I wonder how many Trump supporters watch without realizing that Mr. Potter in all his greed and lack of empathy is Trump (though in fairness, arguably a better businessman than Donnie). I’m going to wager all.
There was a post a few days past about someone watching the movie with his dad and his dad just says he’d shoot Mr. Potter.
OP then asked his dad, “so you’re okay with shooting the CEO now?”
Dad shut up about it after that.
Conservatives like to believe that they are the heroes of the story. Where they are the paragons of virtue but in reality, they want to control and oppress people. That’s it.
I remember years ago someone ran down what Potter’s horrible, evil, awful, inhuman, immoral, interest rate was on his loans…
2%.
They watch it and think how nice it is that angels exist.
You know it’s a movie right? It’s not real life
Yea, when has any art form been an allegory for real life.
It’s not real life
You’re right. It’s a wonderful life. Says so right in the title.
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Telling you it’s a movie makes me a fascist lol. That’s a new one
I wasn’t necessarily accusing you of being a fascist, only pointing out that insisting media does not have deeper meaning beyond the surface level is a common element of fascism.
I didn’t say it doesn’t. I said it’s a movie, meaning it’s not real. Using it as an argument about Trump is a bad argument. Then jumping straight to fascism is just stupid
OP simply expressed disbelief that Trump supporters don’t draw the obvious parallels between Trump and the character of Mr. Potter that they see.
Mr. Potter’s character was obviously written to satirize real-world robber barons, of which Trump is a model example.
obvious parallels
Like?
Trump is a model example.
How?
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JFC
Jfc
5 grand back then was like 80k today i think
WAAAAAY more 5k back then was buy a house money. 5k back in the setting of the movie 1912-1934ish? Was ≈260 ounces of gold. So today that is $680,000 today which is definitely enough to afford a nice house.
We are given inflstiin stats using consumer price index as the main metric of measure but CPI is beyond inadequate primarily because it does not account for the devaluation of a currency due to the increase in circulating currency supply.
For 172 years the price of gold stayed constant only changing when fdr made it illegal to hoard more than a certain amount of gold, bought back all the gold, built fort knox to store it in and then after they were certain they had a majority of the support in the usa they revalued it from $19 to $35 so for the first 172 years after the Usa implemented a standard currency (the us dollar) gold only fluctuated ≈80% but since nixon ended the gold standard in 1971 the price of gold has ballooned 7500% to $2650 last time i checked. And this all corresponded perfectly with the amount of money printed into supply. After nixon pulled out of the bretton woods agreement in 8 years the price of gold had increased 2000% just under $800 and within a year of that spike the us printed the first trillion into circulation now we print one trillion every 3-4 months.
I could elaborate on why the value of money is intrinsically tied to the price of gold but it is an argument i make regularly and ill wait till the choir of people who trust the criminals of wall street who’s business model is committing fraud, exploiting the poor and robbing the working class chimes in
But $5000 today is less than 1% of the gold $5000 was 90 years ago but despite that its still an impossible amount for most people to accumulate.
CPI isn’t perfect, but it’s more indicative of real world concerns of average person. I don’t care about gold, but I do care about goods accounted for in the CPI.
Just because a commodity is roughly fixed in amount and availability not as easily manipulated by making up numbers does not mean it has some magical absolute “value”. Value is always subjective and heavily based on context.
Offer me a bar of gold for everything in my pantry today? Sure thing, I know I can get a lot more money and refill my pantry. If you made that same offer, but people are disinterested in gold? No, because ultimately that bar is useless to me without the wider context of people willing to part with significant resources in exchange for the gold.
Modern monetary policy is as much about psychology as it is about math. Gaming the system so that, largely, people have a number that behaves predictably to general goods and services over time. In the great depression, the relative value of gold in real terms fluctuated wildly, and society exploded in no small part due to people’s feelings relative to the numbers despite the fundamentals not changing much between “things are going great” and “everything is ruined”.
This is a common talking point, but much of what you’ve said isn’t true. We did not have enough gold to cover every dollar the whole time under Bretton Woods, about 65% at the end of WW2, and it wasn’t out of the blue that Nixon withdrew from the agreement.
If we had tried to maintain that system, we would have either lost all our gold due to countries taking advantage of the price difference between the peg and gold markets worldwide, or we would have had to restrict dollar supply to the point we would no longer be the reserve currency of the world, neither of which were in our country’s interest.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Late_application
What did I say that wasnt true? The us dollar maintained strength for 172 years from 1799 till 1971 untill nixon shock led to the age of austerity we now face where 60% of working people live paycheck to paycheck with no emergency savings. If you cut out generations x and w then the percentage is higher. A majority of millennials and gen z will never own homes or have retirement savings. Forcing them to work till they are too sick to do so and have to rely on measly social Security payments if the program hasnt been gutted or privatized in 30-60 years from now.
