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  #31  
Old April 24th 19, 01:04 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 547
Default Homeless in Seattle

On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:14:16 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/23/2019 1:00 PM, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski


Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves. Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing, medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.


1914 and 1% to 7% on extremely high incomes.

The Amendment passed because all and sundry assured it would
never affect the average guy. The Founders knew better,
which is why the original Constitution prohibited such taxes.

BTW before you get excited about 'wage slavery', the quit
rate is way up, that is, more employees are leaving for
better situations.


I've always sort of laughed when "wage slavery" is mentioned. After
all, it isn't the factory owner that sets the wages it is the labour
force. The minimum that they will accept.

I remember a young Indonesian mechanic I had working for me at a
remote site in N.Sumatra. He asked me why I got so much money and he
got so little. I told him "Quit!". That went on for a while and
finally he tells me that he doesn't want to quit but he is curious and
I told him that I would "quit". He thought about that for a while and
then said that if he quit there was 10 other guys standing in line to
get his job. I replied, "and that is why I get all that money and you
get so little.

As an aside, I once worked in a rather remote part of Irian Jaya, now
West Papua, where the locals wouldn't accept money. It had no value to
them :-)
--

Cheers,

John B.
Ads
  #32  
Old April 24th 19, 01:48 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default Homeless in Seattle

On 4/23/2019 7:52 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 11:00:21 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski


Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems

with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when
employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much
cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves.
Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing,
medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence
wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax
deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep
expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income
taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.

:-) A federal income tax was originally enacted on October 1913.

According to:
Slave Prices in the Lower South, 1722-1815
Peter C. Mancall, Joshua L. Rosenbloom, Thomas Weiss
University of Kansas

In 1815 the median price of a male slave was $500 (which is !$7,958.44
in 2017). Salaries for a skilled craftsman, in Massachusetts, in 1815,
was in the range of $2.00 a day, for unskilled workers it was in the
$1.00 a day range.

So yes, as the North had learned, hiring help was cheaper...


? If you paid $500 for a slave you had him for the rest of his life.
You'd spend that much on an unskilled worker in a year and a half, and
have to keep on spending. True, there would be some cost in housing and
feeding a slave, but it seemed they tended to minimize that expense.
Then there was the possibility of profiting by breeding.

... at least
for those who didn't operate a large plantation, was cheaper than
buying and maintaining slaves.


I wonder about other North-South differences. My vague impression is
that the north was using its labor more to populate factories - to
produce iron, fabrics, mechanical devices, etc. while the south was
using its labor to harvest and bale cotton and other agricultural goods.

In the one case, the workers could be brought to the specific place
where the work was done - indeed, could be brought there from overseas
if necessary. And if one worker or group of workers were unproductive or
made trouble, there were plenty more waiting to take their place.

Seems it was different on a southern plantation. You had to run your
plantation with the workers you had - or owned.

Not that I'm an expert on this, by any means. But I know that contrary
to popular belief, slavery was almost universal through most of human
history. It certainly wasn't just the evil American southerners vs. the
helpless folks they captured in Africa.

And I recall reading that one main reason the North was able to get rid
of slavery was because machines had been invented to do the work. The
Roman empire (for just one example) could not have sustained itself
without slaves.

--
- Frank Krygowski
  #33  
Old April 24th 19, 01:55 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default Homeless in Seattle

On 4/23/2019 8:04 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:14:16 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/23/2019 1:00 PM, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski

Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves. Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing, medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.


1914 and 1% to 7% on extremely high incomes.

The Amendment passed because all and sundry assured it would
never affect the average guy. The Founders knew better,
which is why the original Constitution prohibited such taxes.

BTW before you get excited about 'wage slavery', the quit
rate is way up, that is, more employees are leaving for
better situations.


I've always sort of laughed when "wage slavery" is mentioned. After
all, it isn't the factory owner that sets the wages it is the labour
force. The minimum that they will accept.


And these days, American workers - who live in a relatively expensive
country - have to compete against millions of workers in places where
living costs (and expected amenities) are far, far lower. Those workers
accept far less than the Americans can.

My area has lost lots and lots of decent-paying jobs, despite the
promises made to workers by a certain occupant of the White House. GM
has said over and over, "screw you, we can get this work done in Mexico
and make lots more profit." For other industries, substitute China, or
India, or Southeast Asia, etc.


