Brandon DeCamp
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2016–2026
2:36 · 9.8M views · Feb 24, 2012
The classic 1950s recording of Tennessee Ernie Ford singing 'Sixteen Tons', a song about a coal miner trapped in company-store debt.
Used as a joke reference in threads about debt, housing, and exploitative economic arrangements.
3 comments from Hacker News
Here's how you perpetrate a wealth transfer from average homeowners to the rich: 1. Deregulate mortgage lending to cause a housing bubble. 2. When it bursts, bail out the banks, and let people lose their homes, resulting in the homes being transferred to banks and landlords, causing more speculation and price increases. 3. Meanwhile, make sure the proportion of economic growth going to workers is kept minimal, even as the stock market booms. 4. Now, these workers not only have to sell their labor to the rich for paltry returns, have their retirement (if any) invested by the rich, borrow from the rich to go to college, but also rent from them in perpetuity. this video
this video You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store
The 21st century version of "16 tons"[1] becomes "16 terabytes" and the refrain becomes: "I owe my soul to the company stor[age]". [1] this video