'We are essentially in a new Gilded Age’: As workers get laid off, CEOs and shareholders gobble up hundreds of billions in profits
'We are essentially in a new Gilded Age’: As workers get laid off, CEOs and shareholders gobble up hundreds of billions in profits
CEOs cite the need to downsize in a rough economy, but it seems corporations are doing better than ever.
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Here's a crazy thing.
Watch an old movie with a super rich character and look at how poor they seem.
In 1973's 'The Mackintosh Man' the baddie is a British lord, one of the richest in England. His yacht looks like a tugboat compared to today's superyachts.
Hell, In 'Batman and Robin' billionaire Bruce Wayne has a mere three dozen cars.
In the book count of monte cristo, he gets like, a single small chest of gold and gems. And that's supposedly enough to live like kings for multiple lifetimes. Compared to the movie version where it's dozens of large chests and at one point they just give a guy an entire wagon full of gold.
I don't know anyone who was around in the 1800s who can tell us accurately how much one gold coin could buy. Also, gems vary tremendously in value. The Hope Diamond is worth $250 million. Edmund could have had a dozen stones that size in his chest.
Numbers in that book always seem a bit random, but always work as a sort of scale. This lady has an income of 40k Franks while this dude has an income of 5k shillings.
You never exactly know what's what, but you get the scale and the massive fortune the Count must have. My guess is that he was like a billionaire, with 900 million VS everyone else who was at best a 10-20 million type dude.
Fuck billionaires and all, but I think two things are wrong with this.
First, comparing hollywood to real life. They were making super yachts in the 1800s. El Mahrousa was built in 1865 and still in the top 10 in size.
But those megayachts sre super unnecessary and terrible for enviroment.
Secondly, times just generally changed. Poor people shifted a lot too. 1970s poor was a lot more poor than modern poor generally.
But we should still fix the system that fucks over thr majority.
You're completely wrong about the idea that people who were poor in the 1970s were worse off than people today.
Hunter Thompson's book, "Hell's Angels" has a chapter on the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist circa 1972. A biker could work for six months as a Union stevedore and earn enough to hit the road for two years. A part time waitress could earn enough to support herself and her musician boyfriend. A kid who graduated high school and got a minimum wage job could rent a one bedroom apartment and party and still put money in the bank.
And don't say that today's tech is much better unless you can prove that real wages dropping resulted in the creation of the internet.
stevedore
noun.
a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.
(Definitions from Oxford Languages)Edit: Reformatted for readability ease.
Add two spaces before a line break to preserve said line break after markdown formatting.
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
noun
a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.> Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more > noun > a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.Appreciate the advice, but I was aware of it. I was just in a hurry though, so I did a quick copy and paste and moved on. Figured the information would be conveyed well enough as is.
Fair enough.
Personally the "learn more noun" bit tripped me up for a moment, so I thought to mention after figuring it out. The information is appreciated regardless.
Yeah, I was just doing a community service after having done the lookup for myself, so I figured anyone with any reasonable mindset would forgive me for it not being formatted perfectly, considering it's still very readable.
The information is appreciated regardless.
You're welcome. It was a easy 'low-hanging fruit' way of making Lemmy a little bit better for all.
But would you consider that poor then? Maybe money was easier to obtain, but starvation/malnutrition rates have constantly been on a steady decline until the last few years. Not often you see people using a burlap sack to cloth their families, child labor, things like that. And we do have a lot of social programs like SNAP that didnt exist pre-1970s.1980s had the Homeless act. The world has changed drastically in the last 50-100 years.
But I guess you could make solid arguments that the economy is generally harder now, so its worse for the majority, incuding the poor.
Not often you see people using a burlap sack to cloth their families, child labor, things like that. And we do have a lot of social programs like SNAP that didnt exist pre-1970s
Burlap sacks and child labor were prevalent in the 1930's Depression.
Johnson's War On Poverty began in 1964
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_poverty
Homelessness became rife in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan slashed spending. He'd done the same thing as California governor and should have known what would happen when he took his act national.
So, we have been progessing over time, until recently, correct?
Now lets bring being poor as a different demographic than white male in history as well.
Because there was a black millionaire in the early 1900s, it was easier to be poor and black before/during the civil rights movement than it is in modern day?
I dont feel like we are having a coherent converation and these replies are purely reactive?
I never felt we were having a coherent conversation.
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