Not what I was looking for, but worth a look

 

From the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 1959 edition

The three columns of data on the right show percent of population for each income range. The largest group of women earned between $3000 and $3999 in 1957; the largest group of men, between $4000 and $4999.

That table comes up because I found it. (It's not one of a series on a topic, I mean.)

I was reading Charles L. Schultze in Employment, Growth, and Price Levels: The effects of monopolistic and quasi-monopolistic practices (September 1959). Schultze says:

The rise in salary costs per unit was not only due to an increase in salary rates -- which rose by about the same amount as wage rates -- but also by the rising ratio of salaried output to employment.

In context, that statement looks to me to be a crucial part of his "demand shift" argument, so I wanted a look at the numbers that Schultze was talking about: wage numbers and salary numbers, separately.

Apparently there is no such thing anymore. It's all "wage and salary" now, numbers combined, as if the three words were one.

This corruption of thought is far too common. I've been similarly troubled by "supply and demand" and by "money and credit". Such word combinations cannot be described as "portmanteau" because they do not expand the vocabulary. They reduce it. They reduce our ability to think about things. How can one evaluate Schultze's demand-shift hypothesis if data on wages and salaries are no longer presented separately?

How can one understand that the source of our economic problems is that we have come to use credit for money, when people think only in terms of "moneyandcredit"?