Talk:Jakob Fugger

Changed Ulrich back to Franz after finding that the source originally cited by Graulau gave the name as Franz, not Ulrich. https://archive.org/details/diefrauendeshaus0000scha/page/12/mode/2up?view=theater. Kept the link to the 20th century historian out, though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.147.20.161 (talk) 14:43, 19 September 2024 (UTC) Changed "Franz" to "Ulrich" as Barbara Basinger's father. the link to "Franz" is to a Wikipedia entry about a 20th century historian, as the father of a 16th century woman. You can find the support for the change to Ulrich in Jeannette Graulau, Finance, Industry and Globalisation in the Early Modern Period: the Example of the Metallic Business of the House of Fugger. Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali, Nuova Serie, Vol. 75, No. 4 (300) (Ottobre-Dicembre 2008), pp. 554-598 https://www.jstor.org/stable/42740758.

References

There are no references here. Where does this information come from? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.204.120.252 (talk) 15:05, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Luther in Augsburg

"Jakob also secured the right to sell papal indulgences, which increase his already vast fortune tenfold. Misuse of this system angered the Augsburgers so much that Martin Luther in 1517 formed the protestant reformation in the same city."

Luther began the Reformation in the Saxon city of Wittenberg, not in the Swabian city of Augsburg. I have removed the last sentence as being factually incorrect. --Iacobus 05:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Removed

"At their peak the Fugger family had amassed a fortune of 5,100,000 guilders – a greater sum than the combined value of all 30 companies listed on today’s DAX, the German Stock Exchange index. " --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:59, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Unsited refrence

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123025158419834413.html?mod=yhoofront

This article has been quoted in the current version without credit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.176.61.164 (talk) 23:58, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Jacob's Father.

In this article it states that His father was Hans fugger, but i think it was the first jakob fugger, jakob fugger the elder.

Some quote's from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugger:

The first reference to the Fugger family in the Swabian Free City of Augsburg is the arrival of Hans Fugger recorded in the tax register of 1357.

Hans Fugger's younger son, Jakob the Elder, founded another branch of the family, ... He died in 1469. ... Jakob's eldest son, Ulrich ... Ulrich's youngest brother Jakob Fugger...as born in 1459...Jakob died in 1525.

Ergo it went Hans, Jakob (elder), Jakob (rich).

Whereas on the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_Fugger it is written:

Jacob Fugger (German: Jakob Fugger; 6 March 1459 – 30 December 1525) ... He was the son of Hans Fugger,

So this is contradictory.

All this information from wikipedia articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.150.95.121 (talk) 05:59, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

External links modified

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External links modified

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Removed claim of 400 billion dollars wealth

I have removed the claim that Fugger's wealth was 400 billion US dollars allowing for inflation. This is in fact quite a lot more than the total wealth in Europe at the time of Fugger's life.

Fugger's wealth was approximately 300 _million_ US dollars allowing for inflation. The 400 billion figure was arrived at using the formula Fugger_wealth / nominalEuropeGDP1521 * nominalEuropeGDP2018: given that the European economy has grown a lot in the last 500 years, this is not the same as measuring Fugger's wealth in modern US dollars allowing for inflation.

This methodology appears to have arisen from a 2009 Forbes article, which has lead to ridiculous claims such as the wealth of William the Conqueror being over 200 billion USD. Bit by bit I am trying to purge Wikipedia of these erroneous statistics and I hope you'll join me in this effort. Ordinary Person (talk) 14:43, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Claims of Wealth based in blatant WP:IAI removed.

A various mangle of sources and WP:OR have been used to purport on this page that Jakob Fugger had a net worth, in today's terms, of between $300-400B, and that this was 2% of the European economy, either based on that as a ratio of the current GDP of Europe, or an arbitrary claim of it being of the historical GDP of Europe as per the bad source.

The $300-400B figures are about 2% of the current European economy (GDP), but that's irrelevant, because the figures are blatantly wrong.

The GDP of Europe in the era was far smaller than $300-400B. GDP per capita of Europe at this time was around $1250 in 1990 USD, or around $3000 in 2022 USD. Population of Europe was around 65 million in 1525, the year of Fugger's death. This means the entire GDP of Europe at the time was approximately $195B.

The fact that the source is incorrect is apparent beyond doubt, an opinion article with nothing backing it's claims is not a quality source, and the proliferation of wildly inaccurate claims of historical figure's wealth needs to stop. Apocalyte (talk) 14:08, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Right now we have a reliable source vs your original research. Wikipedia goes with the reliable source. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 18:06, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

