Thomas caused me to math, blame this on him. I start poking buttons and it's all over cause there's neat stories in those numbers.
Like this sh!t I tarded together...

Thomas mentioned the value of a nickel in 1884. The cost to ride the new Coney Island Rolly Coaster on this day in history.
A nickel in 1884 wielded the power of $1.25-$75.00 compared to 2015.
But it depends how you look at it. It's where the math gets really fascinating and explains a couple things.

If you were buying a stick of butter or some bacon or riding a rolly coaster, that nickel would have a purchasing power of about a buck and a quarter today.
When someone looked at you jumping on that rolly coaster for a nickel, it seemed like you were tossing down 12 or 13 bucks in today's dollars.
That's why that ride was priced at that point. It was decadent, novel, and out of reach for most of us plebes.

Back to the point...
If you put that nickel to work by building something, it wielded a force equal to about 75 bucks in today's dollars.
This meant, quite literally, that every nickel you used to create would return 1,500 nickels. That's a 150,000% return on your money.
The GDP is the comparative weight that makes that money "real" because it's actually creating and becoming a concrete product of capital. Or something.

That takes you to men like Rockefeller and Carnegie.
Both were genius at taking advantage of this incredible post-civil war advantage.
A country was rebuilding, healing, and expanding industrially and ifrastructurally like no country had ever done in the history of the world.

They could see this economic diamond grow daily. They had faith in it. Economists of the day had their collective thumb up their ass, lacking any empirical evidence to provide a strong, believable forecast. Most men were just flat scared to death to make a move because of this.

Rockefeller built an empire worth around 700 BILLION dollars, literally on the bodies of his workers. The estimates of men who died on the job (or of job-related illness from conditions) in his employ is astronomical.
On the other hand, in his later years he very much devoted himself to philanthropy. He's long been described a Psycopath Angel, which is why most folks are ambivalent about him and the family's name.

Carnegie had been right on Rockefeller's heels for a time, until "his" private lake killed a couple thousand people in Johnstown, and it wrecked him. He switched gears, sold out, and made philanthropy his full time job. He used that same crazy economy to build and give much more than his dollar's worth.

Carnegie at his height was worth around 70 BILLION dollars.
Rockefeller, 700 BILLION dollars.
To put this in perspective, Bill Gates is worth around 80 BILLION today. His net worth has doubled in the last few years.

That seems like Bill Gates is worth more than Carnegie, right?
Not remotely. At Carnegie's peak, when he sold US Steel, he was the richest man in the world, and his wealth accounted for about .75% of the GDP.
At the height of Rockelfeller's wealth, he was worth 1.5% of the GPD. That is unreal.
Here's the perspective...
Bill Gate's 80 BILLION is worth .0005% of our GDP.
If anyone ever reaches John D. Rockefeller's wealth in this day and age, may God have mercy on all our souls. Really.

P.S.
I probably wouldn't turn this in as a report.
Odds are it's brutally wrong, I relied a lot on my brain. :-)
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Well if anyone would know what a nickel was worth in 1884 it would be Thomas and possibly pnoon. :-)

On a more serious note, so much wealth today is calculated on pretend numbers and projected income, look at people like Mark Z from Facebook, his money is on paper and based on projected earning of a company that doesn't produce a God damn thing. Different type of tycoon these days, these are not what we used to refer to as titans of industry. I am sure I will be corrected on this, but it's all part of the game, flame on.
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If what you're saying is true ( I'm not doubting you) then that is insane.
Couldn't the overall debt and the fact that the dollar was backed by gold effect these calculations?
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I'm with ya, Ads. Most of what we create nowadays is dogsh1t.
Although you can kind of look on things like MyFace as entertainment. But it's free entertainment that someone else pays for. Still creating nothing. Not even a rolly coaster.

Sure can, Ken.
We ran out of gold around 1893, and because "fast" had turned out to mean "shoddy", lots of capital ventures were going belly up. So we mootched a mess of gold to prop us up.
Then in 1897, things were failing badly again.
But this time JP Morgan, who was in charge of all the money in the US, worked out a bailout situation for every company that was in good shape.
So well-funded, well-built, solid ventures like US Steel and became even more valuable.
JP Morgan doubled his and Rockefeller's wealth overnight. While he played solitaire, literally.

Our debt really didn't factor, because it was owned by private entities, not so much the government. At least not the same as today when the government wallows in debt.
This was before the federal reserve system was created by Morgan, and then he owned all the money in the whole country, mind ya. He's the guy that invented wallowing. :-)
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Glad I could keep you amused for a bit, Scott. You can tell Weeze she's welcome. :-)

To me, for reasons to be revealed, the most interesting of these "robber barons" was Daniel Drew. You may not know him by name, but he was one of the crookedest of all those crooks. He got his start as a cattle drover, moving cattle across New Jersey to the Hudson for processing at Manhattan slaughterhouses. It was his practice to feed them salt in the holding pens, making them so thirsty they would drink gallons and gallons of water trying to sate this. He would then have them weighted for market, gaining an additional profit off this bogus weight. Thus the term "watering stock" came to be. Drew then devoted these profits to the growing railroad industry by helping to establish the Erie Railroad, where he continued his nefarious practices. He would artificially pump up the value of the stock in the company to lure new investors. Once he received this additional capital, he would then jerk the rug out from under the stock, allowing it to drop to pennies on the dollar. At that point he would buy back the stock he had sold, which he'd then pump up again, only to repeat this over and over, and thus to add an entirely different meaning to "watering stock".