--
- Frank Krygowski
  #34  
Old April 24th 19, 02:05 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
AMuzi
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,447
Default Homeless in Seattle

On 4/23/2019 7:04 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:14:16 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/23/2019 1:00 PM, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski

Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves. Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing, medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.


1914 and 1% to 7% on extremely high incomes.

The Amendment passed because all and sundry assured it would
never affect the average guy. The Founders knew better,
which is why the original Constitution prohibited such taxes.

BTW before you get excited about 'wage slavery', the quit
rate is way up, that is, more employees are leaving for
better situations.


I've always sort of laughed when "wage slavery" is mentioned. After
all, it isn't the factory owner that sets the wages it is the labour
force. The minimum that they will accept.

I remember a young Indonesian mechanic I had working for me at a
remote site in N.Sumatra. He asked me why I got so much money and he
got so little. I told him "Quit!". That went on for a while and
finally he tells me that he doesn't want to quit but he is curious and
I told him that I would "quit". He thought about that for a while and
then said that if he quit there was 10 other guys standing in line to
get his job. I replied, "and that is why I get all that money and you
get so little.

As an aside, I once worked in a rather remote part of Irian Jaya, now
West Papua, where the locals wouldn't accept money. It had no value to
them :-)


Back to that income tax thing.
My grandfather, a railway roundhouse machinist, was worth
about 30c an hour in 1910:

https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/p...ages/1910-1919

when general labor (digging ditches, loading/unloading
freight and shoveling horse poop off the streets) paid a lot
less. The lowest 1914 tax bracket of $2000/year was a lot
of money then.


--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971


  #35  
Old April 24th 19, 06:07 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
[email protected]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,041
Default Homeless in Seattle

On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 7:48:30 PM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/23/2019 7:52 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 11:00:21 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski

Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems

with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when
employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much
cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves.
Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing,
medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence
wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax
deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep
expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income
taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.

:-) A federal income tax was originally enacted on October 1913.

According to:
Slave Prices in the Lower South, 1722-1815
Peter C. Mancall, Joshua L. Rosenbloom, Thomas Weiss
University of Kansas

In 1815 the median price of a male slave was $500 (which is !$7,958.44
in 2017). Salaries for a skilled craftsman, in Massachusetts, in 1815,
was in the range of $2.00 a day, for unskilled workers it was in the
$1.00 a day range.

So yes, as the North had learned, hiring help was cheaper...


? If you paid $500 for a slave you had him for the rest of his life.
You'd spend that much on an unskilled worker in a year and a half, and
have to keep on spending. True, there would be some cost in housing and
feeding a slave, but it seemed they tended to minimize that expense.
Then there was the possibility of profiting by breeding.
--
- Frank Krygowski


John B. wrote that the daily wage of unskilled labor was $1 per day. Lets say $250 per year. And I have read many, many times that in olden times that laborers earned just barely enough to survive. Everything they earned was used for housing, food, etc. Nothing was leftover for savings. So I think we could estimate the slave owner costs for keeping one slave for a year at about $250. The same wages paid to an unskilled laborer. Back in the 1700-1800s time period I doubt the cost of living was that different across the states.

So a slave owner pays $250 to house and feed his slave each year. A unskilled wage earner is paid $250 each year. And he uses every penny of this to live on. But the slave owner has to pay $500, two years wages, up front to get the slave before he pays the $250 annual cost to keep the slave. Seems the slave owner starts $500 in the hole. And of course the slave owner also has to pay for management, guards to make the slaves work.

In most situations, slavery was not the economic godsend some people seem to imagine. And remember slavery also existed simply because there was not enough labor, people to do the work. That is the better reason for slavery to exist in the USA. But if there are enough laborers (northern factory towns), then slavery loses its economic advantage.
  #36  
Old April 24th 19, 07:06 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 547
Default Homeless in Seattle

On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 20:48:24 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/23/2019 7:52 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 11:00:21 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski

Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems

with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when
employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much
cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves.
Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing,
medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence
wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax
deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep
expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income
taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.

:-) A federal income tax was originally enacted on October 1913.

