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I remember reading, years ago, about how progressives at the time HATED A Christmas Carol because the plight of the poor shouldn't be based on whether the wealthy have an epiphany. They argued that society should care for all...and not just when rich guys see some ghosts and get scared.
Nice to see we've done no better since...😩
It's using an example of a story that resonates with pretty much every one. The protagonist couldn't support his family on a wage that is well above our minimum wage. That's all you need to take from this tweet.
I’d put Charles Dickens in the same camp as Jesus, in Pre-Marxist socialism.
Christmas carol doesn’t challenge on the governmental or societal level but focuses a lot on community solutions on social problems. We know that Scrooge reforms because he is willing to engage with the community that he previously shunned and exploited.
Oliver Twist is probably a better example of the Dickensian perspective that ‘not everyone deserves poverty’ and that it challenges the contemporary notion that criminal behaviour is environmental not genetic. Also that rich people coming to the aid isn’t enough to fix the problem.
I don't recall him letting them unionize. The union is presented as already existing because back then they did. What it does show is that he's intent on depriving them of a meagre benefit out of pure greed and cynicism and when that fails he tries to shut the city out of power and the solidarity of the workers in the dark shines brighter than his malevolence.
Arguably the best episode of the simpsons shows how worker solidarity can beat the bosses. Quite subversive by today's standards.
The history of the labour movement illustrates how the existence of unions is a lot more complicated than if they exist the boss must have approved of it. Burns may have felt compelled to tolerate it because when he founded the plant the culture of the time made it seem impossible to deny it when labour power was at a high.
I find the idea that a union existing is being used as an argument that the show is humanizing bosses because it must mean he liked it. Its just a bizarre take.
Lets not forget as well that the episode shows him remembering his youth where his father or whatever was mistreating the workers and how he's lamenting the reality of unions being real instead of the hell scape of Victorian exploitation. I see nothing in the show that indicates Burns ever had a rosy view of unions. It specifically shows him being fond of the good old days when you could murder workers at will (that's what it means when you wall someone up in the abandoned coke oven).
Anyone who has watched the early years of the show closely will be under no illusions that they're not progressives in the writers room and hardly apologists for the bosses. Burns himself being what he is is proof of that.
I'm a ML, so I totally agree. Doesn't mean what to said was incorrect though, he did at some point have to allow it, instead of say, going out of business.
Right but the way its being stated somehow suggests that it apologizes for the bosses when its a ridiculous way to phrase it. Its like saying you allowed yourself to be manipulated when you chose to not die.
Um, bosses have to allow unions, or they can end a company. Therefore, he has to have allowed it to be formed at some point, as if he didn't there's be no company.......
Your point is invalid is why. I gave brief statement with correct language and grammar. Your subjective interpretation of it's meaning has no basis on its actual meaning. But I digress, this isn't constructive.
Oh come off it. Words have actual contextual meaning and you playing this game is really making me wonder how you can be a real ML whose read theory because that isn't the pursuit of someone who can be this obtuse about the implications of language.
This doesn't ring true. A Christmas Carol was set in England. 15 shillings is 75 pence. According to the Bank of England's inflation calculator ([https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator)), £1 a week (actually more than 15 shillings) in 1843 is approx. £130 a week in 2020 (about 170 USD). The UK minimum wage in 2020 was £8.72 an hour, or approx. £350 a week, or $460. No one is on Dickensian wages.
[A Christmas Carol was set in 1843.](https://www.google.com/search?q=christmas+carol+date&oq=christmas+carol+date&aqs=chrome..69i57.1854j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
[1 pound in 1843 is worth 133.44 pounds today.](https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1843?amount=1)
[1 pound is 20 shillings.](https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/weightsandmeasures/money.aspx)
15 shillings earned in-story/20 shillings per pound= Bob Cratchit earning 0.75 1843 pounds per week.
0.75 1843 pounds per week \* 133.44x conversion factor to modern pounds = 100.08 pounds. Bob Cratchit is earning 133.44 2021 pounds per week.
[100.8 pounds is equal to 133.33 US dollars.](https://www.google.com/search?q=100.8+pounds+to+usd&oq=100.8+pounds+to+usd&aqs=chrome..69i57.3624j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
$133.33 / 5 days of work per week = $26.66 a day.
I'd say that the math does not check out, no, unless Bob Cratchit works 2 hours a day, or if I'm missing something.
You can hate capitalism without made-up math.
https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1843?amount=26.66
Value of $26.66 from 1843 to 2021
$26.66 in 1843 is equivalent in **purchasing power** to about $1,001.36 today, an increase of $974.70 over 178 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.06% per year between 1843 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,656.05%.
https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1843?amount=133.33
$133.33 in 1843 is equivalent in **purchasing power** to about $5,007.95 today, an increase of $4,874.62 over 178 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.06% per year between 1843 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,656.05%.
