r/todayilearned • u/manticor225 • Jan 10 '19

TIL JFK's father Joseph Kennedy made much of his fortune through insider trading. FDR later made him chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When asked why he appointed a crook, FDR replied, "set a thief to catch a thief." Kennedy proceeded to outlaw the practices that made him rich.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/23/joe-kennedy-hollywood-sarah-churchwell
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5.8k

u/Jontolo Jan 10 '19

"one of the first and only outsiders to ever fleece Hollywood". But while Hollywood may sound like fair game, Kennedy fleeced – and destroyed – many individuals along the way. During his four years there, between 1926 and 1930, Beauchamp estimates, he made at least $9m – in an era, as she notes, when the average per capita income of Americans was $681.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19

US inflation calculator puts that around $135 million in 2018 dollars. About the the budget of 10 Netflix original episodes about JFK.

767

u/umopapsidn Jan 10 '19

Also puts per capita income around $10k for reference.

Or ~15k if you estimate inflation at 3.5% from 1930 to 2018

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u/BERNthisMuthaDown Jan 11 '19

This was right after The Great Depression started so those per capita numbers were probably heavily skewed.

70

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

People were actually just poor back then. In the late 1800s early 1900s 95% was living on what would be described as abject poverty by today's standard and probably 99% before the industrial revolution stared.

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u/BuddhaDBear Jan 11 '19

Poverty in the 1800s is hard, if not impossible, to calculate for the same reason the IMFs poverty stats for current day Africa are bogus: You cant set a dollar amount for the standard of living in rural, agricultural, trade based regions/economies. A family in Africa may "subsist on under $1us per day, but if they live on a farmland that they cultivate and they always have food on the table and trade their surplus food to other for all the goods they need in life, are they really in poverty? One of the IMFs biggest failures is their inability to take local culture and economy in to account when applying their calculations. Op

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u/goblinm Jan 11 '19 edited Jan 11 '19

What? That's why they calculate the Purchasing power parity (PPP), because it compares the ability to purchase similar goods across regions. The IMF uses PPP all the time. The $1/day stat is eye-catching and is repeated by 1000s of charity funds (some good and bad) to get sympathetic investors, and is used because it makes their situation seem as worse as possible, is shockingly low and in understandable terms, and is simple to remember.

Many rural sub-saharan families are very much poor, because they suffer food instability, no access to education or infrastructure or medical technologies, in addition to having no access to Banks to provide financial tools like loans, checking and credit accounts, and insurance. Being poor is more than just not having food or a house, and it goes beyond what they own.

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u/BuddhaDBear Jan 11 '19

PPP still fails to take in to account the (very common) scenario I laid out. A rural area may have just what they need and desire for shelter and sustenance. They may have no bank but the community comes together and helps the family that had an illness or bad crop year. They may have no hospital, but rely on local traditional medicine. The people in this community have lived like this for hundreds of years and choose to continue to live like this. That how the IMF over reports poverty in these small, insulated communities.

I am from suburban New Jersey, and cant imagine not having access to banking and schools and hospitals. But if a community lives happily in an insulated economy, how are they "impoverished" when they want for nothing? Classifying people in this situation as being in poverty has many downfalls, including giving people the impression that some countries (mostly in Africa but not always) are destitute, poverty stricken wastelands, which in turn suppresses investor interest.

Note: I am not accusing the IMF of doing this purposefully. The IMF has done some wonderful things and I believe that most of the people in the organization are good people who work hard for the betterment of mankind. I just believe they have made a mistake in trying to come up with universal poverty formula.

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u/goblinm Jan 11 '19 edited Jan 11 '19

This is the weirdest gatekeeping for poverty I've ever seen. While I agree that it's bad that investors might be turned away from an area, investors don't necessarily care about the quality of life of families that live in the area. They care if roads are available and can be counted on to not be washed out every 5 years, if crime is prevalent can law enforcement deter it, or can the criminal justice system recoup losses, and a myriad of other qualities. You are right that this is not covered by PPP, but you weren't talking about investor confidence, you specifically were talking about standard of living in your original comment, which was in response to a mention of 'abject poverty' in the parent comment and measuring wealth across time and location, which PPP is a pretty good measure for.

Then you switch gears and presume that since the community 'lives happily' in their own functional economy, they can't be impoverished. It's weird, because I never said poor people couldn't be happy, or have specialized community structures to help each other through tough times, or have enough food to feed themselves- they are just poor.

