TL:DR - Cratchit is making poverty wages in the UK and the US. However with extra context provided by different numbers, can still show workers around the world are being screwed.
I was curious about the math.
Schillings to Pound (https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/education-resources/shillings-to-pounds-converter)
15 schillings equals £.75
Inflation from 1843 to October 2025 (https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator)
£.75 = £83.18
Bob Cratchit was making £83.18 per week. That’s about:
- £2.07 per hour for 40 hours (£83.18 / 2)
- £166.36 for two weeks (£83.18 * 2)
- £4,325.36 per year (26 x £166.46)
The median weekly pay for someone who lives in London is £903 (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8456/). There is a 166.262% difference between Cratchit’s weekly income (£83.18) and the median income of London (£903).
The overall median income for people living in the UK for the fiscal year ending 2024 was £36,663 with the mean being £42,684. (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householddisposableincomeandinequality/financialyearending2024)
There is a 157.789% difference between Cratchit’s annual income (£4325.36) and the median annual income of someone in the UK (£36,663).
The minimum hourly wage in the UK for April 2025 is £12.21. (https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates)
There is a 142.017% difference between Cratchit’s hourly income (£2.07) and the minimum wage in the UK (£12.21).
Cracthit is still making poverty wages in the UK.
For the Americans;
As December 5, 2025, the exchange rate is hovering around $1.33 USD for every £1. (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GBPUSD=X/?guccounter=1)
£83.18 = $110.92 USD
Bob Cratchit was making $110.92 USD per week. That’s about:
- $2.77 per hour for 40 hours ($110/92 / 2)
- $221.84 for two weeks ($110/92 * 2)
- $5,767.84 per year (26 x $221.84)
The Federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25 per hour (https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/minimumwage)
- $290 in weekly income ($7.50 * 40)
- $580 per two weeks ($290 * 2)
- $15,080 for the year ($580 * 26)
There is a 89.3345% difference between Cratchit’s weekly income ($110.92) and the federal minimum income ($290). There is a 89.3345% difference between Cratchit’s yearly income ($5,767.84) and annual income at the federal minimum ($15,080).
Cracthit is still making poverty wages in the US.
Conclusion
- Showing your work and sources are super important. This tweet may have been correct at one point however it’s way off the mark now.
- On a surface level, my calculations show that workers have had it it great. However, with extra numbers for context. We can easily show that workers around the world are still being fucking screwed. Numbers like the percentage increase of wealth, the consumer price index, calculating real wages, the rise in productivity vs the stagnation of wages, etc.
Your money numbers make sense, but the percents don’t. Your first example says 166% difference between 83.18 and 903. 903 is a 1085% increase. Your others are also way too low. If you just look at your percent changes, it looks like Bob is doing much better than he really is.
This is AMAZING. God I wish more people did this shit. Bravo!
The error mightve been in when the currency conversion was done, the first googlr result claims that in 1843 one pound would get you around 5 usd.
Thanks for actually doing the math, I’ve seen this float around for a while and it always felt off.
Americans doing anything about it:
We can’t do anything about it, we’re homeless and broke!
I🙏 u r not joking.
You have a home, and you 100% paid for it, take it back!Nepal did it. Myanmar did it. Thailand did it. South Korea did it.
Please stop making excuses for yourselves, and make fascists pay.I wish it were that simple.
I know it’s not. But Nepali were more homeless and poor than you, and still burned their government building to the ground.
Time to organize and take the fascists down.Nepal hasn’t had a real government since the King stepped down, the government they overthrew was like a year old.
We have one very deeply entrenched with every aspect of life. Our entire society is just in time… Meaning every city is basically 3 weeks from starvation at all times. There’s food stores everywhere, but they’re in military caches
Also, do you have any idea how big America is?
Even if everyone just went to their state capital to protest, that would be a 2-9 hour drive for the majority of the population… Before you take into account traffic. There’s no other option either. You’d have to organize buses beforehand, otherwise the numbers would never get to a point our heavily over funded and militarized police couldn’t supress it
Which gets back to the organizational issue… The FBI and CIA (the latter, extra illegally) break up every effort at progressive organization. They’ve been doing it for about a century… It’s why things are so one sided here
There’s not going to be a glorious revolution, the conditions for it are just not present.
There’s going to be an economic (and possibly societal) collapse, and if we’re very very lucky, we’ll fix the structural problems with our democracy while we pick up the pieces
Also, do you have any idea how big America is?
This is what gets me when I see posts wondering why Americans haven’t marched to Washington and overthrown the government. If I lived on the coast of Portugal, Washington DC would be roughly as far away as Moscow is to there.
Somehow MAGA did it.
I believe that is what helped lead them to take down their government; that there was more homeless and poor. There are a lot of people (maybe a majority) in this country that haven’t seen the effects enough in their own lives for them to give a shit. Enough people still have jobs, food, and a home so aren’t feeling enough pressure to act. Contentment, complacency, and apathy for others are counteractive to revolution, and we still have much of those in the US.
South Korea is the wrenth to this hypothesis, that I concur with.
That’s the thing, they are good at just keeping people poor enough, but not too poor. It’s not worth it for them to risk everything because they aren’t that poor. Yet anyway.
Sorry, I forgot to buy the gold politician package this year to encite the change we need. I was too busy surviving.
With how cheap corporations buy politicians, even a fruit basket is enough of a bribe. See Bubba 👨❤️👨Drumpf.
OP didn’t show work, and I don’t know how they arrived at the numbers they did.
If we handle inflation before exchange:
15 shillings is £0.15.
£0.15 in 1843 is £16.64 today.
£16.64 is $22.22
$22.22/week is $1155.44/year.
If we handle exchange before inflation:
15 shillings was $0.72 in 1843
$0.72 in 1843 is $31.52 today
$31.52/week is $1639.04/year
Don’t let this get in the way of another meme meant to outrage the kids!
Isn’t a shilling worth 12 pence and 1 penny would equivalent to 1 cent?
It was my understanding that a shilling was 1/100 of a pound sterling.
The most damning point of which is that cratchet isn’t destitute; underpaid for his job maybe, but manual laborers were often making half his hourly wage at the time and any reader would have known this.