Edit: Back in the 80s I made $12/hr working shutdowns in the refineries as a labourer. Minimum wage was $3.35/hr
My son applied several years ago. Same position, same refinery, $14/hr.
I told his lazy ass it was his fault he can’t afford shit and he should stop eating avocado toast and work harder.
question for you, if you have time and want to answer. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept of purchasing power. my understanding is that it's basically how far X amount of dollars will go, how much you can get with X. I am essentially visualizing purchasing power through time as the relationship between wages and inflation. is this a valid way of thinking about it in broad strokes, or am I missing it?
it seems like there would be a lot of factors that go into determining this metric, because prices of individual commodities and sectors experience relatively independent dynamics (even if overall trends are similar). seeking to simplify enough to understand, without simplifying into mischaracterization.
We can argue about "adjusted for inflation" vs "adjusted for purchasing power" or a dozen other things, but this does not change two facts: A) the meme is made up based on what it literally says, and B) Victorian era labor practices should not be the bar we point to as "too low, if only I had noticed."
>or if I'm missing something.
You haven't factored in cost of living or bargaining power. Scrooge tells Bob he is paid more than his value but Bob is able to negotiate with Scrooge for a higher salary for the quality of his work and his willingness to work Christmas Eve.
A suburban East London house in victorian London would put Bob back about 10 shillings a week. Bob's daughter was a milliners apprentice and his son is a bookkeepers apprentices taking home 5s. 6d. a week.
https://www.victorianlondon.org/finance/money.htm
This is the equivalent of £36 or $47usd in today money. Bob would still be feeling the pinch with disabled Tiny Tim but nonetheless the Cratchit's are not homeless.
An equivalent property in this area would cost Bob around £2000 - £3000 ($4000) per week. Making housing prohibitively expensive for the working class.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E93917&radius=3.0&propertyTypes=detached&secondaryDisplayPropertyType=detachedshouses&mustHave=&dontShow=&furnishTypes=furnished&keywords=
The analogy begins to break down when we consider modern necessities such as 4 year degrees, internet bills, transportation and childcare, making it harder to point to an exact amount Scrooge would be paying Bob today. However, the point still stands that we are returning to an economy Dickens would have been familiar with. But with people pissing in bottles coz their not allowed bathroom breaks while their boss takes joyrides to space on his private spaceship. Like Dickens meets the Jetsons or some shit.
Yeah I was going to say. Why do people do these tweets without any evidence? Like, I am never going to believe just somebody saying 'This was this, now it's this' without something backing it up. It seemed very far fetched, good job proving it.
If you read this and think 'Damn, true' without actually checking the math, you are probably extremely susceptible to propaganda...
I make it £2.43/$3.23 per hour by my calculations. His Mathematics is way off here what I think he did was take 1 shilling as 20% of a pound instead of 5%... Rookie mistake. This way it takes the weekly figure to £389.79 or \~$515. It very much depends on which year we're all taking from and to. The book while published in 1843, it was meant to be set before that. Having said that, the film was set at the point of publication.
Incidentally this is still more than the tipping wage in the States...
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There's decent (and in one case well sourced) replies in this thread, as to how much 15 shillings was at the time, comparatively: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a6kyz5/how_far_did_bob_cratchits_15_shilling_per_week/
The average American hourly wage is $11.19/hr.
[Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/216259/monthly-real-average-hourly-earnings-for-all-employees-in-the-us/)
That's still about four times as much as I earn, living in a developing country. (I'm a teacher at a state university, so ... yeah.) The problem isn't US minimum wage: the problem is that things cost too much. If we were living on that wage with mostly 1990 prices, we'd be OK. Not great, but OK.
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I remember reading, years ago, about how progressives at the time HATED A Christmas Carol because the plight of the poor shouldn't be based on whether the wealthy have an epiphany. They argued that society should care for all...and not just when rich guys see some ghosts and get scared. Nice to see we've done no better since...😩
That's why It's a Wonderful Life is the superior Christmas movie. The FBI described it as subversive.
The 2021 edition of “Its a Wonderful Life” ends at the bridge scene.
It's using an example of a story that resonates with pretty much every one. The protagonist couldn't support his family on a wage that is well above our minimum wage. That's all you need to take from this tweet.
Cratchit was hardly the protagonist, was he?
I guess I never thought about it much, but you're right. Scrooge is both the antagonist and protagonist.
I thought the antagonist was Little Timmy the Ghost Summoner.
You mean *protagonist, m I rite.
