1 pound = 20 shillings.
1 GBP in 1843 is worth £104.72 now (https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator)
104.72/20*15=78.54
£78.54 = $99.55USD
99.55/40 (hrs per week) = $2.49USD per hour
Or less, given he likely worked more than 40 hours per week.
But I think we can say that $2.50/hr is a very Scrooge-like wage, and that OP has no fucking clue how to do basic math.
EDIT:
However, from https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/relativevalue.php
1GBP in 1843:
in 1843 there are four choices. In 2021 the relative:
- real price of that commodity is £104.40
- labour value of that commodity is £862.70
- income value of that commodity is £1,409.00
- economic share of that commodity is £4,601.00
he likely worked more than 40 hours a week.
a quick Google tells me it was 52 hours / week, which was likely 6 day weeks - so roughly 8-9 hours a day mon thru Saturday
Interestingly, the numbers I found said that Americans at the time worked on average 70 hours / week.
How did you jump from 78.54 to 64.13?
Oops! Thanks for that. Initially I used 1841 as the year, and later found out it should have been 1843. For some reason there was a huge change in value between 1841 and 1843. That 64.13 was just a leftover I forgot to replace. Fixed!
How do you go from 78.54 (modern pounds equivalent to 15 shillings) to 64.1325? I don't understand that step.
Oops! Thanks for that. Initially I used 1841 as the year, and later found out it should have been 1843. For some reason there was a huge change in value between 1841 and 1843. That 64.13 was just a leftover I forgot to replace. Fixed!
In the 1840s, 15 British shillings would have been equivalent to approximately $3.63 in U.S. dollars at the time. Adjusting for inflation, this amount is equivalent to about $123.24 in today's U.S. dollars.
If someone earned an amount equivalent to $123.24 per week in today's dollars, the daily rate for this income would be approximately $17.61 in today's U.S. dollars.
Your math is weird. Why are you talking about daily rate, when OP is talking about weekly and hourly?
Where did you get your inflation conversion from? I got my numbers from the Bank of England, and it's about $100usd, not $123usd. 25% margin of error is way off.
$2.49usd per hour is the right answer.
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This was a beautiful comment on the topic of wage disparity and how businesses use tips to pay their staff.
"Butbut everyone has a fridge!"
Yea, so does every landfill. Just because we can produce a shitload of things does not magically mean certain people are incapable of taking way too big of a cut.
If Cratchit worked 40 hours a week, then his weekly wage translates to 16.18 pounds per hour, or $20.49/hour.
If Cratchit worked 65 hours a week, which is more likely considering he was overworked during a time in which workers were expected to work more than 60 hours a week, then his weekly wage translates to 9.95 pounds hour, or $12.60/hour.
Thank you. Nuance matters
Thank you for the source. Their context helps.
I’d love to see a third option. But I’m lazy and dumb. What was that equivalent in gold ?
Why does the working class, the largest class, not simply eat the smaller class?
I genuinely don't believe this math
Smart, OP has a reputation for posting memes that are wildly incorrect/dishonest.
Weird flex to side with Scrooge. I believe your complaint is with Melanie D’Arrigo.
The first ghost will appear at midnight
I'm guessing that assumes 40 hour work weeks which i doubt he worked only 40 hrs a week.
Over the past 50 years GDP per person is up 4x in the US. At the same time we've gone from just the man working in a household to both adults working.
We could be 8x richer per household if wages kept up, instead housing/tuition/healthcare are more unaffordable than ever. We're poorer.
I don't need Charles Dickens to tell me that the US federal minimum wage has gone up $7.00 in 80 years, and that is dysfunctional.
But what the fuck is or was a guinea ?
Apparently it was worth 1 pound and 1 shilling
yeah but: he paid them more and now burgers are more expensive. so...
Currency conversion ?
I don't think scrooge lived in the (un-)united states of america
You can calculate an equivalent. How many hours of work would he need to pay for housing and food in that time for that currency.
We're more efficient than ever at construction and agriculture, but it takes more hours to pay for it.
Bob Cratchit's problem was he couldn't keep it in his pants. Of course he was living in poverty with 15 kids or however many he had.
EDIT: Are people seriously downvoting me for being mean to Bob Cratchit?
You're probably being downvoted for being wrong. In the novel, he had 5 kids, but also the entire point of Bob Cratchit is as an allegory for the working class, so criticizing him for having too many kids is hilariously in line with Ebenezer Scrooge pre-ghosts. You might as well have said that Mr. Cratchit should've let Tiny Tim die so they wouldn't be so poor for maximum irony.
Having a large number of kids was really common during that time period. Back then kids often helped around the house and on the farm; plus it was pretty common for kids to die before reaching adulthood which is another reason for the large number.
It wasn’t until around the 40s or 50s that the 1-3 kids per family became common