And lets say hypothetically that the usa never ended the gold standard. the idea that there isnt enough gold to cover the amount of currency circulating isn’t the issue. Unless something happens that destroys the trust in the us dollar there is no reason for people to demand their currency be exchanged for gold (or silver which is highly undervalued atm but ultimately not as valuable as a commodity in comparison to gold) the main factor that makes the gold standard not viable in modern times is billionaires hoarding wealth. When regular people were in control of the vast majority of the wealth share, in the times before the 1980’s the wealth held by regular working class people would recirculate into the economy. Whereas when multi millionaires and billionaires (people in the top 10-5% of the wealth distribution pyramid )hold wealth that wealth gets hoarded and hidden away and removed from the financial ecosystem which does not benefit markets or society as a whole. Before the 1980’s/1990’s the bottom 90% of people held 80% of the wealth but today that has reversed. The top 20% hold 73% of the wealth with the wealthier half holding 66% meanwhile the wealthiest 1% hold more wealth than the bottom half of our entire society.
There is no argument where ending the gold standard was a positive thing for americans. Since then we have seem hyper inflation. In the 40’s 50’s and 60’s one could buy a home for $5000. The median price was just under $8k and one cojld find a fixer upper for $2000-3000 but today the median price of a home is just under half a million dollars and even a dilapidated derelict crumbling structure in new england, thing anywhere within an hour or two of boston or new york is selling for $150,000 if you’re lucky. Buildable lots are going for $60-100k if you gk farther away from those metropolitan centers then you can find better deals on property but not by that much.
Fiat currencies are only worth anything because wealthy people have convinced us to believe them. But ultimately those currencies primarily derive their value from gold. In the case of the us dollar post 1971 the commodity backing a majority of the us dollar supply is petroleum and related petrochemicals which is a far inferior commodity to back currency. And the introduction of the us petro dollar didn’t change the fact that the us dollar’s value is still intrinsically tied to gold and all currencies are. If you look at the exchange rates between any two currencies at any point in us history you’ll see that the value in exchange always adds up to the price of gold so i fail to see where or when another country’s currency would ever be able to get one up on another countrys economy and take advantage of their currency value and the price of gold.
Also we are already slipping as far as being the reserve currency of the world with so many countries joining BRICS and more will definitely be joining in the next few years. Many are speculating that these countries will develop their own currency which could potentially be block chain based sometime before the end of the decade. Couple all this with the way events are unfolding in the middle east and it seems easy to see that a large global conflict is looming right around the corner.
How about something that destroys the value of gold? Like someone digging a hole in the right place or someone developing technology to do something efficiently that was previously too pricey (like extracting gold from sea water).
Do you think a large industry wouldn’t be devoted to doing those very things? If not, I point you to the crypto mining industry and the fact that 30 years ago, people were told it would be too expensive to extract oil from the Canadian tar sands.
Nothing will devalue gold. Gold is not merely valuable because it is rare but because of its properties and usefulness in technological and industrial applications.
People dig in the right place and find gold all the time but the amount of gold to offset the amount that already exists and reduce its value by any significant amount would have to be astronomical. Unless a meteor that contains ten times the amount of gold that we have dug out of the earth crashes into the ocean we wont se any significant reduction in gold value.
As far as sea water gold extraction now you sound like that dude that got laughed out of shark tank for wanting to nuke the ocean and manufacture artificial hurricanes to extract gold from seawater. Lulz
While gold has intrinsic usage, the value is driven more largely by speculation.
Sorry, are you saying the value of gold doesn’t fluctuate? Since when?
The value of gold fluctuates but in a limited capacity and the biggest driver of that fluctuation is the overprinting of currency. Even during the gold rush the price of gold held constant.
Gold has always been valued because of its properties and the applications it has in industry, chemistry and technological innovation
I’m lucky to be able to save £100 a month, mainly because I sold my car. Wait for it, because of a new train station opening within walking distance. Just having a month’s wages put aside feels great, small steps.
5k in the bank?
Some day…
I actually saved that much in about 5 months.
Wow that’s amazing, billionaires must totally think you’re one of them.
I wonder what he does. As a “working man.”
Plenty of workers can save that money in 5 months. I don’t even think that someone need a high paying job for that, depending on your expenses. Problem is that that money buys you little nowadays.
What’s that? No even a 1% of an average house anyways.
See my link about half of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck and then realize that plenty of the ones that aren’t have stuff they want to spend the remaining money on to make their lives less miserable like entertainment.
Is it possible? Maybe. Is it healthy for your mental state? Probably not in a lot of the other half of Americans who can afford to save anything at all.
