Rachel Maddow used the same statistics on her show last night but it’s a little misleading. These numbers assume that dollars in the past are the same as dollars now, as long as they have been adjusted for the change in consumer prices in the mean time. What this ignores is the society’s actual ability to pay for something. The Vietnam War, for example, was conducted in the context of a much smaller economy. $111 billion in 1973 was a much bigger piece of the pie, and not all measures of long-term inflation account for that. If we compare it to changes in the consumer price index (which follows the prices of common consumer items from month to month), $111 billion then is worth $517 billion now. But, if we compare it to the value of work, by how much an unskilled worker makes then versus now, it is worth $486 billion. And if we look at what share of the economy it represented then and apply it to today’s economy, it’s worth $1,108 billion.

When comparing by the relative size of the economy, you find out that Bill Gates is a piker compared to the rich of the past. Rockefeller’s $900 million in 1913 commanded far more of the economy than Gates’s measly $57 billion ever did.

This is a fascinating site if you like this sort of thing:
http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/
Wikipedia also has a great list of historical rich folk:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_wealthy_historical_figures

On the other hand, if three-quarters of the state legislatures agree, we can take out the trash and flush the john.

Actually, we’d probably have to replace the john. And the adjoining series of tubes. In Hazmat suits.

Great explanation of how banks should operate & how they failed. If some thing a bank does is not helping to produce some thing of value it should be outlawed. Anything else is gambling with other people’s money and has nothing to do with capitalism. Rescind the bailouts, let them fail, cancel every credit default swap in existence and then outlaw this and all other gambling types of instruments.

[re=185977]null[/re]: New Constitutional Convention — YES!!

Oh God.

Not another one.