[HN Gopher] RCA and the Roaring Twenties
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RCA and the Roaring Twenties
Author : benbreen
Score : 60 points
Date : 2025-01-29 17:50 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (globalfinancialdata.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (globalfinancialdata.com)
| Animats wrote:
| RCA and the Nifty Fifties.[1] This is an orientation film for
| employees.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEPS1uYRCdE
| trhway wrote:
| interesting tidbit:
|
| After World War II, stars that made over $70,000 faced a marginal
| tax rate of 77%. Paley worked out an accounting technique whereby
| individual performers would set themselves up as a corporation so
| they could be taxed at 25% rather than 77%. Sarnoff, the head of
| NBC and RCA, decided this method was legally and ethically wrong
| and he ended up losing most of his biggest stars.
| Frieren wrote:
| > Sarnoff, the head of NBC and RCA, decided this method was
| legally and ethically wrong and he ended up losing most of his
| biggest stars.
|
| This is why the government needs to assure that everybody plays
| by the rules.
|
| If companies out there are lying about an employee status to
| make them instead a contractor (looking at you Uber) the rest
| of companies that are following the law are hurt as other
| workers and society at large.
|
| Enforcing labor law is good for the economy and good for
| society.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Enforcing labor law is good for the economy and good for
| society.
|
| It may be good for society but if you compare countries with
| more labour laws to those with less, e.g. Europe vs America
| (or Western Europe vs Northern Europe, which has stronger
| welfare but less onorous regulation), more labour law is not
| good for the economy.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Amount and enforcement are orthogonal. Regardless of how
| much you have, it must be consistently enforced.
| Frieren wrote:
| > more labour law is not good for the economy
|
| If by economy you mean the richest 0.1% earning more money,
| I have to agree. But I disagree with that definition of
| "economy".
|
| For me economy includes the ability of citizens to make
| ends meet and afford good health care and education. A good
| economy requires a well regulated labor market.
|
| That definitions of a "good economy" are excluding these
| considerations it is just an effect of inequality and an
| increasing focus on the needs of the 0.1% over the economy
| as a whole. And it is not a real representations of the
| real economy at all.
| organsnyder wrote:
| GDP isn't the only measure of a country's success. European
| countries surpass the United States in many metrics
| relating to the actual wellbeing of their citizens.
| nradov wrote:
| Which European countries specifically? Europe is a big
| place. Are you including Moldova? Or just the nice parts
| of the EU?
|
| You can cherry pick measures of success to make one
| country look better than other countries. So what. For
| example, the USA does better than almost all European
| countries in 5-year cancer survival rates.
| organsnyder wrote:
| My wording was sloppy: I should have said "...many
| European countries..." or just "many countries", for that
| matter. My point is that the level of GDP in the United
| States is not required for a thriving society.
| nradov wrote:
| What is the minimum GDP per capita required for a
| thriving society?
| organsnyder wrote:
| I don't have that answer. But I see no evidence that the
| United States benefits--as a society--from our high GDP.
| nradov wrote:
| Would we be better off with a lower GDP?
| organsnyder wrote:
| I don't know. But we certainly would be better off if we
| optimized for other metrics besides GDP.
| nradov wrote:
| Which other metrics should we optimize for, and how
| should those metrics be weighted relative to each other?
| bigtex88 wrote:
| This is a bad-faith question and you know it.
| cowfriend wrote:
| was Moldavia included in the grandparent's comment on
| labor laws?
|
| re: cancer survival. Are you referring to this work from
| 2020, showing that the US has more cancer than the EU,
| even though odds of survival are better?
|
| The US Has Higher Incidence, Survival of Rare Cancers
| Compared With Europe (2020)
| https://www.ajmc.com/view/the-us-has-higher-incidence-
| surviv...
|
| and shows that Age-adjusted incidence for all rare
| cancers combined was 17 percentage points higher in the
| United States than in Europe. The 5-year net survival for
| all rare cancers was significantly higher in the United
| States compared with Europe (54% vs 48%).
|
| so 17% more likely to have it and a 6% increase in
| survival.
|
| Can we talk about cherry picking?
| nradov wrote:
| Right, which was exactly my point. By cherry picking
| statistics you can make any developed country look better
| than any other developed country. So what.
