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Frame from Tennessee Ernie Ford - 16 Tons Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Tennessee Ernie Ford - 16 Tons

Brandon DeCamp
Music
YouTube
Cited on HN 3 times, 2016–2026, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Used as a joke reference in threads about debt, housing, and exploitative economic arrangements.

The classic 1950s recording of Tennessee Ernie Ford singing 'Sixteen Tons', a song about a coal miner trapped in company-store debt.

3 jokes · Music

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@umadon Jun 2019 Makes a joke
on HN thread Investors Are Buying More of the U.S. Housing Market Than Ever Before
Read more
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]
@amiga386 Mar 2026 Makes a joke
on HN thread Roblox Is Minting Teen Millionaires
[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

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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