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The Titanic is the perfect metaphor for trickle down economics: the rich got lifeboats, the poor got “stay calm and wait your turn” and then they drowned while the band played.
@Daojoan That steerage passengers would have actively been kept from using lifeboats is an exaggeration. See for instance https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/aycbue/is_there_any_evidence_to_suggest_that_steerage/ .
(But yeah, if you want to believe something strongly enough, counterarguments are futile, of course.)
@tml @Daojoan The Reddit post you reference claims "Overall, this meant that 63% of the entire first class, 42% of the second class, and 25% of the third class lived, and three-quarters of all of the women and half of all the children lived." Maybe steerage passengers were not "actively kept from using lifeboats" but, if you were in steerage, you were twice as likely to die as someone from first class. This is in line with the OP's original comment.
@gpilz @Daojoan So where in that post do you see any basis for the claim that the poor would have been told to "stay calm and wait your turn”? If anything, it was the men (from all travel classes) that were told to stay calm and let women and children go first. (No, I am not some ridiculous "male rights activist".)
@gpilz @Daojoan Also, note that I am not disputing that steerage class passengers had the lowest survival rate. Of course, the emergency evacuation system on ships back in those days was abysmal, and your chance of survival in case of a disaster depended on where your cabin was. (The Titanic was in no way exceptional.)
I am just opposed to oversimplification and exaggeration.