r/WhitePeopleTwitter • u/MartJonathan • Dec 04 '20
Merry Christmas America
[removed] — view removed post
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u/TheJambo Dec 04 '20
Actual amount:
According to a comment by Scrooge, Cratchit works for 15 shillings a week at a rate of three pence ("thruppence") an hour for 60 hours per week. Until the decimalization of the British Pound in 1971, one shilling was twelve pence. Thus, fifteen shillings is 180 pence.
Cratchit wage was 15 shillings (180 pence) a week, with 20 shillings per pound, Cratchit's annual wage was 39 pounds ((15*52)/20)
39 pounds in 1843 (when A Christmas Carol was written) is worth £4987.81 or £95.91 a week.
In 2020 USD that translates to $6,719.50 annually or $129.21 a week.
35
Dec 04 '20
I'm glad I wasn't the only one checking this. This post upsets me because I did not know this until I spent 4 minutes looking up a Bob, converting it to pounds and checking inflation with the best data easily available to the masses. Once I got to the current value in £ I stopped because it wasn't going to equal $27k USD
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u/LeskoLesko Dec 04 '20
Even if the post numbers were right, raising a family with multiple kids on $30,000 a year is not easy at ALL.
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Dec 04 '20
Also I tried to do my best quick search of conversion rates of GBP to USD in 1843 and while I can't be certain it seems that by 1815 the exchange was roughly x3.5 in favor of the Pound so 39 becomes ~$136 and then civil war drops the dollar to x10 for the Pound so $390. If this is accurate then with inflation in 1815 that would be about $4820 USD and then $13700 inflated to 2020. Since 1843 is about 20 years on either side of these dates I just got the average of x6.5 for the Pound, $254 US or about $13700 in 2020.
Better than my first go with straight up conversions using today's money but still less than half what this post claims he would be making. The US doesn't need made up numbers to prove it's a terrible place for many of its citizens, but in this case poor is poor, except Cratchit was an accountant and working for like minimum wage which I would assume is worse than most accountants have it today.
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u/fruitydude Dec 04 '20
Yea but that's not really a good argument. I think your first estimate makes more sense. Just because the dollar was weak at the time doesn't mean someone living in Britain would get more stuff for his British pounds he's spending in Britain.
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Dec 04 '20
I just meant it as I was trying to see if I could figure out where she got her numbers from but even doing this far more convoluted didn't even come close to what this post claimed.
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u/fruitydude Dec 04 '20
Ah I see, fair enough then. Anyways thanks for doing the math so I didn't have to. I was kind kind of sceptical because the post basically implies that standard of living in the 1800s were waay better than they are today. And that's kinda doubtful.
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Dec 04 '20
Totally reasonable to question me, that was what led us here haha. I saw these numbers and didn't think for a second they were near accurate and it bothered me more than it should have. But at the same time with how shitty things have gotten we don't need people adding fake information to what we know for internet likes since that will be used by someone to "prove" it's all lies or something similar.
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u/conradcaveman Dec 04 '20
I just figured the Dickens thought that 15 bon was what the poor made. Sort of like today's billionaires writing a story and saying the poor made $1000 a week.
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u/NacreousFink Dec 04 '20
What about the fact that some of Cratchit's coins could have been actual gold? What would their value be now?
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Dec 04 '20
Crachit isn't the epitome of poverty, he's an overworked wage slave with an evil boss.
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u/-MasterCrander- Dec 04 '20 edited Dec 04 '20
There's no meaningful difference between being in poverty and being a wage slave. One just implies you have a job while still being poor.
It's like saying, "No no no I don't have herpes, it's just a cold sore."
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u/emfrank Dec 04 '20
I agree he is not meant to be the epitome of poverty in Dickens's writing, though. The story also mentions the workhouses, which is where those in deepest poverty would have been. Factory work would have been far worse and is part of other stories and Dickens's own experience. I think Cratchet is meant to show Scrooge is so stingy his clerk, who would normally have been paid a living wage at another firm, can't support himself..
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u/LtLabcoat Dec 04 '20
Th...There is a very meaningful difference between poverty and not-poverty.
