
Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Schemes - samclemens
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/10/25/mark-twains-get-rich-quick-schemes/
======
petercooper
So it says $450k then is equivalent to about $11M now, a multiple of about 24.
So scaling up.. the coal miner's daily pay was about $36 in today's money and
monthly rent about $144. A 3 bed NYC apartment, on the other hand, was about
$1920 in today's money. Seems the gap between poor and the 'typical' rich has
come down a lot, even if it doesn't feel like it.

~~~
dmix
Not to mention the quality of life of the poor now, vs even the 1980s, let
alone 1880s, has significantly improved. The poor didn't have smartphones,
flat screen TVs, and broadband internet plus quality/variety of food.

In the rush to close a largely abstract gap (as it is by nature entirely
relative to some previous, also unique, point in history) I worry we risk
losing touch with the practical day-to-day gains/costs. Especially as the
controls often end up pushing down on the work class rather than the intended
targets at the top. Such as shifting operations and taxable revenue overseas.

Not to mention how individual morality is always pinned to it when it's often
the side effect of much higher level systems (the rise of globalism [1],
regulatory-heavy states vs tax shelters dynamic [2], growth of the financial
industry [3], etc, etc). Then "fixing" becomes a vindictive pursuit rather
than for the benefit of everyone.

Quality of life of the general population should be the primary measure in
this conversation. Merely focusing on a single metric, such as closing some
gap between two relative ends of a spectrum, could very easily lead to bad
policy making that does little to help those on the other end.

[1]
[https://news2-images.vice.com//uploads/2016/11/chart-41.png](https://news2-images.vice.com//uploads/2016/11/chart-41.png)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/R6SWilB.png](https://i.imgur.com/R6SWilB.png)

[3] [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-
klein/financial_servic...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-
klein/financial_services%27_share_of_us_gdp%2C_1947-2009%284%29.png)

~~~
majormajor
Are iphones, TVs, and internet the measure of "quality of life" we want to
settle on?

~~~
aey
What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where
the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can
be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke,
Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a
Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on
the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.
Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know
it.

— Andy Warhol

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Rainymood
Lovely article. Best piece imho:

>And Twain wasn’t born “around the year 1835,” but during it—a strategic
decision of the utmost significance, suggesting an alert and eager business
mind operating even in utero.

~~~
jeffwass
The following line (in the next paragraph) is good too :

"Unfortunately, Twain was not so astute in his choice of parents."

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acomjean
I expected discussion of his investment in a typesetting machine. They have
one in the Mark Twain museum in Hartford. Its a big machine:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paige_Compositor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paige_Compositor)

"The Paige Compositor typesetting machine that drove the family to the brink
of bankruptcy, forcing them to leave their Hartford home."

[http://www.marktwainhouse.org/museum/our_collection.php](http://www.marktwainhouse.org/museum/our_collection.php)

~~~
dmix
Seriously, how could they not mention this? The headline really has nothing to
do with the article...

~~~
mi100hael
From TFA:

 _Excerpted from_ How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark
Twain _by Alan Pell Crawford. Copyright © (2017) by Alan Pell Crawford.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All
rights reserved._

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erikb
Nice article, but what do the title and text have to do with each other?

Spending ~30+ years learning to write and sell books doesn't look like a Get-
Rich-Quick scheme to me. His father also bought land so that his future
generations could become rich. That's not quick either.

~~~
smudgymcscmudge
I had the same thought. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I didn’t
expect it to turn into stories of crazy business ventures.

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jaredklewis
Regarding the point about his good fortune of being born in 1835, I wonder
what the date is for new tech billionaire CEOs. The article made me wonder if
we are in our own little gilded age now.

Mark Zuckerberg: 1984

Larry Page: 1973

Sergey Brin: 1973

Elon Musk: 1971

Michael Dell: 1965

Jeff Bezos: 1964

Jack Ma: 1964

Masayoshi Son: 1957

Steven Ballmer: 1956

Bill Gates: 1955

Steve Jobs: 1955

Paul Allen: 1953

Larry Ellison: 1944

The median of this list (which I compiled with no particular methodology or
criteria) is 1964. The mean is 1962.

~~~
tossaway1
Maybe you're already aware of this but being in a gilded age would not be a
good thing. The gilded age described a society where serious problems were
masked by a thin veneer of gold.

~~~
jaredklewis
I've never read the book, but am aware it is a satire. Given your description,
I think my word choice turned out to be apropos. Though perhaps "thin veneer
of gold" should be modernized to "tacky stucco facade" or "parallax hero
background."

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billions
Mark Twain's financial struggles and goals were never framed or discussed in
my American school education. Wonder what the children of our poorest families
would aspire to given the truth of business? God forbid they try to emulate
Mark Twain's path.

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beautifulfreak
There seems to be an error: "The family’s annual food bill was $80 a month."
For a person earning $1.50 per day, that would have been a whopping monthly
food bill.

~~~
spiderfarmer
Historically, the price of food was much higher than it is now. Thank our
farmers for operating more efficient year after year.

[https://mjperry.blogspot.nl/2010/07/as-share-of-income-
ameri...](https://mjperry.blogspot.nl/2010/07/as-share-of-income-americans-
have.html)

~~~
rz2k
You are right that modern technology has figured out how to turn energy into
soil (way oversimplified!), and that probably 80% of the nitrogen in the
bodies of any of us reading this came from the Haber process.

However, it still sounds bizarre that about 90% of their expenses was food.

~~~
jdietrich
It isn't totally off-base. Even today, the poorest consumers in middle-income
countries spend 70-80% of their income on food.

[http://www.hindustantimes.com/interactives/how-do-people-
in-...](http://www.hindustantimes.com/interactives/how-do-people-in-
developing-countries-spend-money/)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
In the UK I'd be suprised if like us most of the income of other poorer people
didn't go to landlords/banks through rent/mortgage payment?

It may appear for those in state housing that food is their greatest outlay
but that would only be if accommodation provided by welfare wasn't classed as
"income".

In Twain's position, and time, would food have certainly been the greatest
outlay?

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known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks)

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blunte
Nice introduction, but I admit I was a bit disappointed to not get even one
"get-rich-quick scheme".

~~~
Animats
Right. Clemens put large sums into a typesetting machine project, but it was a
dud.[1] One of the prototype machines still exists.

[1] [http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi50.htm](http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi50.htm)

~~~
blunte
Link doesn't seem correct, but I would guess that a typesetting machine
project wouldn't be categorized as a get-rich-quick scheme. This sounds more
like a (risky?) business venture.

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james_woods
„and for settlers trying to persuade Indians to abandon tribal lands that
these newcomers wished to inhabit.„

Ah - they persuaded them. What a lovely euphemism.

~~~
kbart
You have taken it out of context, where it was ironically written about the
most common uses of revolvers, so it was clearly a joke (the whole article was
written in humorous manner, for those who didn't read).

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waibelp
Am I the only one getting fake amazon popups on that page?

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Blazespinnaker
I get a fake iOS security warning. Quick rich scheme indeed.

~~~
josephpmay
There's an add-injection infection going around today. A lot of sites are
getting this.

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keymone
is it just me or is the font really hard to read?

~~~
erikb
It's on the harder side, I also have to say so.

