Just when you thought progress wasn’t being made, technologic advancements and plunging prices in lighting over the past 200 years put things in a different light, so to speak. From man’s early history B.C. it took about 400 labor hours to produce an hour of light equivalent to a 100 watt bulb. Today, that light unit costs a few seconds of labor, or a few pennies of income. Also, due to technologic advancements, consider the availability and falling costs of refrigeration, climate control, transportation, clothing, food, water, plumbing, communications, shipping,…. The poorest 1% of Americans live with comforts that royalty of a few generations back could never have dreamed of.
See statista’s The Cost of Light Through the Ages.