1816 - the maximum income tax level is 5%
2013 - the standard income tax level is 30%
1837 - Citizens are forced to do "Statutory Labor" each year. For example, if you owned £ 201 taxable income, then you had to 8 days of working on rural roads.
2013 - Instead of Statutory Labor, we have Statutory Holidays. The road work is now done by Unionized workers who spend more time posing for Wendy's commercials than work.
1843 - For every 700 people in Upper Canada, there are 2 saddle/harness makers, 1 coachmaker, 4 wheelwrights, 6 blacksmiths and 2 coopers.
2013 - For every million people in China, there is a factory - in China.
1850 - 100 000 black slaves have escaped via the Underground Railroad. The final stop: Niagara Peninsula, Upper Canada.
2013 - Russian and Serbian millionaires move to Canada, since the new final destination for slaves is still Niagara Peninsula, Ontario.
In the US:
1860 -
Perhaps the most revealing memorial to Lincoln and his world is found in one of the most mundane of American documents: the census. There he is in the Springfield, Illinois, listing of 1860: Abraham Lincoln, 51 years old, lawyer, owner of a home worth $5,000, with $12,000 in personal property. His neighbor Lotus Niles, a 40-year-old secretary—equivalent to a manager today—had accumulated $7,000 in real estate and $2,500 in personal property. Nearby was Edward Brigg, a 48-year-old teamster from England, with $4,000 in real estate and $300 in personal property. Down the block lived Richard Ives, a bricklayer with $4,000 in real estate and $4,500 in personal property. The highest net worth in the neighborhood belonged to a 50-year-old livery stable owner, Henry Corrigan, with $30,000 in real estate but only $300 in personal property. This was a town and a country where bricklayers, lawyers, stable owners, and managers lived in the same areas and were not much separated by wealth. Lincoln was one of the richer men in Springfield, but he was not very rich.
2013 - Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
There are 1 426 billionaires in the world. (i.e. for every game on CC that saxitoxin has played, there is a billionaire).