Lots of people are able to “save” $10k per year, depending on your definition of savings (for example, putting it into a retirement fund) but anyone who thinks they are well-off because of it don’t realize where they stand on the class ladder. If you continue to stash away that ten grand every year it’ll take you 42 million years to match Elon Musk’s current net worth. That’s so long ago that the Eurasian landmass was still a blob of disconnected islands.
Jokes on you, I was indoctrinated to believe Earth was created like 5,000 years ago.
I’m a PhD researcher. I make just over €1250 a month, grant money. Portugal.
Sounds like grad students get fucked over everywhere.
I guess? €1250 is the average national wage here, I think. I’d argue we have low wages as a nation, not so much as grad students, you know what I mean? I’m not upset at my situation, even if it’s not a lot of money.
Oh, well if you’re fine with it, fair enough. I just feel like, considering what grad students will be doing in the future, they deserve more than average.
The only idea that comes to mind is working for the mining industry in Austalia. My cousin’s husband was a carpenter there and apparently made bank. Although from the stories they told me, most would not save a significant portion. Apparently they tend to work 14 days on, 14 days off or in similar arrangements, and be flown in and out around their shifts. A significant portion of their colleagues would choose to fly to Bali instead of their respective Australian cities, spend their 14 days off there and immediately use up their wages. Weird lifestyle overall.
Very similar situation in western Canada’s oil industry, except replace Bali with drugs and big trucks.
Why would you say that?
there’s always gotta be at least one “let’s all pay attention to how this isn’t a problem for ME” chud in the comments
Yeah! Sucks for the Americans, though.
Nearly half means not half, so that’s better than 50/50 odds to not be living paycheck to paycheck. That’s not really that lucky, statistically speaking
And there’s a big difference between not living paycheck to paycheck, and being able to save $1k/mo
How does that not still make the statement in the meme true? Because I think it still does. If you’re not living paycheck-to-paycheck it doesn’t mean you are able to amass $5000 in savings, it means you’re not at risk of going into debt (or at least more debt than you’re probably in thanks to things like student loans).
I put that much every month into my savings account.
See how stupid this contest is?
What contest? What are you people on…
Gaslighting doesn’t really work when seemingly everyone else gets the point.
Oh, I was just gaslighting! Thank you for clarifying.
12k a year - gets really depressing when you realize how many years it takes to buy a house, and in America how many years a small medical event costs you.
Yeah, it’s really not much at all… Our government actually recently set up this thing where they’ll cover the cost of a house for young working people, but even then it’s really tough to buy. I don’t want to buy anytime soon, but still, it’s a real struggle for lots of people.
Sucks on the healthcare in America. Hope you guys get something worked out over there… :C
IKR? It’s not hard. Whoever posted this without accounting for the inflation since 1950 really just told everyone he has no try in him.
You’re right. I should have just tried harder to be wealthy but I couldn’t afford to buy the bootstraps to pull myself up with.
If you think that’s wealthy, that’s just more indication of your mental blocks.
I think it’s wealthier than half the country. Far more than half, in fact. Because plenty of the people who aren’t living paycheck-to-paycheck still want to do things like go out to eat a couple of times a month or buy the latest games just so their lives aren’t totally miserable, so they aren’t able to save up $5000 either.
Congratulations on your privilege though.
Well, I’m in a very privileged position… For a lot of people it’s not easy at all. Making minimum wage in my country there’s no way you can save that much, for example.
Loser count go brrrrr
The number of people on lemmy who are apparently dirt poor and don’t comprehend money or the economy is ridiculous.
Anything short of declaring yourself a homeless disabled pensioner eating rats to survive will get hostile responses around here, and even then someone would claim rats are a luxury.
No, the downvotes are for being tone-deaf and contributing nothing of value to the conversation. Lots of us here are perfectly able to save that much and more, but that doesn’t change the fact that far too many cannot.
I’m a young man and I make about the average income in my country. I saved that much very easily in only 5 months. That’s some value to the conversation, I’d say. Not to take away from the discussion of course, and I do apologize for being tone-deaf. I really just meant it as a throwaway comment, I don’t know, didn’t think much about it.
Their comment responds directly to the claim in the OP.
That you lack the reading comprehension to understand this is horrifying.
What percentage of the population of the US can save $5000?
56% of Americans have more than $5000 in savings excluding retirement funds such as 401k.
Well that’s weird, because well over half of Americans have less than $5000 in their savings accounts.
Do they keep the rest in a mattress?
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I don’t know about all that…
I just meant for it to be a factoid I guess, didn’t think much about when I posted. When I saw all the notifications I was actually expecting to see people were as excited about potatoes as I am — I made a post about it last night.
Lots of people do struggle, I think it’s fair to point out how hard it is to save for some.