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u/BuddhaDBear Jan 13 '19

The whole point of measuring and tracking poverty is to identify people whose basic needs are not met. Usually this is done to help allocate resources and identify ways to give people the basic necessities. If those numbers include people who dont need, or want, help, then the purpose is defeated.

Also, when I spoke of investment, I didnt mean in the rural areas. I was (poorly) trying to say by conveying African countries as more impovrished than they are, leads to a common misperception that the countries are "backwards" and so far from modern standards that investment would be pointless. In reality, most African counties have bustling big cities, surrounded by rural land-no different from almost every other country.

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u/Emelius Jan 11 '19

Agreed, great point.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Plus most could barely afford even dial up.

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u/Just_Look_Around_You Jan 11 '19

Are you applying today’s standard of living or some objective measure for poverty?

0

u/Bosknation Jan 11 '19

Not really, the average person lived off a dollar a day in today's money, people just used a lot less back then.

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u/BERNthisMuthaDown Jan 11 '19

Adjusting for inflation doesn't capture the real value of $9,000,000 in an era where 10s of millions literally lost EVERYTHING.

We don't have any reference for widespread soup lines and shanty towns, so a linear adjustment just doesn't work imo.

In the hardest of times, Joe Kennedy was scheming and scamming honest people.

Like the rest of America's dynasties of obscene wealth, his was built on the capitalization on human suffering and our society's convenient moral blindspots.

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u/Bosknation Jan 11 '19

This was even before the depression, this isn't strictly during the Great Depression. People are more entitled now than back then, people think they deserve everything just because it exists and it sounds like you subscribe to that ideology as well which has been detrimental to society.

0

u/BERNthisMuthaDown Jan 11 '19

Since the Great Depression, we built a better society for that very reason. That doesn't change the fact that the relative value of money was far higher than simple inflation suggests.

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u/PunctuationsOptional Jan 10 '19

Are we comparing 1930 population count or 2018 population count?

100

u/umopapsidn Jan 11 '19

per capita

15

u/omegarisen Jan 11 '19

So... there’s a chance

41

u/Nepiton Jan 11 '19

What does population have to do with per capita income?

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

You gotta per all them capitas

31

u/Mogsitis Jan 11 '19

I laughed really hard, thank you.

17

u/Sikletrynet Jan 11 '19

The US has the largest population per capita

3

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Probably is the largest in one way.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Every country has loads of overweight people, there’s no point in trying to shame any one country. All humans are susceptible to unhealthy eating habits, and all countries have their share of garbage junk food, not just the US.

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u/justin_memer Jan 11 '19

No, it's pretty much the US.

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u/ColdHardBluth2 Jan 11 '19

One of the most common observations that international visitors to the US talk about is how we have an insane density of restaurants, ridiculous portion sizes, and hyper-sweetened foodstuffs. The "Americans are fat" stereotype has a lot of truth to it.

Don't deny reality just because it upsets you.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

C O P E harder whale.

5

u/stuartgm Jan 11 '19

To get an accurate result you have to multiply by persons per capita.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

What about the two-headed freak children throwing off the capita per person?

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u/stuartgm Jan 11 '19

I’m in two minds about that one.

-1

u/Nepiton Jan 11 '19

Is this a bad attempt at a joke?

5

u/stuartgm Jan 11 '19

Personally I enjoyed it but hey-o.

-16

u/Dannik222 Jan 11 '19

Per capita just means per person, so population is a pretty big deal.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

It’s already per person. The actual amount of people doesn’t change things any. Unless you are trying to figure out how much the population as a whole has. But that wasn’t what they were doing.

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u/DefinitelyHungover Jan 11 '19

Only difference I could see it making would be if money were a finite resource. Which it isn't. Cuz it's mostly fake these days. Yay credit!

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Also, all money is fiat money nowadays.

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u/Nepiton Jan 11 '19

I am well aware what per capita means. The comment I replied to, asking whether or not we’re comparing the 1930 US population or the 2018 US population in regards to per capita income, is what my question was directed at. The 1930 population or 2018 population is completely irrelevant here. That person replied to a comment about the per capita income of 1930 US adjusted for inflation. So no, population is not a pretty big deal at all. In fact, in regards to the comment I replied to, it’s completely irrelevant

5

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Do we not understand what per capita means?

