Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie’s early life was lived mostly in poverty. Carnegie was born in Scotland into a family that lived in poverty. He was the breadwinner of the house and was uniquely intelligent. An example of this intelligence can be seen in his early years when he could decode morse code by just hearing it. It wasn’t until his later life that he would accumulate the wealth that he is famous for. Because of poverty, he experienced when he was younger, he learned that an immense amount of people were suffering on a daily basis. Felix “Pewdiepie” Kjielberg was born in Gothenburg, Sweden on October 24, 1989. His life wasn’t very similar to Carnegie’s in that he didn’t start out poor. He started in a middle-class family and went to  Chalmers University of Technology until he dropped out. He never really had a major struggle when he was young in terms of economy, but they were not rich either. 

Carnegie gained so much wealth that he became one of the wealthiest men in history. He became invested in the steelmaking industry; this was after working to get enough money to afford to invest in it. He gained a firm grasp over the industry through his intelligent use of vertical organization. He gained ownership of all the companies within the production and distribution of steelmaking, and this allowed him to easily control the prices of the steel. This made it incredibly easy for him to gain a monopoly over the steelmaking industry. This eventually leads to his total net worth of 300 million dollars which is worth four billion dollars today. This allowed him to live a very comfortable life during his later years. Felix Kjielburg gained his wealth through his current job at YouTube. During his early years, he worked at a Hotdog stand in order to amass enough wealth to continue doing YouTube. Eventually, around 2013, he gained one million subscribers. This began to give him enough money to start becoming self-sufficient. His current net worth is thirty million dollars. Although it is not as much as what Carnegie gained. It is still an immense amount of money to have. 

Andrew Carnegie gave away much of his wealth to those who were less fortunate, and he also advocated for others to do the same. This is most definitely because of his poor upbringing. Carnegie spoke about those who are wealthy; he said that if those people are lucky enough to be wealthy they should give much of their wealth to those who are less fortunate. He also was responsible for financing major improvements in modern science, founded many institutions, and many more important things. This helped in providing a better life for those around him and advanced our modern world. Felix, although provided less in quantity, gave much of his wealth and used his fame to bring attention to growingly concerning issues. He’s used his fame to raise money for several organizations such as CRY, Save the Children, The Crisis Textline, and many more. This has raised millions of dollars for great causes. This is also amplified by his own donations to such causes, most recently to the anti-defamation league. He does not possess nearly the amount of wealth as Carnegie did, but he still tries his best to this very day to provide good for society as a whole. 

Despite Carnegie’s contributions to society, he has still fallen under horrendous controversies. The most glaringly obvious of which is the treatment of his workers. His workers were paid a microscopic amount of money. Their salary then is equivalent to 30,000 per year in today’s money. Which back then, was just above the poverty line. This is worsened by the fact that they worked six days a week, ten hours a day with respect to little from their supervisors. This lead to the infamous homestead strike where several people lost their lives to the oppressive use of force demonstrated by Frick. The strike lasted about a month and ended in death and attempted assassination. So saying Carnegie has a controversial reputation would be an understatement. Despite not being nearly as terrible as Carnegie’s, Felix’s controversies still plague him to this day. He was under fire for his past usage of dark sarcastic anti-Semitic humor which was taken out of context by the majority of the media. Despite never supporting any malicious ideas, reporting sites such as The Wall Street Journal took these clips out of context in an attempted smear campaign. He was also caught saying a racial slur on stream which was a less than stellar moment on his end. But, in the end, he is still more than a great person. At the very least, he has never exploited children and the disabled for money.

Resources:

Jackson, Lara, editor. “Nobody Wants To Tell You The Things PewDiePie Has Done For Charity.” Fraghero, https://www.fraghero.com/nobody-wants-to-tell-you-whats-pewdiepies-done-for-charity-and-hes-done-a-lot/.

PewDiePie. (n.d.). PewDiePie. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-lHJZR3Gqxm24_Vd_AJ5Yw.

Carnegie Corporation of New York (n.d.). Carnegie Corporation of New York. Retrieved from

Carnegie Hall (n.d.). Carnegie Hall. Retrieved from

Jackson, L. (Ed.). (n.d.). Nobody Wants To Tell You The Things PewDiePie Has Done For Charity. Fraghero. Retrieved from https://www.fraghero.com/nobody-wants-to-tell-you-whats-pewdiepies-done-for-charity-and-hes-done-a-lot/