Benjamin
VeeThis is why I love the internet... there's always somebody willing to compute.
oscarfalconI feel that A Christmas Carol SHOULD be updated with Contemporary Currency (based on these statistics)... then see conservatives BAN it asap.
@oscarfalcon 👍 💯 totally.
Noel KellyThe true meaning of the Christmas spirit.
Ghosts scaring rich people into paying their workers living wages.
moduluxThe post contains an image with the following text:
Time for your annual reminder that,
according to A Christmas Carol, Bob
Cratchit makes 15 shillings a week.
Adjusted for inflation, that's $530.27/wk,
$27,574/yr, or $13.50/ hr.
Most Americans on minimum wage earn
less than a Dickensian allegory for
destitution.
This is Hell
jasper89@VeroniqueB99 or, that job doesn’t exist anymore because of accounting software and business practices.
Also, he doesn’t need to rely on minimum wage if he’s a modern accounting professional at the entry level:
derekheld
Robin Barton@VeroniqueB99 That is insane
Arapalla
Zerochaos80@VeroniqueB99 even the federal government says people can't afford basic necessities on $7.25 an hour. Instead of murdering "suspected drug dealers" Trump should try doing something useful with his time besides practicing his golf swing. (or pardoning presidents who move tons of cocaine into the US). That was a great point made, by the way.
Artemis@VeroniqueB99
This has been fact checked and while the numbers are all right, historians say that Cratchit wasnt a destitution allegory in raw numbers. 15 shillings was double what manual laborers earned. It was simply not enough to support a such a large family.
Michael Eickenboom
LukefromDC@VeroniqueB99 I think Scrooge would have trouble with current rents in DC
@LukefromDC 🤣 👍who doesn't?...
Matthew Malthouse15 shillings was 3/4 of a pound sterling.
According to the Bank of England's inflation calculator 15 shillings in 1840 would be £66.69 in October 2025.
Today £66.69 is $91.42 so we would get $4,753.84 per year.
I'm sure that if one took the £-$ exchange of the time and used a US $ figure one would get a different number but not so sure it'd be that different.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator
Unredacted Epstein files now@calmeilles @VeroniqueB99 Yeah, I can’t figure out where the optimistic numbers are coming from.
Sean LynchEven if you multiply that annual salary by 2.4 to account for the pound going from 240d per pound to 100d per pound after decmilisation in the early 70's, you still get to $11,409.22 per year.
No wonder he couldn't afford a goose for Christmas dinner!
The 2.4 multiplication would be erroneous. 15 shillings being 3/4 of a £ and so 75p.
Working in parts of a pound not pennies accounts for decimalisation.
Noah Mittman 
@calmeilles @VeroniqueB99 I assumed the weaker US dollar was a factor, but it was only a 0.2000 rate, and when plugging it into measuringworth.com only made it more confusing -- £0.75's purchase value is much lower and its wage value is much higher than the original screenshot between now and then according to them
https://www.measuringworth.com/dollarvaluetoday/?amount=3.73&from=1840
https://www.measuringworth.com/dollarvaluetoday/?amount=3.73&from=1840
soup2nuts
sheddi@VeroniqueB99
For comparison, the current UK minimum wage for age 21+ is £12.21 an hour, which at today's exchange rates would be about US$16.30.
For comparison, the current UK minimum wage for age 21+ is £12.21 an hour, which at today's exchange rates would be about US$16.30.
HestiaAndTheCourt
Mark Gardner@kmartino That could be taken as either an argument to raise the minimum wage or to abolish it.
SearingTruth"Perhaps profit should be the least of our concern.
And humanity the most."
SearingTruth
@SearingTruth ...perhaps indeed...
Fardels BearWhen you think about Bob Cratchit's wage in terms of what it can buy, he's still poor but gets by. It's enough to support a wife and 3 children in their own home, when many poor families shared a single room. Scrooge was a miser but he knew the market value of a good clerk, with the essential numeracy skills that were the reputational backbone of a City firm. Cratchit is middle class, albeit one of the precariat.
The non-existent healthcare would be familiar to many Americans.