# Rich then or poor now? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 7, 2011, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477 "2011-02-07T01:52:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/21 "2011-02-07T06:03:42Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > A _billionaire_ in 1911? That’s some extreme cash. I may miss modern music, but with that kind of scratch and the legends around (and in the making) I would easily cope. Jam with Robert Jordan anyone? This is true; a billion dollars in 1911 was a _lot_ of money. You’d be wealthy on the order of John D. Rockefeller. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/22 "2011-02-07T08:05:58Z")
I’m an insulin dependent diabetic. No matter how much money I have in the past, I’m not going to be able to get insulin developed in time to live very long. Well, I don’t THINK that I could get it developed in a couple of weeks. And I don’t know enough about insulin production to direct the research. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/23 "2011-02-07T09:18:33Z")
If you are poor in the US today, you’re probably living in a neighborhood where the life expectancy is pretty short anyway. ---
**Author:** ![One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/838e76/32.png) [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/24 "2011-02-07T09:36:55Z")
If I can’t take my family then I choose poor in the presnt with family over rich in the past sans family. If it’s a family deal it gets trickier. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/25 "2011-02-07T09:38:12Z")
Oh, I forgot to answer the question: I’d take rich then just to see how it feels. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/26 "2011-02-07T12:03:34Z")
Remember, very poor people in 2011 have medicaid, vaccinations, welfare, food pantries, etc… . Old people have medicare. Also, even poor people in 2011 USA still have televisions, DVD players, cable tv, internet, microwaves, air conditioning, refrigerators, etc… These are all things to consider before making your decision. And the OP is based in the United States, not Calcutta. My position is, with all the things we have today, one is better off being poor today then rich back then. ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/27 "2011-02-07T13:19:30Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > I’m an insulin dependent diabetic. No matter how much money I have in the past, I’m not going to be able to get insulin developed in time to live very long. Well, I don’t THINK that I could get it developed in a couple of weeks. And I don’t know enough about insulin production to direct the research. Even if you did know how, you don’t want that insulin. Sure, it’d keep you alive, but it wasn’t fun, and it didn’t keep you complication-free like modern insulins. So I’m with you and the others. I gotta stay here and be poor, because I wouldn’t last very long without drugs. ---
**Author:** ![McReady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ee59a6/32.png) [@McReady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/McReady)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/28 "2011-02-07T13:53:34Z")
I’d feel I owed it to the species to take the deal. With a billion 1911 dollars, and my 2011 knowledge of the history to come, maybe I could prevent the World Wars. Maybe my sponsorship of young Robert Goddard (and middle-aged Tsiolkovsky, if I could lure him away from Czarist Russia) would get us into space by mid-century. Money talks. I’d push for birth control, women’s suffrage, racial integration, all that good stuff. And maybe I could get a date with Lillian Russell. ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/29 "2011-02-07T13:56:51Z")
If I can take my family, rich then. If not, it would have to be poor now. ---
**Author:** ![ColdPhoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@ColdPhoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ColdPhoenix)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/30 "2011-02-07T14:10:34Z")
The only thing that would make it a difficult choice would be if I had to leave my family. Otherwise it’d be rich in 1911 in a blink of an eye. > [@pkbites](#): > > Also, even poor people in 2011 USA still have televisions, DVD players, cable tv, internet, microwaves, air conditioning, refrigerators, etc.. Who needs TV if you’re super-wealthy? You can have super hot naked ladies dancing around you all day pouring you glasses of the finest vintage champagne and offering cocaine off their voluptuous breasts. If that doesn’t take your fancy you can travel the world in proper style, and see the wonders of the world without swarms of modern day tourists. Have delicious food prepared by the best chefs in the world compared to the microwave ready meals you can get as a poverty line US citizen? ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/31 "2011-02-07T14:40:44Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > My position is, with all the things we have today, one is better off being poor today then rich back then. I haven’t voted and have so far have avoided the curse, but wouldn’t it be an adventure? Is there not enough da Vinci or Edison in you to step up & take the risk? No such equipment? Build some. No such parts? Forge some. No such steel process? Search your mind, remember it, and ‘invent’ it. No such music? Play some and let others riff from there. No such novels? Write some; every idea you have is brand-spanking new. Want sound with your movies? Splice the recordings onto the firm, have a needle fitting in your projector & your off to the movies! Stable mono-wing airplane designs. Steer tank designs away from rivets. Introduce plasma shape-charge torpedoes. Turn bread mold into penicillin. Point science towards genetics-based diseases 100 years early. Turn depression sugar cane into a fuel source. Invent Latex (rubber suspended in water; its only 10 years early). Invent an assembly line process for dipping penis-shaped glass molds into latex and you’ll not only invent a better condom, you’ll put America ‘In The Mood’! 😃 California real-estate, Venezuelan oil wells, Swiss bank accounts. Die young? Maybe. But what a way to go… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/32 "2011-02-07T15:18:57Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > No. You can take nothing with you but your memories of your life up until 2011. If you know how to make antibiotics, knock yourself out back in 1911. Under those rules? With that much money? Yeah. In a second. It’d be too late to do anything about WWI… but I could change WWII by a lot with that cash. A lot of people alive that would be dead. If I couldn’t change the world on that scale? No, not really, rather be living now. I’d view going back like that, even with that much money, as a sacrifice. But one probably worth it. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/33 "2011-02-07T17:05:29Z")
