the base price. Another way that it is wrong is that anyone with minimal ranks in a craft or profession skill can earn average 10 times the rate of unskilled labor. This actually creates a greater disparity between the lower and middle classes than the already large wage disparity which existed in the real world between peasant farmers and craftsman, which was more like 3-5 times unskilled wages. I'm not an expert here, but my understanding is that baring a few exceptional cases of coin scarcity or surplus, the exchange rate of 1 oz gold = 20 oz silver held fairly steady for thousands of years (before the mechanical mining of silver). Relative abundance or scarcity of silver to gold might effect that, but I'm fairly sure those are short term phenoms. [/QUOTE]

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