Category: Calculating

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2469

It is always difficult comparing value of objects over periods of time–this is especially so when trying to compare the value of wealth, in general. And so I won’t be tempted to much to do this while relating the data of this interesting and tiny handout, The Distribution of Wealth in the United States, 1910. It was published in 1912 by Edward G. Hewitt (who curiously locates himself in “Brooklyn Borough”, rather than just “Brooklyn” or the “Borough of Brooklyn”, the incorporation taking place 14 years earlier) and presented in a bit of an odd way, at least to me, dividing the wealth into groups of families. It makes it a little hard to understand, even if there are only 22 divisions to the analysis.

What attracted my attention in this was the number of millionaire families, which was 7,737 in the total of 18,434,837 families–or about .4%–with an aggregate wealth of $26.9 billion, which was a 22.6% share of the national wealth stated at $115,000,000,000. That millionaires club would be about $24 million in 2014 dollars, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.

Secondly, the much-discussed 1% here totaled 189,237 families with wealth of over $62,500, or about $1,494,545 or so in 2014 dollars.

Since “wealth” really isn’t defined here it is difficult for me to extrapolate the differences between the 1% of 1910 and the 1% of 2015–especially so since I’ve seen several different current interpretations of what the modern 1% actually means.

In 1910 there were 7,737 families of millionaire status–today there are something like 5.4 million millionaires in the U.S., though that is counted as individuals, or about 1.6% of the population compared to .4% in 1910. And as my friend Jeff Donlan points out, it would be more useful to talk about the 24-millionaires club than simple millionaires, but I don’t have access to that data, at least not for this half-hour post.  

It is interesting that The Economist in 2012 stated that the average household income of the 1% was $1.2m in 2008, according to federal tax data. I find it very surprising that the 1910 1% (adjusted by BLS) comes in at $1.49m.

Again, this is all sorts of problematic, but even though stumbling around like I am here with these numbers it is very curious to see how closely those 1% numbers from 1910 and 2014 come together. It feels like this is wrong on many or all levels, and the 1910 data might all be junk for all I know, and that it is like saying that the stars are all the same size because that’s what it looks like here on Earth, but it is strange about how those numbers worked out–at least here, using the stated data.  I’m not saying that what I’m saying above has any value beyond indicating that there may be something interesting here…

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

[Image source: http://www.rechnerlexikon.de/artikel/Bild:Bollee-mit-Maschine-CNAM1990.jpg]

This was a surprise, finding M. Bollee’s article (“Sur une nouvelle machine a calculer”) in the 1889 Comptes Rendus, pecking around in that big 10-pound volume looking for something else.  It was very easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, just a few pages long in a 1000-page book.  But there it was, nestled comfortably in pp 737-739.  It these few pages Bollee describes his machine and with particular reference to his innovative approach to direct multipilication–a fine addition (ha!) to the long line of contributions by Babbage and Clement, Scheutz, Wiberg and Grant and Hamann. 

Notes:

Léon Bollée: “Sur une nouvelle machine a calculer”, in Comptes Rendus de l’Academie Sciences (Paris), volume 109, 1889, pp. 737-9.  (You can purchase the original paper if you’d like by following this link to our Books for Sale page, under “Bollee”.)

An image of the machine from The Manufacturer and Builder:

See:  the Making of America, http://digital.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=manu;cc=manu;rgn=full%20text;idno=manu0022-7;didno=manu0022-7;view=image;seq=0162;node=manu0022-7%3A21

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

My friend Jeff Donlan  (who writes a fine and insightful blog, At the Library) cent (ha!) me this  article on the false tyranny of the penny–rather it is about getting rid of the penny, which the author claims has run its course of usefulness, swallowed by the history of economic need for it. Maybe it takes more money to deal with the one-cent piece than it is worth, I don’t know–the author of the article goes through that along with a short history of other currencies dumping their minuscule and antiquarian denominations.  

What I wonder about is what happens to the number “9”?

My made-up statistical reference notes that about half of all prices on all the stuff in the U.S. use at least one nine; many use two.  What happens to people excitedly advertising “,..and all your’s for only three small payments of $19.99!!!  And what about gasoline prices which are $2.89 and 9/10?  Assuming that we keep the nickel, prices will have to re-adjust to accommodate the five-cent piece, dropping the “9” in millions of prices.  No doubt tens of millions of people will think that prices have been raised across-the-board.  

And what will we do with this enormous surplus of 9s? 

Seriously though why not just get rid of the whole lot of less-than-a-dollar currency?  I know that would be very problematic, but no doubt it there will be less time between the introduction of the penny to its demise than there will be from now to the elimination of all coin-and-paper currency,  After all, in for a penny, in for a pound.