Comment by vessenes
1 day ago
I believe Victorian wealth disparity was on par with today's in America -- perhaps America has slightly more "power law" wealth at the very top of the percentage charts -- but for those in charge of new empires, maybe this article will be very useful and remind them it's better to go party in SF than it is to put in too much time in the office.
Not in the least. Today in the US less than 1% of the population works as home service. In victorian England it was around 10%.
The US is a powerful "empire", but the UK is the most powerful Empire to ever have existed.
As the variably attributed proverb goes, "The sun never sets on the British Empire, because God doesn't trust the English in the dark"
It's certainly now well intent into making sure it'll never rise again.
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I'm not sure that demonstrates anything. That just demonstrates that people work different jobs than they did back then; it doesn't tell us anything about wealth distribution.
21% of US jobs are service occupations. All you've really done is establish that cars exist so the wealthy have deemed it no longer necessary to allow filthy peasants to live in their mansions.
This seems far to low. First, I assume you are talking about the current economy. If yes, various sources tell me it is more like 80%.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says:
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“I never thought I would be so rich as to be able to own a car, but I did become rich — so rich that in the end I could give up working if I liked. That was a great surprise to me.
But at the same time, it was the irony of life that while I could afford a car, I could not afford a maid."
- Agatha Christie
Nowadays service jobs are externalized. Try to compare how big chunk of the population are in service industries now and then.
Back then they had a private coachman and now you have an independent contractor with the Uber app.
We've always have public coachmen and public bars and restaurants. The fact that there are many more now only means a lot more people can afford them.
what a strange rebuttal to the observably true fact that wealth disparity today is very similar to victorian and french revolution times, as the parent was saying.
Regarding French Revolution times, I found a good source to confirm your assertion: "Is Wealth Inequality Today as Bad as in Pre-Revolutionary France?"[1] That blog post uses various peer-reviewed academic sources from researchers that calculated pre-industrial (historical) Gini coefficient for different nations.
From that same blog post, they mentioned an excellent data source: "The World Inequality Database". Check this link[2] to compare historical "Top 1% net personal wealth share" for USA vs France vs UK. Hint: After the page loads, you need to drag the green slider at the bottom of the chart to the far left. Then you can see back to 1800. It is wild how unequal Victorian Britan was compared to anything today: Top 1% owned 68% of wealth!
[1] https://populareconomics.substack.com/p/is-wealth-inequality...
[2] https://wid.world/world/#shweal_p99p100_z/US;FR;WO-PPP;GB/la...
> the UK is the most powerful Empire to ever have existed
the word "powerful" isn't really a great choice, because no empire has had the reach of ability as the USA. The USA also used soft power much more effectively, even if the UK reigned over more people.
Per capita largest, maybe? At one point, 1/4 in people in the world were UK subjects.
This is a weird claim to me. Was soft power important before the end of World War 2? I'm unsure. Also, how can you accurately measure soft power?
Almost nobody works in "home service"
But I can get a cleaner twice a week, grab an Uber whenever I want to drive me wherever I want, have professional chefs cook for me every evening via food delivery services, etc etc
That's an unusual measure -- and I like it. I wonder what those percentages are in very wealthy communities in America, e.g. Greenwich and surroundings, Nantucket, Hamptons plus labor communities west.
>but the UK is the most powerful Empire to ever have existed.
Interesting to see this popular myth still being regurgitated when someone as perceptive as Bertrand Russell who lived through part of it admitted it was self-aggrandizing propaganda. In truth 80% of the British "Empire" were impoverished Indians. While back at home the Blue Books were churning out shocking reports of the misery and physical state of the British working class compared to their American and European peers. Read the archives from the early 20th century for a real eye-opener. And to top it all off, the "rule the waves" trope when Britain lost the Battle of the Chesapeake, aka the one naval battle that truly mattered in its history.
> And to top it all off, the "rule the waves" trope when Britain lost the Battle of the Chesapeake, aka the one naval battle that truly mattered in its history.
With all due respect, this is Americentric nonsense. If you had to rank the most important British naval battles obviously Trafalgar is at the top. The Nile, Jutland, and even arguably the Armada campaign are also much more important.
I wouldn't say the UK is now, but was the most powerful empire to have existed. What else would you call a nation that 65 nations have claimed independence from? They can't claim independence if they weren't once part of the empire.
In which European countries were wages higher than in Britain? In which countries were the living conditions so much higher than in Britain in that period? That Britain ruled India and India was poor is no secret but that also doesn’t mean they weren’t powerful.
Also regarding Chesapeake, Britain’s century of hegemony came afterwards. Trafalgar came afterwards, and mattered a lot. Losing that battle doesn’t mean the navy wasn’t globally dominant in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
What’s the Bertrand Russell quote?
You can list a long series of reasons why they were weak and crap, ackshually. But presumably plenty about them was also not weak and crap otherwise they wouldn’t have ended up the global hegemon for a century. Certainly in terms of global trade dominance, at their peak nobody in history has come close, not China and not the USA.
> physical state of the British working class compared to their American and European peers
Probably not European, British workers were very well paid by continental standards (cost of living was higher though). If you want an example of pure exploitative capitalism where workers were reduced to near serfdom there is Belgium.
Are you claiming that the Battle of Trafalgar didn't matter?
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Ultimatly, the new-comer empires got the old warhorse in such a fight, it had to give up the empire- and the us wisely kept out of that classic extractive empire buisness, supporting free trade to placate all those sandwiched late-comer nation as empires going hyperactive.
So in a way, germany got its wish- the french and british empire where no more after 2 world wars.
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