| cowfriend wrote:
| Or you can dig into the details, as Politico did
| https://www.politico.eu/article/cancer-europe-america-
| compar...
|
| and found: The reason the U.S.'s strong performance on
| cancer comes as a shock is because access to care in the
| country is notoriously unequal. But, it turns out, that's
| far less true of the elderly.
|
| Age 65 is when virtually everyone in the U.S. qualifies
| for Medicare -- America's national, taxpayer-subsidized,
| government-run (dare we say socialized), comprehensive
| health insurance program.
|
| in other words, the data you are arguing with shows that
| EU style socialized medicine produced better outcomes.
| ghaff wrote:
| Although Medicare isn't cheap if you currently (or
| recently) had a high W-2 income. I pay about what I would
| for a private plan (or COBRA) for now.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Presumably you can afford it if your income is that high.
| While there are arguments to be made that it shouldn't be
| means-based at all (it destigmatizes it, for one), it
| does seem to be working as intended.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's not unreasonable for a plan that the government is
| always trying to chip away at for financial reasons. But
| a lot of people look at Medicare and think that it's
| essentially free which it decidedly is not for anyone
| with a current or recently high salary. (The add-ons cost
| a bit too but relatively not.)
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think you'd really have to break it down in much more
| detail to say much at all. I mean, it isn't even obvious to
| me at least that "more labor law" is a meaningful measure.
| We have some onerous and overbearing regulations in the US,
| for example Right To Work laws, which restrict the types of
| terms that a company and union can put in their contact.
| But we don't think of that as "more labor law" because it
| works against labor.
|
| Paperwork in the US can be kind of complicated. It is just
| both complicated and poorly aligned.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Nice compact history of US radio. Also lovely to trace a company
| history through several techs, phono->tape->radio->tv. And very
| interesting to hear about stolen lunches and ethical binds still
| relevant today. The invitation here (from the author, and
| submitter I presume) is to compare halcyon radio days with "AI".
| Not sure that works myself. The golden era of non-linear physics
| literally created fundamental new technologies each decade, By
| contrast "AI", blockchains etc are culmination advancements.
|
| The concluding remark is spot on IMHO.
|
| > it was unable to find a new source for dramatic growth. You
| wonder whether the same will be true of the Apples, Googles,
| Netflixes, Teslas and similar companies of the 2020s
| masklinn wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVP0SGNlBiBtF...
| is an exploration of the CED, essentially RCA's last major
| attempt at relevance before Welsh acquired it for butchering.
| relaxing wrote:
| Conspicuously missing here is RCA Astro Electronics, responsible
| for the first weather and satcom satellites, and RCA Missile and
| Radar, responsible for BMD and radars leading up to the Aegis
| system.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| A very interesting article. I worked in the prototype lab of RCA
| Australia (Artarmon, Sydney) in the late 1960s but left before
| the division/manufacturing plant was closed down the early 1970s.
| We made professionsl broadcast and telecommunications equipment
| and the plant did very well (I mentioned my time there and my
| meeting with Sarnoff on HN a while back).
|
| Thus, it came as quite a shock when I later heard the plant had
| closed down as only several years earlier ('68 if I recall)
| Sarnoff Senior (not Robert) had visited the plant and to open a
| new record factory only about a dozen miles away.
|
| As I'd left before the plant was closed I wasn't privy to
| employees' scuttlebutt about Camden's reasons for closing it so I
| had to rely on industry rumors for reasons of which there were a
| number but none was definitive (for me it's always been a bit of
| a mystery).
|
| I was already aware RCA stagnanted from about 1967 onwards but
| this article's Fig 4 (RCA--1920 to 1986) adds numerical info of
| which I was unaware such as the steeper downturn around 1974,
| which is about when the Australian division was closed.
| Presumably, this downturn was at least part of the reason (many
| have long said the '67 decline was due to Robert Sarnoff's
| mismanagement).
|
| I hope someone will soon write a definitive history of RCA, it's
| important it's written because the Company played such an
| important/pivotal role in early broadcast/electronics
| manufacturing (BTW, when I was working there RCA was the biggest
| electronics company in the world).
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