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First, let’s look at the big picture. Capitalism’s remarkable rise in the productivity of labor and general standard of living began in 1776 with the introduction of Watt’s steam engine. This was the beginning of the use of man-made power: fossil fuels and later atomic power too.
These more and more increased the power of human muscles to achieve productive results. The overall result has been a rise in the average worker’s standard of living above that of monarchs of past ages, accompanied by a halving of the work week and a doubling of life expectancy.
The average worker in an industrial country today has a higher standard of living than the Caesars, Louis XIV, and Queen Victoria. He has air conditioning, a car, a computer, indoor plumbing, a refrigerator/freezer, a telephone, a television set, a washer/dryer, and much more.
If he’s sick, he has access to antibiotics and other “wonder” drugs, and to X-Rays, MRIs, EKGs, and so on. He can own a larger personal library and listen to more music than any of them could. The only thing he cannot afford that they could is personal servants.
So the actual data most definitely does confirm the theory that capitalism raises real wages, shortens hours, and improves living and working conditions.
P.S. The diagram that accompanies your first reply implies no rise in the productivity of labor. Constant real wages accompanied by rising money wages implies prices rising as fast as wages.
Yet if the productivity of labor rises, the supply of goods rises faster than the supply of labor, with the result that prices fall relative to wages.