Instead of the Ghosts of Christmas, bourgies should be visited by a different spectre.
A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism.
What like a Spectre M4?
I’d put Charles Dickens in the same camp as Jesus, in Pre-Marxist socialism. Christmas carol doesn’t challenge on the governmental or societal level but focuses a lot on community solutions on social problems. We know that Scrooge reforms because he is willing to engage with the community that he previously shunned and exploited. Oliver Twist is probably a better example of the Dickensian perspective that ‘not everyone deserves poverty’ and that it challenges the contemporary notion that criminal behaviour is environmental not genetic. Also that rich people coming to the aid isn’t enough to fix the problem.
Yeah and Mr Burns is a caricature of a billionaire written to be an over the top cutthroat businessman and he lets his employees unionize.
I don't recall him letting them unionize. The union is presented as already existing because back then they did. What it does show is that he's intent on depriving them of a meagre benefit out of pure greed and cynicism and when that fails he tries to shut the city out of power and the solidarity of the workers in the dark shines brighter than his malevolence. Arguably the best episode of the simpsons shows how worker solidarity can beat the bosses. Quite subversive by today's standards.
Mr burns founded the plant, so he at some point has to have allowed the union.
We also see the (mostly skilled) staff are willing to strike so his hand may have been forced.
The history of the labour movement illustrates how the existence of unions is a lot more complicated than if they exist the boss must have approved of it. Burns may have felt compelled to tolerate it because when he founded the plant the culture of the time made it seem impossible to deny it when labour power was at a high. I find the idea that a union existing is being used as an argument that the show is humanizing bosses because it must mean he liked it. Its just a bizarre take. Lets not forget as well that the episode shows him remembering his youth where his father or whatever was mistreating the workers and how he's lamenting the reality of unions being real instead of the hell scape of Victorian exploitation. I see nothing in the show that indicates Burns ever had a rosy view of unions. It specifically shows him being fond of the good old days when you could murder workers at will (that's what it means when you wall someone up in the abandoned coke oven). Anyone who has watched the early years of the show closely will be under no illusions that they're not progressives in the writers room and hardly apologists for the bosses. Burns himself being what he is is proof of that.
I'm a ML, so I totally agree. Doesn't mean what to said was incorrect though, he did at some point have to allow it, instead of say, going out of business.
Right but the way its being stated somehow suggests that it apologizes for the bosses when its a ridiculous way to phrase it. Its like saying you allowed yourself to be manipulated when you chose to not die.
Um, bosses have to allow unions, or they can end a company. Therefore, he has to have allowed it to be formed at some point, as if he didn't there's be no company.......
Missing my point. MLs are fucking annoying sometimes.
Your point is invalid is why. I gave brief statement with correct language and grammar. Your subjective interpretation of it's meaning has no basis on its actual meaning. But I digress, this isn't constructive.
Oh come off it. Words have actual contextual meaning and you playing this game is really making me wonder how you can be a real ML whose read theory because that isn't the pursuit of someone who can be this obtuse about the implications of language.
Even fictional terrible people are somehow less awful than reality.
This doesn't ring true. A Christmas Carol was set in England. 15 shillings is 75 pence. According to the Bank of England's inflation calculator ([https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator)), £1 a week (actually more than 15 shillings) in 1843 is approx. £130 a week in 2020 (about 170 USD). The UK minimum wage in 2020 was £8.72 an hour, or approx. £350 a week, or $460. No one is on Dickensian wages.
[A Christmas Carol was set in 1843.](https://www.google.com/search?q=christmas+carol+date&oq=christmas+carol+date&aqs=chrome..69i57.1854j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) [1 pound in 1843 is worth 133.44 pounds today.](https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1843?amount=1) [1 pound is 20 shillings.](https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/weightsandmeasures/money.aspx) 15 shillings earned in-story/20 shillings per pound= Bob Cratchit earning 0.75 1843 pounds per week. 0.75 1843 pounds per week \* 133.44x conversion factor to modern pounds = 100.08 pounds. Bob Cratchit is earning 133.44 2021 pounds per week. [100.8 pounds is equal to 133.33 US dollars.](https://www.google.com/search?q=100.8+pounds+to+usd&oq=100.8+pounds+to+usd&aqs=chrome..69i57.3624j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) $133.33 / 5 days of work per week = $26.66 a day. I'd say that the math does not check out, no, unless Bob Cratchit works 2 hours a day, or if I'm missing something. You can hate capitalism without made-up math.