I’m a non-white woman. There is no amount of money you can entice me to go back in time to that date. The Nineteenth Amendment wasn’t even passed until 1920, do you know that? I don’t want to have kids, either. I suppose I could be an eccentric billionaire recluse but it just isn’t worth it. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/34 "2011-02-07T17:22:42Z")
Is there an order to the whole “being tossed in a lake of fire thing”? Like could I wait a couple of seconds after the 60 and have a few of my relatives go before making up my mind? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/35 "2011-02-07T17:31:46Z")
> [@Drain\_Bead](#): > > If I can take my family, rich then. If not, it would have to be poor now. This. If I can’t take my family, no amount of money would make up for my never seeing my son again. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/36 "2011-02-07T22:26:36Z")
If I went back to 1911, my mother and father would be one year old. If I could have a will written leaving my fortune to my mother and not a cent to my father, I’d settle for that. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/37 "2011-02-08T06:43:32Z")
A billion dollars in 1911? I’d take it in a heartbeat. I would change the world and be the richest person in history by 1929. Hell, with a billion dollars I’m already in the top-10 and richer than John Rockefeller by $300 million (he wouldn’t break a billion until 1916). And with this wealth, I will shape the future… I’d first buy as much Standard Oil as I could - the Supreme Court is going to rule against the company in June (and the breakup comes 6 months later) so the buying opportunity is short. Ford is another buying opportunity (sell about 1922 or so), as well as GM (using the Ford proceeds to purchase GM). Keep the GM for about 40 years or so, and buy other stocks as they become available - IBM, GE, Westinghouse, Woolworth, Sears… be bullish on America. Short Europe. Don’t know how one bets against a continent, but my investment dollars are only going into the safest post WW2 plays - Bayer, Volkswagon, etc. By 1929 I’ll be 59 years old and probably have a net worth about 5% of America’s GDP, or about $5 billion. I’ll also be largely out of stocks, waiting for the shitstorm about to occur. (It will be argued by later historians that selling my vast holdings in late 1928 to June 1929 is what destabilized the markets to begin with, but they’re wrong. WRONG, I tell ya!) 1933 is where things really start to diverge. The stock market reaches its nadir, the banking system collapses, and Hitler is in power in Germany. Even after my philanthropy efforts, I still have $4 billion left, which I start using to steer the future. Hitler’s dead. I’m getting that fucker and he ain’t seeing 1935. If a couple of others go out with him, so much the better. I’ll gladly put a $20 million bounty on his head - let’s see how long he lasts. Now that I’ve scotched WW2, I will need to spearhead development of computers and rockets (and possibly nukes). This will be difficult because the US military was the driving force behind all three technologies from 1941-onward and without their demand for these items, little will get developed. Thank God the OP has given me almost 25 years to figure this out! 😉 I’ll campaign against prohibition and for birth control. I’ll start scientific foundations and universities that will develop technologies and medicines that will improve the lives of billions. I’ll kick-start the agricultural revolution, I’ll develop a better rationale for a space program (one designed for the long-term). You’ll have your internet, your pron and captioned kittenz, no later than 1980 - that I promise. It’ll be glorious. When do I start? ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/38 "2011-02-08T16:50:42Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > I’m a non-white woman. There is no amount of money you can entice me to go back in time to that date. The Nineteenth Amendment wasn’t even passed until 1920, do you know that? I don’t want to have kids, either. I suppose I could be an eccentric billionaire recluse but it just isn’t worth it. I was having a similar thought as a black man. I could just see the money being taken from me by some made-up law, and me being imprisoned (or worse). If all I can do with the money is hide away somewhere and not get to enjoy it publicly in a modernized (for the time) country, then it seems somewhat pointless. If my money is possibly going to get taken away from me either way, I may as well remain in the present. Admittedly, I’m no history buff. Were there prominent and wealthy non-whites anywhere in the US during that time period? ---
**Author:** ![The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/39 "2011-02-08T17:08:37Z")
Well, if this really happened exactly as you describe, I probably wouldn’t have the balls to give up everything I know. But if I had the choice to be BORN earlier, I think I’d be happier. I think I could do without a lot of modern conveniences, and if everyone else was doing the same (like gathering together for tea or reading books around the fire rather than watching TV or going on the computer), that would be fun. I’d most likely live a more healthy lifestyle and a healthy environment, and I rather like the idea of living in a single-income household and making sure the house is clean and dinner is on the table by the time my husband gets home from work. ETA: Oh my gosh and I didn’t even think about the fact that I’d get a billion dollars, too! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477/40 "2011-02-08T17:08:52Z")
I’d take it. $1 billion in [1911 dollars](http://www.westegg.com/inflation/) is $22,830,135,938.17 in today’s money. With that kind money I could invest heavily in the political corruption of era, and change America’s direction to something much more progressive. I wouldn’t do anything to stop the Great Depression. That’s a hard lesson that needed learned. However I could bide my time and push for universal healthcare, food, and shelter assistance to reduce the pain of it. Further I could push for education availability and reforms. Most importantly I could, maybe, jump start the civil rights movement so Jim Crow, and gender discrimination is ended sooner. I’d have an upper-hand with this too. As a modern I know full well all the nasty consumerism advertising tricks, and could really push my agenda on a more advertising naive era. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rich-then-or-poor-now/570477.md?page=3)