So why are barrels used to depict poverty? After all, they are quite impractical. The origin is generally attributed to Will B. Johnstone who was a popular political cartoonist for the New York World-Telegram in the 1920s and ‘30s who depicted the American taxpayer as a naked man wearing a barrel to illustrate his penniless state and it went on to represent the millions who had lost everything in the Great Depression.
In it’s time, the 8-track tape player was revolutionary in enabling user selected music to be played in motor vehicles. It was invented by Bill Lear who also invented the car radio as well as the personal business jet that was named for him.
8-track technology was rather flawed but far better than the only other option at the time… a record player that was quite bulky, cumbersome and far more prone to malfunction. It became relegated to the junk heap after the development of cassette tape player incorporating Dolby noise reduction technology.
2024 could be an historic year in a very bad way… total gross interest payments on the national debt could total $1 trillion amounting to almost one out of every six dollars the U.S. government spends. By comparison, in 2021, it was one out of every fifteen dollars. In 2023, 13 cents of every tax dollar collected was spent on interest and it will likely be higher this year. Bottom line, it isn’t the size of the debt that matters but rather the cost of servicing it with dollars that could be much better spent.
So why are barrels used to depict poverty? After all, they are quite impractical. The origin is generally attributed to Will B. Johnstone who was a popular political cartoonist for the New York World-Telegram in the 1920s and ‘30s who depicted the American taxpayer as a naked man wearing a barrel to illustrate his penniless state and it went on to represent the millions who had lost everything in the Great Depression.