Drew was a good friend to the mammoth of that era, Commodore Vanderbilt. They often played poker together, enjoyed each other's company, and considered themselves friends. They were such good friends that, one night, Daniel Drew stole 6 million dollars from the Commodore (a truly massive sum at that time), stuffed the cash into a carpetbag, and fled with it across the Hudson in a rowboat, holding up in a Jersey City hotel surrounded by his hired goons to protect his stolen booty from his buddy.

In later years Drew began to despair about his odds of avoiding Hell in the afterlife, so in an attempt to purchase his way into Heaven (NB, this was not only long after the Pope sold indulgences, it would also have been no option for a "good" Methodist like Drew anyway), he purchased an estate in Madison NJ in 1867 and established there Drew Theological Seminary, now called Drew University. His tradition continues there, as this small liberal art college a few blocks from me has the highest tuition costs on any institute of higher learning in a state not known for bargains anyway . . . and yes, that includes Princeton. :-)
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So in the not so long ago past we would have paid for basic phone service and then had to pay extra for a long distance call. Today I can pay for cell service or internet service and not pay of long distance on top of my base service through free long distance or apps.

So does my nickel buy more technology today and less physical goods? Or as the universe continues to expand does my nickel only have the option to decrease in value?
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Jay, in 1884 a nickel would buy you unlimited access to all available cellular and internet service, with zero data, time, or distance surcharges, limits, or restrictions. :-)
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There ya go, Jay. It used to be all you can eat before Verizon got involved.
The filthy scum whore bastards.
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But how do you REALLY feel about them, Scott? :-)
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I forget you weren't around when I hated Verizon daily, Thomas.
Believe me, we had a very stressed relationship. :-)
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Another one for you, how about a bottle of Coke then at the shop vs now at your local 7-11 outside of extremes they are about equivalent aren't they?

in 1884 it the "data" was charge by the dot dot dash .._
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As originally formulated, Coke required 5 ounces of coca leaves for a gallon of syrup. At that dosage, nobody cared what it cost.
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I suppose only Thomas can remember back that far. He did go to unc with Zebulon Vance after all.
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Zeb B. be my boy, Jerry. Believe it or not, he thought I was the funny one. :-)
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Thomas, did you channel Zebulon Vance or did you actually see him?
Nevermind. I don't even want to know.
:-)
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Funny story I was taught about old Zeb Vance in my NC history course. Vance was renowned as a raconteur and wit. He was arrested after the Civil War for the crime of being the governor of a rebel state during the conflict, but was later pardoned . . . even though he was never charged with anything. He was elected to the US Senate, but prohibited from serving, for the same crime he was never charged with. Only once this prohibition was lifted was he allowed to take his seat in Washington.

Now the northern senators of the period had a jolly time making things difficult for their southern colleagues. One of the pranks they pulled involved the portrait of another former fellow senator, Jefferson Davis. They removed it from its normal place and had it rehung in the Senate washroom. After that, they took delight in standing outside the doorway when southern representatives used those facilities, to laugh at their discomfiture and anger at this insult. Knowing of Vance's reputation for a ready wit, they were particularly anxious to witness his reactions the first time he availed himself of the toilet.

When Vance exited, they were puzzled and surprised that he seemed to have no reaction whatsoever, and so they questioned the freshman senator:

"Senator Vance, what did you think of our facilities?"

"Outstanding, gentlemen. I found them extremely modern and clean."

"Well, did you not notice anything odd or out-of-sorts with them?"

"Um, no sirs, no I cannot say I did."

"Uh, well, did you not see that portrait of Jefferson Davis hanging in there?"

"Oh yes, indeed I did! An excellent likeness I do confess. The artist should be complimented."

"And did you not think it strange to find it hung in the water closet?"

At that, with a straight face, Vance answered "Why, not at all. Nothing strange about it. I always heard that Jeff Davis scared the $#!+ out of you Yankees."
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Ahh, Jefferson Davis. :-)
It's always amazed me that such a perfect fit for a Confederate leader existed, a man of stubbornness extraordinary, bordering mythical.
This is a man that was willing to stand on his conviction of "I will by God have everything, or I will have nothing" despite having to lose his entire (seceded) nation and people to see it through.
When that ego was dislodged, away with it went any semblance of whatever imagined heritage, culture, or dream that was the antebellum south.

This isn't a political point or any of that nonsense, mostly because I abhor politics.
But here's a man that could have, at any time before the war's end, won what any minded person would have considered a huge victory.
Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment which would have protected slavery as it sat, and protected the Amendment from repeal. Something radically apart, only created to save the Union. Something that would have radically changed history and increased future human misery exponentially, but it wasn't enough. No siree.
Jeff needed more. He needed the whole wide open west south of the whatever the hell parallel it was. 49th?

A great quote that sums it all up and witnesses a stubborness that never ceases to amaze me...

"No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union." - General John B. Gordon, Reminiscences of the Civil War.
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I hope Thomas will regale us with legend of JEB Stuart tomorrow.
There were great strategists and generals of the Civil War, the South's two most important being JEB Stuart and George Mcclellan.
Those two men gave the South a chance to win.
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I won't be regaling you with McClellan, since he was a damn Yankee.

I also won't regale with Stuart, nor with Stonewall Jackson, nor even Robert E. Lee, as they were damn Virginians. Nathan Bedford Forrest wasn't . . . he was a damn Tennessean. :-)
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I'm painfully aware of that. Doesn't make my earlier statement any less true. :-)
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