According to:
Slave Prices in the Lower South, 1722-1815
Peter C. Mancall, Joshua L. Rosenbloom, Thomas Weiss
University of Kansas

In 1815 the median price of a male slave was $500 (which is !$7,958.44
in 2017). Salaries for a skilled craftsman, in Massachusetts, in 1815,
was in the range of $2.00 a day, for unskilled workers it was in the
$1.00 a day range.

So yes, as the North had learned, hiring help was cheaper...


? If you paid $500 for a slave you had him for the rest of his life.
You'd spend that much on an unskilled worker in a year and a half, and
have to keep on spending. True, there would be some cost in housing and
feeding a slave, but it seemed they tended to minimize that expense.
Then there was the possibility of profiting by breeding.

... at least
for those who didn't operate a large plantation, was cheaper than
buying and maintaining slaves.


I wonder about other North-South differences. My vague impression is
that the north was using its labor more to populate factories - to
produce iron, fabrics, mechanical devices, etc. while the south was
using its labor to harvest and bale cotton and other agricultural goods.

In the one case, the workers could be brought to the specific place
where the work was done - indeed, could be brought there from overseas
if necessary. And if one worker or group of workers were unproductive or
made trouble, there were plenty more waiting to take their place.

Seems it was different on a southern plantation. You had to run your
plantation with the workers you had - or owned.


Prior to the Civil War cotton was literally king. The export of cotton
by 1840 was worth more than all of all other U.S. exports combined.

To effectively raise and pick cotton before the advent of mechanized
pickers (some time in the 1930's I think) it required a large labor
force and given that on a large plantation growing sufficient food and
providing rudimentary shelter was relatively cheap it made slavery an
economical way to operate..

In contrast the North which was largely industrialized found slavery
was largely uneconomical - no place to house them and no way to raise
sufficient food down at the factory site.

Not that I'm an expert on this, by any means. But I know that contrary
to popular belief, slavery was almost universal through most of human
history. It certainly wasn't just the evil American southerners vs. the
helpless folks they captured in Africa.

Certainly not. In fact of the slaves from Africa the majority weren't
shipped to the U.S. I believe that only some 6% of enslaved Africans
actually ended up in N. America,

There seems to be evidence that enslaved Africans were shipped to
Africa, Europe, and Asia prior to the European colonization of the
Americas.
(Ferro, Mark (1997). Colonization: A Global History. Routledge, p.
221, ISBN 978-0-415-14007-2.)

And I recall reading that one main reason the North was able to get rid
of slavery was because machines had been invented to do the work. The
Roman empire (for just one example) could not have sustained itself
without slaves.

--

Cheers,

John B.
  #37  
Old April 24th 19, 07:27 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 547
Default Homeless in Seattle

On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 20:55:18 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/23/2019 8:04 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:14:16 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/23/2019 1:00 PM, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski

Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves. Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing, medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.


1914 and 1% to 7% on extremely high incomes.

The Amendment passed because all and sundry assured it would
never affect the average guy. The Founders knew better,
which is why the original Constitution prohibited such taxes.

BTW before you get excited about 'wage slavery', the quit
rate is way up, that is, more employees are leaving for
better situations.


I've always sort of laughed when "wage slavery" is mentioned. After
all, it isn't the factory owner that sets the wages it is the labour
force. The minimum that they will accept.


And these days, American workers - who live in a relatively expensive
country - have to compete against millions of workers in places where
living costs (and expected amenities) are far, far lower. Those workers
accept far less than the Americans can.

Certainly that is correct but within my lifetime the U.S. workers
received far lower wages for their services than they do today.

My area has lost lots and lots of decent-paying jobs, despite the
promises made to workers by a certain occupant of the White House. GM
has said over and over, "screw you, we can get this work done in Mexico
and make lots more profit." For other industries, substitute China, or
India, or Southeast Asia, etc.


Actually Henry Ford thought of it before anyone else did - make a car
so cheap that my employees can afford one... and made a huge chunk of
cash doing so.

But remember that the U.S. did exactly the same thing, Ever heard
about "Oil for the lamps of China" when Mobile gave away kerosene
lamps to encourage the sale of lamp oil, i.e., kerosene, as did Great
Briton and post WW II did Japan, and now China.

