is it just me or is the font really hard to read?
Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
21–30 of 89 posts
Re: Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
#22„and for settlers trying to persuade Indians to abandon tribal lands that these newcomers wished to inhabit.„ Ah - they persuaded them. What a lovely euphemism.
You have taken it out of context, where it was ironically written about the most common uses of revolvers, so it was clearly a joke (the whole article was written in humorous manner, for those who didn't read).
Re: Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
#23There seems to be an error: "The family’s annual food bill was $80 a month." For a person earning $1.50 per day, that would have been a whopping monthly food bill.
The whole sentence is illogical as 'annual' implies 'per year'.
Re: Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
#24Nice introduction, but I admit I was a bit disappointed to not get even one "get-rich-quick scheme".
"to not get even one "get-rich-quick scheme"."
It's stressed in the article that the most important thing to get rich is to be born around 1835, so you could start with this.
Re: Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
#25There seems to be an error: "The family’s annual food bill was $80 a month." For a person earning $1.50 per day, that would have been a whopping monthly food bill.
The whole sentence is illogical as 'annual' implies 'per year'.
I think it means average cost per month.
Basically what they say is that yearly spend was $960, and then present it as per-month-cost, but I can imagine food prices varied quite a bit with the seasons back then, so that true spend at any given month could be quite a bit different from this average.
Re: Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole sentence is illogical as 'annual' implies 'per year'.
I think it means average cost per month. Basically what they say is that yearly spend was $960, and then present it as per-month-cost, but I can imagine food prices varied quite a bit with the seasons back then, so that true spend at any given month could be quite a bit different from this average.
Then why not say "The family’s food bill was $80 a month."
Re: Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Historically, the price of food was much higher than it is now. Thank our farmers for operating more efficient year after year. https://mjperry.blogspot.nl/2010/07/as-share-of-income-ameri...
You are right that modern technology has figured out how to turn energy into soil (way oversimplified!), and that probably 80% of the nitrogen in the bodies of any of us reading this came from the Haber process. However, it still sounds bizarre that about 90% of their expenses was food.
$1.50 per day is about $45 per month, $80 per month would be 175% of income, so I'd hope that there was a second income earner in the family.
Re: Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
#28Regarding the point about his good fortune of being born in 1835, I wonder what the date is for new tech billionaire CEOs. The article made me wonder if we are in our own little gilded age now.
Mark Zuckerberg: 1984
Larry Page: 1973
Sergey Brin: 1973
Elon Musk: 1971
Michael Dell: 1965
Jeff Bezos: 1964
Jack Ma: 1964
Masayoshi Son: 1957
Steven Ballmer: 1956
Bill Gates: 1955
Steve Jobs: 1955
Paul Allen: 1953
Larry Ellison: 1944
The median of this list (which I compiled with no particular methodology or criteria) is 1964. The mean is 1962.
Re: Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right that modern technology has figured out how to turn energy into soil (way oversimplified!), and that probably 80% of the nitrogen in the bodies of any of us reading this came from the Haber process. However, it still sounds bizarre that about 90% of their expenses was food.
$1.50 per day is about $45 per month, $80 per month would be 175% of income, so I'd hope that there was a second income earner in the family.
I think the error is the 'per month' part. $80 per year matches pretty well with a daily wage of $1.50, and a monthly housing cost of $6. It would work out to over 20% of their annual budget being allocated to food, which while higher than today, historically seems to match.
Re: Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes
#30There seems to be an error: "The family’s annual food bill was $80 a month." For a person earning $1.50 per day, that would have been a whopping monthly food bill.
Someting is off with the food prices. Multiplying the other amounts by 100 yields reasonable comparisons to todays prices:
$485 - mens suit
$8000 - NYC rent
$150/day - working person salary
$600 - rural rent
$35/lb butter
$40/dozen eggs