No, you have a garbage source that you refuse to acknowledge the problems with. Apocalyte (talk) 19:44, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. This is a rather sad state of affairs. The page as it stands now asserts that 2% of the European GDP around 1500 and 2% of the current European GDP are "equivalent" (i.e., comparable when measured in constant dollars). It is embarrassingly wrong (as a glance at the historical data found on Wikipedia shows, if one needs evidence to confirm that Europe has actually become richer in the last 500 years). This is a deliberate misuse of the term "equivalent" and I think the goal here really should be to inform rather than to confuse the reader. I will try to fix it but apparently I'm not the first (or, I suppose, the last). Gregory Cherlin (talk) 03:48, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia requires verifiability, not truth. Its an estimate, referenced to a published source, and the author of that source is cited as to their opinion. So I see no reason to remove it unless there is a source that contradicts it specifically. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:20, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Your source for the phrasing is an opinion piece plugging a book, and what you quote from that is not in the book, and on a straightforward reading is contradicted by what the author writes in the book, namely: "When he died in 1525, his fortune came to just under 2 percent of European economic output. Not even John D. Rockefeller could claim that kind of wealth. Fugger was the first documented millionaire. In the generation preceding him, the Medici had a lot of money but their ledgers only report sums up to five digits, even though they traded in currencies of roughly equal value to Fugger's. Fugger was the first to show seven digits." One can resolve the contradiction since the paragraph quoted measures net worth in two different ways, neither of which is remotely similar to the usual measure in constant dollars, while the opinion piece introduces a third way of measuring it. According to List of regions by past GDP (PPP) the GDP of Western Europe in 1500 was approximately $44 billion in 1990 dollars, so the estimate given in his book (wherever it comes from originally) is somewhere on the order 1 billion in modern terms. The key point here is that Wikipedia cannot simply patch together random quotations without context or concern for relevance and clarity.

There is material here that one could consider dealing with in the body of the text. For that matter, one could consider its possible relevance to Gini coefficients. One might more reasonably include in the body of the text the journalist's comment about "first documented millionaire," which however suffers from similar problems (in the opposite direction) as it does not make the conversion to modern currency. For the moment, I'm going to put something like that in the lead paragraph, since you're obviously attached to this particular source. This is of low quality and not really informative, but someone else may then try to improve it. It will have the virtue of appropriate brevity and directness. Gregory Cherlin (talk) 22:34, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

You should look for consensus before editing. We don't use Wikipedia as a source nor do we create our own original research citing any sources. Steinmetz' observations and opinions are properly cited as such and are there to provide context. See WP:YESPOV on citing such sources. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 13:09, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The consensus appears to me to be there, though in a very disjointed form, and for obvious reasons. You've given no rationale to prefer the phrasing in the author's blurb for the book as opposed to the phrasing actually found in the book, and no rationale for including it in the lead paragraph (as far as I see here), while various substantive points have been made against it. My interests lie elsewhere and I was struck in passing by the poor quality of that line, consulted the talk page, saw that the problem had been clearly recognized, according to my reading of the conversation, and attempted to address it taking into account the points made. Gregory Cherlin (talk) 17:47, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Consensus is based on the opinions of several identifiable editors, we don't even have that here (re: the SPA account and the sleeper account). If a person is a source there is no reason to WP:CHERRY-PICK depending on where they were quoted. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:48, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

"cherrypicking, in a negative sense, means selecting information without including contradictory or significant qualifying information from the same source and consequently misrepresenting what the source says." That's certainly part of the problem here. Gregory Cherlin (talk) 17:02, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

"Our concern within Wikipedia is about cherrypicking from within a source or closely-related multiple sources, and an editor should be careful in handling that." - we have related sources here. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 12:01, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I think that problem should be addressed at some point. Gregory Cherlin (talk) 18:48, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Net Worth of Fugger

Hello User:Fountains of Bryn Mawr, I really want this issue resolved. I know that the $400 billion is 'in today's money'. It had to be, the dollar didn't exist at the time. But I, and two other editors before me, are telling you independently that regardless of popular belief (and I'll admit this myth seems to have become 'fact' by its prevalence, thanks to the obscurity of the subject making the miscalculation of Steinmetz the only authoritative source) there wasn't enough wealth in the world, let alone Europe for this to be true. Wikipedia editors aren't required to mindlessly regurgitate clearly wrong information just because a journalist wrote it in a book - we can use common sense and discretion. For what it's worth, this [[1]] 2015 article quotes Steinmetz but does give Fugger's net worth at the time of his death as $300 million. Please, stop the edit warring or we'll eventually be in DRR. KeeperOfThePeace (talk) 08:51, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Its cited to a source and as opinion of the source per WP:YESPOV. Cited 2015 article gives the same value (2% of GDP) and does not mention "$300 million". We go by sources in Wikipedia following WP:YESPOV. As for consensus for change, the number of IPs, single edit accounts, and short history accounts making the edits with the same rational (and lack of reliable sourcing) looks a bit like sockpuppets speaking. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 20:05, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

I can assure you I am no sockpuppet. The ~one year gaps between challenges to this information in my opinion makes it highly unlikely that any sockpuppeting is going on here. We're using the same rational because that rational makes sense - it is impossible for anyone to have a net worth of $400 billion in the 15th century. It really is as simple as that. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk combined don't have that much, and they live in a postindustrial world of powerful computers, globalisation and large (10-20x what it was in the 15th century) populations. As for the article I cited: "Charles won, at a cost to Fugger of 544,000 florins — the largest loan in history at the time, roughly $76 million today. Fugger died in December 1525, at age 66. An accounting of his business released several years later placed his final wealth at 2.02 million florins." The fact that it doesn't say the words '$300 million' explicitly doesn't mean that it doesn't support that in the previous sentence and the source is unuseable. Maybe we can keep the '2% of GDP' (at the time) figure, as it at least seems somewhat plausible and all the sources repeat that claim. KeeperOfThePeace (talk) 09:05, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Please don't ignore the wording, it doesn't say he had $400 billion, it says he had "$400 billion in today’s money". Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 18:30, 6 July 2023 (UTC)