There was even a Japanese song entitled "The Celluloid Doll From
America" that told the story about the cheap celluloid doll from
America that was so pretty, but so easily broken :-)
--

Cheers,

John B.
  #38  
Old April 24th 19, 07:30 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 547
Default Homeless in Seattle

On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 20:05:50 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/23/2019 7:04 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:14:16 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 4/23/2019 1:00 PM, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski

Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves. Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing, medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.


1914 and 1% to 7% on extremely high incomes.

The Amendment passed because all and sundry assured it would
never affect the average guy. The Founders knew better,
which is why the original Constitution prohibited such taxes.

BTW before you get excited about 'wage slavery', the quit
rate is way up, that is, more employees are leaving for
better situations.


I've always sort of laughed when "wage slavery" is mentioned. After
all, it isn't the factory owner that sets the wages it is the labour
force. The minimum that they will accept.

I remember a young Indonesian mechanic I had working for me at a
remote site in N.Sumatra. He asked me why I got so much money and he
got so little. I told him "Quit!". That went on for a while and
finally he tells me that he doesn't want to quit but he is curious and
I told him that I would "quit". He thought about that for a while and
then said that if he quit there was 10 other guys standing in line to
get his job. I replied, "and that is why I get all that money and you
get so little.

As an aside, I once worked in a rather remote part of Irian Jaya, now
West Papua, where the locals wouldn't accept money. It had no value to
them :-)


Back to that income tax thing.
My grandfather, a railway roundhouse machinist, was worth
about 30c an hour in 1910:

Thirty cents an hour was about $2.70 for a 9 hour day. Damned good
money! Plus working for the railroad was thought of as almost as good
as working for the government :-)

https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/p...ages/1910-1919

when general labor (digging ditches, loading/unloading
freight and shoveling horse poop off the streets) paid a lot
less. The lowest 1914 tax bracket of $2000/year was a lot
of money then.

--

Cheers,

John B.
  #39  
Old April 24th 19, 08:59 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 547
Default Homeless in Seattle

On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 22:07:41 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 7:48:30 PM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/23/2019 7:52 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 11:00:21 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski

Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems
with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when
employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much
cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves.
Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing,
medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence
wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax
deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep
expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income
taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.

:-) A federal income tax was originally enacted on October 1913.

According to:
Slave Prices in the Lower South, 1722-1815
Peter C. Mancall, Joshua L. Rosenbloom, Thomas Weiss
University of Kansas

In 1815 the median price of a male slave was $500 (which is !$7,958.44
in 2017). Salaries for a skilled craftsman, in Massachusetts, in 1815,
was in the range of $2.00 a day, for unskilled workers it was in the
$1.00 a day range.

So yes, as the North had learned, hiring help was cheaper...


? If you paid $500 for a slave you had him for the rest of his life.
You'd spend that much on an unskilled worker in a year and a half, and
have to keep on spending. True, there would be some cost in housing and
feeding a slave, but it seemed they tended to minimize that expense.
Then there was the possibility of profiting by breeding.
--
- Frank Krygowski


John B. wrote that the daily wage of unskilled labor was $1 per day. Lets say $250 per year. And I have read many, many times that in olden times that laborers earned just barely enough to survive. Everything they earned was used for housing, food, etc. Nothing was leftover for savings. So I think we could estimate the slave owner costs for keeping one slave for a year at about $250. The same wages paid to an unskilled laborer. Back in the 1700-1800s time period I doubt the cost of living was that different across the states.

So a slave owner pays $250 to house and feed his slave each year. A unskilled wage earner is paid $250 each year. And he uses every penny of this to live on. But the slave owner has to pay $500, two years wages, up front to get the slave before he pays the $250 annual cost to keep the slave. Seems the slave owner starts $500 in the hole. And of course the slave owner also has to pay for management, guards to make the slaves work.

In most situations, slavery was not the economic godsend some people seem to imagine. And remember slavery also existed simply because there was not enough labor, people to do the work. That is the better reason for slavery to exist in the USA. But if there are enough laborers (northern factory towns), then slavery loses its economic advantage.


I'm not sure that when you are talking about what amounts to a large
farm you can put a dollar value on living costs. After all, you are
going to raise food for the family and it costs little more than labor
to raise it for more people and the labor is free. Generally speaking
meat animals, in the 1800's probably cost almost nothing to raise as
they do replicate themselves and would generally be eating stuff that
is growing on the place.