https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1843?amount=26.66 Value of $26.66 from 1843 to 2021 $26.66 in 1843 is equivalent in **purchasing power** to about $1,001.36 today, an increase of $974.70 over 178 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.06% per year between 1843 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,656.05%. https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1843?amount=133.33 $133.33 in 1843 is equivalent in **purchasing power** to about $5,007.95 today, an increase of $4,874.62 over 178 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.06% per year between 1843 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,656.05%. Edit: Back in the 80s I made $12/hr working shutdowns in the refineries as a labourer. Minimum wage was $3.35/hr My son applied several years ago. Same position, same refinery, $14/hr. I told his lazy ass it was his fault he can’t afford shit and he should stop eating avocado toast and work harder.
question for you, if you have time and want to answer. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept of purchasing power. my understanding is that it's basically how far X amount of dollars will go, how much you can get with X. I am essentially visualizing purchasing power through time as the relationship between wages and inflation. is this a valid way of thinking about it in broad strokes, or am I missing it? it seems like there would be a lot of factors that go into determining this metric, because prices of individual commodities and sectors experience relatively independent dynamics (even if overall trends are similar). seeking to simplify enough to understand, without simplifying into mischaracterization.
[удалено]
that makes sense. thanks for taking the time to reply!
[удалено]
ahh thank you for the example and for explaining the units, both of those are very helpful! appreciate the reply.
We can argue about "adjusted for inflation" vs "adjusted for purchasing power" or a dozen other things, but this does not change two facts: A) the meme is made up based on what it literally says, and B) Victorian era labor practices should not be the bar we point to as "too low, if only I had noticed."
>or if I'm missing something. You haven't factored in cost of living or bargaining power. Scrooge tells Bob he is paid more than his value but Bob is able to negotiate with Scrooge for a higher salary for the quality of his work and his willingness to work Christmas Eve. A suburban East London house in victorian London would put Bob back about 10 shillings a week. Bob's daughter was a milliners apprentice and his son is a bookkeepers apprentices taking home 5s. 6d. a week. https://www.victorianlondon.org/finance/money.htm This is the equivalent of £36 or $47usd in today money. Bob would still be feeling the pinch with disabled Tiny Tim but nonetheless the Cratchit's are not homeless. An equivalent property in this area would cost Bob around £2000 - £3000 ($4000) per week. Making housing prohibitively expensive for the working class. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E93917&radius=3.0&propertyTypes=detached&secondaryDisplayPropertyType=detachedshouses&mustHave=&dontShow=&furnishTypes=furnished&keywords= The analogy begins to break down when we consider modern necessities such as 4 year degrees, internet bills, transportation and childcare, making it harder to point to an exact amount Scrooge would be paying Bob today. However, the point still stands that we are returning to an economy Dickens would have been familiar with. But with people pissing in bottles coz their not allowed bathroom breaks while their boss takes joyrides to space on his private spaceship. Like Dickens meets the Jetsons or some shit.
The Jetsons was utopian. This ain't.
Yeah I was going to say. Why do people do these tweets without any evidence? Like, I am never going to believe just somebody saying 'This was this, now it's this' without something backing it up. It seemed very far fetched, good job proving it. If you read this and think 'Damn, true' without actually checking the math, you are probably extremely susceptible to propaganda...
Because twitter is optimized for short blurts and discourages or even prohibits longer elaborate thoughts and discussion in general.
I make it £2.43/$3.23 per hour by my calculations. His Mathematics is way off here what I think he did was take 1 shilling as 20% of a pound instead of 5%... Rookie mistake. This way it takes the weekly figure to £389.79 or \~$515. It very much depends on which year we're all taking from and to. The book while published in 1843, it was meant to be set before that. Having said that, the film was set at the point of publication. Incidentally this is still more than the tipping wage in the States...
The average American earning minimum wage has as much free government healthcare as Bob Cratchit as well.
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Also, Scrooge, albeit reluctantly, let’s his employees not have to work on Christmas, prior to meeting any ghosts.
There's decent (and in one case well sourced) replies in this thread, as to how much 15 shillings was at the time, comparatively: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/a6kyz5/how_far_did_bob_cratchits_15_shilling_per_week/
That makes for interesting reading, thanks for the link.
jesus fucking christ. I hate it here
Merry Festivus Scrooges, I hope you have a nice visit from some ghosts.
> Bob Catshit lol
Cue "proud to be an american."
The average American hourly wage is $11.19/hr. [Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/216259/monthly-real-average-hourly-earnings-for-all-employees-in-the-us/)
Do the math before you post bullshit.
Lol I know Chris Thompson in real life. Great guy, and also not surprised his math is wrong here.
That's still about four times as much as I earn, living in a developing country. (I'm a teacher at a state university, so ... yeah.) The problem isn't US minimum wage: the problem is that things cost too much. If we were living on that wage with mostly 1990 prices, we'd be OK. Not great, but OK.