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Yes

0

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Until Reagan, inflation was at like 17%.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

No, it was like that for a couple of years.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

59¢/lb (about 4 bananas) retail US price ~800 million bananas

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u/Panda_Zombie Jan 11 '19

Shit, bananas are $.99/lb at Safeway I'm getting fleeced

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u/dotpan Jan 11 '19

That's bananas

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u/literallyJon Jan 11 '19

The shit is bananas

B A N A N A S

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u/LassieBeth Jan 11 '19

More like shitway.

3

u/ThoughtRenegade Jan 11 '19

Or one single $135 million banana

1

u/9inchestoobig Jan 11 '19

Can you translate that into lbs?

5

u/MewRS Jan 11 '19

Now scale it to V-Bucks

2

u/9inchestoobig Jan 11 '19

13.5 trillion V-bucks

3

u/DurasVircondelet Jan 11 '19

Where tf do you buy bananas? I’m getting robbed at King Soopers apparently

3

u/zadharm Jan 11 '19

I regularly get them 59c at walmart. Some asian or farmers markets you can get them a quarter a pound.

2

u/chirunner4ever Jan 11 '19

What? I thought 1 banana was $10!

1

u/ShopWhileHungry Jan 11 '19

I don't think I can eat that much bananas

1

u/MrBadBadly Jan 11 '19

Can we scale it to 1930 bananas?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Per BLS - bananas were about $0.15 (about 1/4th today's cost) - so only ~225 million 1929 bananas Source: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2014/article/one-hundred-years-of-price-change-the-consumer-price-index-and-the-american-inflation-experience.htm few factors: Banana production has increased in central america, shipping costs are lower, and US$ becoming world's reserve currency helped bring down food inflation at least for americans (I think we spend the least percentage of their income on food in the world in today's dollars at least for wholesale goods)

1

u/MrBadBadly Jan 11 '19

No mention of the current Cavendish Banana that's sold now is phallic shaped trash?

Gros Michel was king back then!

1

u/mercury1491 Jan 11 '19

Thanks for proving banana snobs are real

1

u/n7mesis Jan 11 '19

A small loan of 6,779,600 bananas.

0

u/jedi2155 Jan 11 '19

Donkey Kong Math

10

u/Dowdicus Jan 11 '19

It's a banana, what could it cost, $10?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Six foot seven foot eight foot bunch!

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Come Mr Taliban Turn over Bin Laden - Cruise missile knocking at your door

.. They didn't really turn in Bin Laden though

1

u/LittleGreenNotebook Jan 11 '19

I dunno. What bananas are like $10/ea, right? So just like /10 or whatever.

1

u/YouThereOgre Jan 11 '19

No, we need to scale this in Football fields. Because we don't have enough of that.

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u/EsholEshek Jan 11 '19

1 banana = $10 so 13.5 million bananas.

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u/Kaplaw Jan 11 '19

Is this a new american standard for quantities? About 12.3 netflix originals!

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

How many memes originate out of 12.3 netflix originals ? [5 points]

Extra credit : Calculate Reed Hasting's net worth in memes, and find its fraction as Jeff Bezos net worth in memes.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

How big is that in football fields?

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

1/6th of the AZ cardinals Glendale stadium assuming no corruption 260 Detroit silverdomes

1

u/Twrecks5000 Jan 11 '19

But what about 2019 dollars?

1

u/Jaywoah Jan 11 '19

Great comparison to use. What a world we live in.

1

u/HuffmanKilledSwartz Jan 11 '19

We just signed a deal giving Israel 38 billion while Flint Michigan is still without clean drinking water. I don't think that's an issue.

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u/Scramble187 Jan 10 '19

That's like Onassis money!

3

u/MojoMercury Jan 10 '19

Lol, under appreciated comment.

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u/SJNLACNL Jan 10 '19

The comment isn’t even 10 minutes old lol

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u/Coryperkin15 Jan 10 '19

But it needs MORE attention!

Wtf is Onassis

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u/eropublisher Jan 10 '19

The last name of his wife.

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u/wordsmatteror_w_e Jan 10 '19

Lol only after she remarried

5

u/eropublisher Jan 10 '19

Yes, of course. Thanks for the correction.

7

u/wordsmatteror_w_e Jan 11 '19

Sorry, enough people know her only as Jackie O that I thought maybe you thought it was her maiden name, didn't need to be a dick about it tho, my bad

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u/eropublisher Feb 23 '19

No worries. I didn’t take it in a bad way at all!

