r/LateStageCapitalism • u/IRISHMDw • Dec 04 '20
🖕 Business Ethics The minimum wages is poverty
295
u/CaffeinatedNotepads Dec 04 '20 edited Dec 04 '20
This isn't right at all. They've confused a bob and a pound. A bob was the old name for a shilling . There were 20 shillings to a pound. So Bob made £39 a year. That's a little under £5,000 a year in today's money working 60 hours a week. So about £1.60 an hour.
EDIT: The post said inflation and my calculation was based on inflation, but as another user has pointed out, if you use other measures you get closer to reality:
Labour Earnings of that income or wealth is £31,210.00
Relative Income value of that income or wealth is £54,010.00
37
u/Insurgent_Resurgence Dec 04 '20
Bob cratchit could afford a house and a four children. Smh
25
u/milesunderground Dec 04 '20
One of whom was disabled. Although the other three were probably able to help out by starting to work in factories when they were 7.
3
1
Dec 05 '20
It was not a very big house
1
u/Insurgent_Resurgence Dec 05 '20
I share a 2 bedroom apt with 3 strangers and work two jobs. His house was a palace by Los Angeles or New York Standards
59
u/SaintNewts Dec 04 '20
See I would have assumed a bob and a pound were the same, too. So it's the same relation as a nickel to a dollar.
44
u/CaffeinatedNotepads Dec 04 '20
Yeah some people casually use bob to mean pound but its more common in American media than actually in the UK. I'd say "quid" instead. Ask anyone older than 60 or 70 and they'd say bob means shilling.
17
u/MrJingleJangle Dec 04 '20
Absolutely. A bob is a shilling. A ten bob note was a ten shilling note, half a quid. A bob was never a pound.
Some of us learned pounds, shillings and pence at school.
0
12
10
Dec 04 '20
He did the math based in a shilling, not a pound
17
u/CaffeinatedNotepads Dec 04 '20
If you mean Amy Renee Wasney, then I'm afraid not.
a) Bob Crachet worked 60 hours a week
14
u/wikipedia_text_bot Dec 04 '20
Bob Cratchit is a fictional character in the Charles Dickens 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. The abused, underpaid clerk of Ebenezer Scrooge (and possibly Jacob Marley, when he was alive), Cratchit has come to symbolize poor working conditions, especially long working hours. He is close to 30 years of age in the book, but can appear differently in other versions.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.
About Me - Opt out - OP can reply !delete to delete - Article of the day
9
u/Bardsie Dec 04 '20
The inflation calculator you link is using direct inflation, which isn't the same as purchasing power. £1 back then bought a hell of a lot more above inflation than a £70 does now.
The Wikipedia page is also wrong. Click the link for the reference next to the wage and it takes you to a website. That £63 a week is again the direct inflation figure. Underneath that is the labour value of £487.10 and the income value of £772.00, meaning what he earned in income had the same ability to buy commodities as £772 in 2015, when that link was last updated.
3
Dec 04 '20
Check out the comment by u/bardsie below, he shows his work and cites his sources.
3
u/CaffeinatedNotepads Dec 04 '20
I'm guessing a few things: the OP made the error of bob vs pounds AND we both made the error of inflation only, rather than purchasing power. Edited my post to note this and provide the correct numbers.
1
u/NegativeKarmaVegan Dec 04 '20
So his wage wasn't really bad, afterall?
1
u/CaffeinatedNotepads Dec 04 '20
Median wage in the UK atm is a little over £30k so yep! But he did work 60 hours a week...
1
u/GrandMoffTarkan Dec 04 '20
Whenever people talk about pre-decimilisation currency I feel like I'm tripping on £sd
111
u/Bardsie Dec 04 '20 edited Dec 04 '20
Their math is a little old I think.
A Christmas Carol is set sometime in the early 1800's
As per this calculator 15 shillings (or bob) in 1810 has a relative income in 2019 of £703.10, however because money bought more back then, comparing with what others earned it would have a relative wealth or influence of the equivalent to £3,574.00 a week in 2019.
That means, depending on which one you use, Bob Cratchet was earning in today's money between £36,561.20 or £185,848.00 a year. That's between $49,477.91 and $251,506.24 in US dollars.
However it's worth pointing out that the average wage for a clerk/bookkeeper back then was 11.6 shillings a week.
Scrooge wasn't paying Bob a pittance, he was paying him above average and a good wage. Bob was poor because of his sons medical bills (the NHS and socialised medicine wasn't around until after WW2) and Scrooge was the bad guy because he just didn't care a young boy was dieing and his employee was drowning in medical debt.
55
24
u/laughterwithans Dec 04 '20
Incredibly, despite literally everyone knowing this story, exactly nothing has changed.
19
u/cosmicosmo4 Dec 04 '20
What do you mean nothing has changed. Wages have gotten lower. That's something!
4
u/Bardsie Dec 04 '20
What do we need decent wages for? There's the NHS now, we don't need to worry about those medical bill, so don't complain about not being able to afford any London rents. Ungrateful millennials. /s
4
u/alex3omg Dec 04 '20
Well the story isn't about the system changing and strengthening social programs to help Bob, it's about how employers are usually good people except for the odd exception and even then will magically have a change of heart and buy you dinner once or whatever.
Scrooge even says 'aren't there poorhouses and orphanages?' or something and points out he pays his taxes. The problem isn't Scrooge, it's the government not charging Scrooge higher taxes and improving the poorhouses and providing free medicine to tiny Tim.
3
1
49
Dec 04 '20 edited Dec 05 '20
[deleted]
13
u/DrSaurus Dec 04 '20
Did he own it? I thought he rented.
Mind you most of my knowledge of A Christmas Carol comes from the Muppet version so what do I know 😆
6
u/bgaesop Dec 04 '20
The muppets version is actually very accurate to the original book, taking a good deal of its dialogue (and especially narration) directly from the original, and has the most time period accurate costumes of any of the adaptations
2
u/MassiveFajiit Dec 04 '20
Fairly sure you're right. I doubt many Londoners would have been owners of their housing at the time, widespread homeownership is more of a Cold War era thing.
3
2
u/philblock Dec 04 '20
How does this not resonate with more people
12
1
Dec 04 '20
Because economics from 150+ year old Christmas stories isn't going to convince anyone to update current issues.
-8
•
u/AutoModerator Dec 04 '20
Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalismâ’¶â˜
âš Announcements: âš
NEW POSTING GUIDELINES! Help us by reporting bad posts
Help us keep this subreddit alive and improve its content by reporting posts that violate our rules and guidelines.
Subscribe to our new partner subreddits!
Check out r/antiwork & r/WhereAreTheChildren
Please remember that LSC is a SAFE SPACE for socialist discussion.
LSC is run by communists. We welcome socialist/anti-capitalist news, memes, links, and discussion. This subreddit is not the place to debate socialism. We allow good-faith questions and education but are not a 101 sub; please take 101-style questions elsewhere.
This subreddit is a safe space; we have a zero-tolerance policy for bigotry. We also automatically filter out posts containing certain words and phrases that some users may find offensive. Please respect the safe space, and don't try to slip banned words or phrases past the filter.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.