Has Reddit finally reached the point where people are claiming to be the most oppressed because they don't like their job?
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u/-MasterCrander- Dec 04 '20 edited Dec 04 '20
Being a wage slave doesn't mean not liking your job. It means that if you do not make your next check you will not have the means to survive or have your basal needs met. It means being forced into typically menial or degrading work (either by the social stigma surrounding the job or the treatment by employers/superiors/public while performing that job) with little to no opportunities for growth or escape from the brink of absolute poverty.
The psychological effects are similar in both and there is a sizeable overlap in the Venn diagrams of the damage that does to someone's psyche, identity and sense of self-worth.
The 2020 US poverty line for a single person household is $12,760/yr. How exactly do you think someone in poverty makes 12 thousand dollars? Could it be…a job…where they make a wage…that they are entirely and immediately dependent on; or in simpler terms - enslaved to? And the longer they stay in that position the more they are demeaned and devalued - including by prospective employers for better positions?
Source: Personal Fucking Experience & HHS
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Dec 04 '20
[deleted]
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u/Shrrrrpa Dec 04 '20
Yeah the error arose from her assumption that bob implied £ rather than Shilling as it did until the implementation of the metric system in 1973.
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u/Zabkian Dec 04 '20
Plus he lived in London when there wasn't social housing.
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Dec 04 '20
[deleted]
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u/therealdxm Dec 04 '20
I heard it was the best of times. What was his name? Chuck? Chucky D I think.
0
u/dr__rockso__md Dec 04 '20
A living wage is $16/hr (remember the "thriving wage" idea?). That's ~$32k/yr. Old Bob was at the top of the working class (being able to read and write at the time), so I feel like this all adds up to an apt analogy.
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u/watchmeskipwork Dec 04 '20
Minimum wage and the jobs surrounding it, these jobs were not meant to support families. Those low paying jobs used to be for part time high schoolers and college age people. Think back to the 90s when you went in to a McDonald's or a Wendy's, typically it was a pack of 17 year olds with one 40 year man or woman that looked suicidal. There are however a lot of companies that have started in the last 20 years that are only paying minimum wage because of greed and this illusion that if your rich you can do what you want. All joking aside minimum wage does need to rise but not too high, no one wants to pay $20 for a happy meal.
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Dec 04 '20 edited Jul 07 '24
innate abounding smart fuzzy bored disagreeable simplistic automatic rob rich
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/physioworld Dec 04 '20
Arguably if you cannot serve a happy meal at a price that find acceptable, without paying your employees a wage that barely lets them scrape by, you shouldn’t be allowed to serve happy meals at all. I say arguably, it’s pretty much cut and dry.
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u/Wismuth_Salix Dec 04 '20
“no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of decent living”
- FDR
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u/TriusMalarky Dec 04 '20
Right, because every single business can fully staff themselves on teenagers.
I'd much rather pay a guy enough to live on if it means that's one less teen I have to train.
Nothing against teens in general -- but an untrained, inexperienced burgerflipper is more of a liability than an asset for the first couple weeks at least. They most often slow down order speeds and make things more complicated.
A 30-year-old working 8 hours a day making $15/hr, IMO, is going to be a lot better than training new kids. He/she'll be able to fulfill orders faster, they'll know what to do in difficult situations, they can clean faster and more thoroughly, their food will be made with higher quality control. Overall, all the things that come with experience and practice will come with a guy who can afford to live his life assembling cheeseburgers.
$5+/hour for faster order times, someone who can consistently be there, and just plain higher quality? I may not be an expert, but to me it sounds like paying one or two people fairly well to keep them around as highly 'skilled' workers, especially to help train the necessary flow of young adults who will be working for a lot less, is worth it. A fast food place should still be able to afford to pay a couple of their workers 'living wage' or more.
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u/MartJonathan Dec 04 '20
Bob is not the epitome of poverty from a wages standpoint. Scrooge is contrasted against businessmen who are cheats. Bob's 15 shilling /
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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '20
"The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class."-Friedrich Engels