When I was a kid we always had a cow and a couple of pigs. the cow ate
hay that we raised and cut ourselves and because she was milking we
fed her a measure of grain (don't remember what kind) a day. the pigs
ate garbage and a bit of grain as we kept them penned, if they were
"free range" than probably no feed at all.

The cow had a calf every year and if a bull calf we ate him and if a
heifer we sold her or replaced her mother and sold the cow.

Chickens replace themselves and if not penned pretty much feed
themselves with maybe some cracked corn that one can grow on the
place..

If you are on a farm than food costs are surprisingly low... assuming
that you have either kids or slaves to do the work :-)

I think that in dollar and cents terms that having slaves on a large
plantation would be essentially free as far as living costs were
concerned. I'm guessing that clothing might be the largest cash cost
that would be incurred. A new shirt and skirt,or trousers, at
Christmas...
--

Cheers,

John B.
  #40  
Old April 24th 19, 02:37 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
AMuzi
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,447
Default Homeless in Seattle

On 4/24/2019 12:07 AM, wrote:
On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 7:48:30 PM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/23/2019 7:52 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 23 Apr 2019 11:00:21 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 23, 2019 at 10:48:08 AM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Our economic system generates more profits to those who reduce expenses,
and employees are seen as expenses.
--
- Frank Krygowski

Yes, one of the economic problems with slavery. There are many moral problems
with slavery of course. But in current and even past times when
employees can be paid a subsistence wage or minimum wage, it is much
cheaper to hire people at poverty wages than it is to have slaves.
Slaves, because they are personal property, require food, housing,
medical care. All of which adds up to much more than subsistence
wages paid to desperate employees. Employee wages are of course a tax
deductible expense. Not sure how slave owners dealt with slave upkeep
expenses. Actually not sure when the US started the federal income
taxes. Maybe it was after slavery officially ended.

:-) A federal income tax was originally enacted on October 1913.

According to:
Slave Prices in the Lower South, 1722-1815
Peter C. Mancall, Joshua L. Rosenbloom, Thomas Weiss
University of Kansas

In 1815 the median price of a male slave was $500 (which is !$7,958.44
in 2017). Salaries for a skilled craftsman, in Massachusetts, in 1815,
was in the range of $2.00 a day, for unskilled workers it was in the
$1.00 a day range.

So yes, as the North had learned, hiring help was cheaper...


? If you paid $500 for a slave you had him for the rest of his life.
You'd spend that much on an unskilled worker in a year and a half, and
have to keep on spending. True, there would be some cost in housing and
feeding a slave, but it seemed they tended to minimize that expense.
Then there was the possibility of profiting by breeding.
--
- Frank Krygowski


John B. wrote that the daily wage of unskilled labor was $1 per day. Lets say $250 per year. And I have read many, many times that in olden times that laborers earned just barely enough to survive. Everything they earned was used for housing, food, etc. Nothing was leftover for savings. So I think we could estimate the slave owner costs for keeping one slave for a year at about $250. The same wages paid to an unskilled laborer. Back in the 1700-1800s time period I doubt the cost of living was that different across the states.

So a slave owner pays $250 to house and feed his slave each year. A unskilled wage earner is paid $250 each year. And he uses every penny of this to live on. But the slave owner has to pay $500, two years wages, up front to get the slave before he pays the $250 annual cost to keep the slave. Seems the slave owner starts $500 in the hole. And of course the slave owner also has to pay for management, guards to make the slaves work.

In most situations, slavery was not the economic godsend some people seem to imagine. And remember slavery also existed simply because there was not enough labor, people to do the work. That is the better reason for slavery to exist in the USA. But if there are enough laborers (northern factory towns), then slavery loses its economic advantage.


I don't know.

But virtually every society until William Wilberforce kept
slaves, frequently large numbers of them, and many (Sudan,
Saudi etc) do today.

Many people think of slavery in very limited domestic terms
when in fact it's nearly universal and ageless.

https://thepoliticalinsider.com/huma...arrests-surge/

https://csi-usa.org/slavery/

https://ahtribune.com/world/north-af...ex-slaves.html

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971


 




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