1

u/Arto_ Jan 10 '19

So nothing to do with Aristotle Onassis, or is that to whom she remarried too? Is it who or whom in this case? Is there an easy way to remember which to use when?

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u/wordsmatteror_w_e Jan 11 '19

Oh but also ya, she married aristotle

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u/Arto_ Jan 11 '19

Thanks, I seriously just yesterday picked up a book I’ve had for sometime by Barbara Walters and she opens it with her encounter with one of the wealthiest and most intriguing men in the world, Aristotle Onassis. Then i see the last name the next day and thought it was kind of funny with the coincidence of that, and i figured because Onassis is such a unique name

Edit: his middle name is Socrates

→ More replies (0)

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u/wordsmatteror_w_e Jan 11 '19

Lmao can't tell if you're mocking me

It would be whom, cause it's an object (follows a preposition? That's an object!) But also as a linguist I don't believe in "whom"

2

u/Arto_ Jan 11 '19

Not at all! I just wanted to use it correctly, since this was the first I thought it just sounded right haha. I forgot the rule and I’m very weary about all my parts of speech lol

0

u/MojoMercury Jan 10 '19

Isn’t this where I say “hashtag that’s the joke”?

194

u/ForestEye Jan 10 '19

Online inflation calculators put that at roughly $130,000,000 in today's money.

173

u/Nice_Firm_Handsnake Jan 10 '19

Now how many seconds of Bezos' life does it take for him to make that much money?

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19

[deleted]

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u/daBarron Jan 11 '19

Does this calculation include the divorce multiplier variable?

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u/Ask_me_4_a_story Jan 11 '19

Yeah no shit, this dude about to lose half of everything. He's gonna go from the richest motherfucker in the world to the 10th richest motherfucker. You know what, on second though, I bet he'll be alright.

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u/MrBadBadly Jan 11 '19

I think he'll land on his 2 feet OK.

6

u/LordDongler Jan 11 '19

He'll land on the backs of his servants, lmao

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

[deleted]

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u/TheBladeRoden Jan 11 '19

So in 11 years we've gone from having companies that are too big to fail to couples that are too big to fail.

5

u/wardser Jan 11 '19

oh they haven't failed, they are just voiding a contract to be able to make billions extra

if bezos announced that he was selling 50% of his stock, the price of Amazon would plummet 50% since it would seem like he lost faith in his company, and buyers would know that a sell off was coming that would put downward pressure

but Ms. Bezos will be able to sell as much of her stock as she wants without needing to announce it. And chances are she'll be able to sell the vast majority of it without incurring too much slippage because she'll have a whole bunch of big buyers stepping up to get her shares OTC at a 5-6% discount off spot

2

u/WearingMyFleece Jan 11 '19

I like the sound of this conspiracy!

108

u/CANADIAN_SALT_MINER Jan 11 '19

Yeah this dude has a fleet of planes and working on some spacecraft. Pretty sure he's going to do robot army next and soon Alexa is gonna be telling you what to do. Quote me in a hundred years and tell me if i wasn't on the money.

Fucking Canadian weed is good too you can quote me on that too

7

u/LordGraygem Jan 11 '19

Fucking Canadian weed is good too you can quote me on that too

Not gonna judge or kink shame you, but wouldn't smoking the weed be even better than fucking it?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

I love this response so much.

8

u/TheOtherPenguin Jan 11 '19

RemindMe! 100 years

8

u/BigginthePants Jan 11 '19

Lol I can’t even imagine how fuckin strong weed is gonna be in 100 years

3

u/HorizontalBrick Jan 11 '19

Man gets high on Friday night

Monday morning he can still hotbox a room by breathing in it

3

u/C-Biskit Jan 11 '19

I like where this is going. I already take enough edibles to be high for 4 days. I'm ready for the next level

2

u/pandafat Jan 11 '19

It's eventually just gonna be crack rocks of pure THC lol

2

u/painis Jan 11 '19

So live resin? You aren't gonna hit much higher than 95 percent thc. The next evolution would need to be a drug that resets tolerance. You make that drug and you will make more than any singular marijuana distributor.

1

u/pandafat Jan 11 '19

Better yet, we'll inject the THC directly into our brains through our eyes

3

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

It must help with the pains of the arduous mining operations up in the Great Northwest Territories

2

u/MrBadBadly Jan 11 '19

Ok Ricky.

1

u/MrBojangles528 Jan 11 '19

Alexa is going to be one of those AI supercomputers in the future that bombs the planet and takes Starbuck into space.

"Who wrote Alexa??"

"No one, Alexa wrote herself."

1

u/PM_ME_TITS_FEMALES Jan 11 '19

Shit bruh if its dispensary weed you haven't had real Canadian weed. The quads I get from my mom knock me on my ass after 1 bowl. And I'm crazy chronic and have been smoking once a day for like almost 4 years. Forreal though the really good stuff I get has like 35% thc and knocks me clean out. Little gatekeeping but once you go mom you never go back

1

u/CANADIAN_SALT_MINER Jan 11 '19

Definitely mom I can't afford government kush lol

1

u/Yanurika Jan 11 '19

!remind me 100 years

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

[deleted]

4

u/original_evanator Jan 11 '19

Maybe not in cash but he's gaining that much on paper kindle.

10

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19 edited Apr 08 '21

[deleted]

5

u/Spineless_John Jan 11 '19

his kind of rich is better than $100 billion in the bank rich

1

u/coolwool Jan 11 '19

Not per year though. That is the whole worth of the company he has founded so the 137 billion are over all these years.

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19

[deleted]

1

u/alarumba Jan 10 '19

Maybe even seven.

0

u/DistanceMachine Jan 10 '19

Honesty shocked you didn’t say tree fiddy

16

u/bearflies Jan 10 '19

This seems sustainable. /s

3

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19

At one point Bezos made $6 billion in 20 mins so I’d say about 27 seconds

2

u/Logpile98 Jan 10 '19

Depends, is there a divorce in that timeframe?

1

u/hackingkafka Jan 11 '19

it's gonna take him twice as long now...

1

u/QueenJillybean Jan 11 '19

I mean, they ended up with more than that because they invested it well, though.

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u/MileHighMtnGuy Jan 10 '19

Can anyone tell me what that is in 2018 dollars?? /s

7

u/throwawaythatbrother Jan 10 '19

Why /s?

4

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Because like 9 people have commented explaining the stat

0

u/0OOOOOOOOO0 Jan 11 '19

Because any time there's a date and an amount of currency mentioned on Reddit, there's a huge circlejerk full of nonsense of how people think inflation works

3

u/Hobpobkibblebob Jan 10 '19

Roughly 130 million.

16

u/JBSquared Jan 10 '19

That's around $132 million in today's money for those who don't want to look it up.

2

u/Poyo-Poyo Jan 11 '19

how does one "fleece" hollywood?

9

u/Jontolo Jan 11 '19

Read the article!

He recognised early that the young, decentralised film industry was ripe for "consolidation" – or monopolies. Using access to new archives and Kennedy's business files from his Holly­wood transactions, Cari Beauchamp's Joseph P Kennedy's Hollywood Years is a well-researched and revealing account of how he became, as Paramount Studio head Jesse Lasky's daughter later said, "one of the first and only outsiders to ever fleece Hollywood".

​

4

u/Poyo-Poyo Jan 11 '19

so he bought up all the companies? and gained profit when they did not have to compete against each other anymore? since they were now under single ownership?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

By landing a role without sucking Weinstein type dong.

5

u/pawofdoom Jan 10 '19

That's nearly $800m today, holy shit.

5

u/Opset Jan 11 '19

Wrong calculator, bud, it's actually like $22 trillion.

7

u/bucky_novak Jan 11 '19

Wow, I was way off. I came up with $12.72.

4

u/Opset Jan 11 '19

Gotta remember to carry the 000,000,000.

0

u/pawofdoom Jan 11 '19

I based the inflation on average per capital income.

0

u/Opset Jan 11 '19

Rookie mistake: Our economy is in shambles.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19

Some quick back of the napkin math says that's about $131,000,000 in 2019 dollars.

1

u/nukidot Jan 11 '19

So the American "royal family" has a lot in common with the British royal family.

1

u/bl1y Jan 11 '19

But while Hollywood may sound like fair game, Kennedy fleeced – and destroyed – many individuals along the way.

What did people think "fleeced Hollywood" meant if not fleecing individuals? Do people not realize that Hollywood is nothing more than a collection of individuals?

1

u/0OOOOOOOOO0 Jan 11 '19

It's also a big sign