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A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

economist.com

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Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#111

Post by ransom1538 »

zizek23 wrote: post #34

Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…

Sort of. The big advantage the US had was OCEANS on both sides and only stone age peoples to the south. Attacking the US on it's own soil has been a suicide mission for hundreds of years. Counties in order to attack the US would need to pile men on ships travel for a month(s) then attempt to skirmish on the beaches. On the other hand attacking Poland /Korea/China/Spain/Italy/Egypt is a matter of walking. Once ships were powered/quick enough to transfer men in mass it was too late -- the repeating rifle had been invented.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#112

Post by walterstucco »

adventured wrote: post #88
maxxxxx wrote: post #44

It will be interesting to see how the next 400 years will go. For a long time the US could just keep growing into new territories and absorb a lot of ambitious immigrants that way. It seems this phase is over. The US is now a grown up country where everything is owned already so it will be much harder to grow. The Trump success seems a symptom of this. Instead of just growing as the US had always done Trump's message…

Your premise isn't very well supported by the facts. The US added $5 trillion to its GDP in the last ten years, despite the great recession - a time in which the most powerful economies of Europe didn't grow at all, nor did Japan. US wages routinely grow three to five times faster than those in Japan, Germany, France or Britain. Where's the lack of growth? GDP per capita went from $46,000x to $57,000x over those ten…

You're right

Spying on citizen and companies of competing countries, including allied countries and their leaders, is highly profitable

I'm sure mob profits all over the world sky rocketed during the crisis, should we ask them for advices?

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#113

Post by maxerickson »

gerdesj wrote: post #69
alex_anglin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing the natives?

Who are the "natives"? Do you stop at "first to call the area by its modern name" or do you go back through say first hominids? Perhaps we should go back further, say "recognisable single cell organism"

Humans are likely the first hominids to occupy the Americas.

There's some speculation of earlier migrations:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-evidence-hu...

In any case, humans had been living here for several thousand years before Columbus arrived 500 years ago. Is it so difficult to see a distinction between millions of people with hundreds of years of history and thousands of people arriving on ships?

(Estimates of the total population vary quite a lot; millions is quite a safe claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_indigeno... )

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#114

Post by Banthum »

phugoid wrote: post #97
newsmania wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery actually held the USA back. It kept the south rural, whereas the north was far wealthier without slaves because it industrialized. Furthermore, the civil war was incredibly destructive and without slavery would not have occurred. Lastly the USA was not the biggest economy in 1850. As for a “usurped continent”, the land was very sparsely populated by the natives compared to the people who came in, and disease…

> It’s just not right to say that so few people should get to control the entire continent just because they were there first. By that argument, it's just not right to say that multi-millionaires should control so much wealth just because they were born into privileged conditions. Wouldn't fairness require a forced redistribution of those resources?

That's why we have such massive forced redistribution of those resources (e.g. progressive income taxes), yes.

There is a limit in either case. Nobody would say one person should be allowed to control all global wealth, or that one person should be assigned all of North America. It's just a matter how where you draw your line.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#115

Post by chrisweekly »

adventured wrote: post #88
maxxxxx wrote: post #44

It will be interesting to see how the next 400 years will go. For a long time the US could just keep growing into new territories and absorb a lot of ambitious immigrants that way. It seems this phase is over. The US is now a grown up country where everything is owned already so it will be much harder to grow. The Trump success seems a symptom of this. Instead of just growing as the US had always done Trump's message…

Your premise isn't very well supported by the facts. The US added $5 trillion to its GDP in the last ten years, despite the great recession - a time in which the most powerful economies of Europe didn't grow at all, nor did Japan. US wages routinely grow three to five times faster than those in Japan, Germany, France or Britain. Where's the lack of growth? GDP per capita went from $46,000x to $57,000x over those ten…

Wage growth for who? Citation please.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#116

Post by pizza »

newsmania wrote: post #73
zizek23 wrote: post #34

Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…

Slavery actually held the USA back. It kept the south rural, whereas the north was far wealthier without slaves because it industrialized. Furthermore, the civil war was incredibly destructive and without slavery would not have occurred. Lastly the USA was not the biggest economy in 1850. As for a “usurped continent”, the land was very sparsely populated by the natives compared to the people who came in, and disease…

I'm skeptical of the idea that the tragedy of the unintended epidemic resulted, fairly, in property rights for the invaders. It means that either:

- "collective pre-existing rights became held in abeyance because so many rightsholders died" -- This assumes the living natives were not the owners of what was still there, either because they were propertyless, or the dead rightsholders didn't have a way to transfer property rights - which they would necessarily, historically have had for rights to have been a pre-existing Native American cultural notion - at the very instant they met the explorers.

- "the natives didn't have a notion of property rights, but the explorers did. the explorers were able to respect property rights, so it was best and fair that they acquired as much as they could" -- If anything this suggests that the explorers had great disrespect or didn't even understand property themselves. It was peak hypocrisy to violate the Native American population's property rights -- that were still their rights even if they were unaware of them. You cannot steal something from someone else if you think they don't know it is theirs. I have a suspicion that this idea I keep hearing "natives didn't have the concept of property" is really just false and veiled racism.

- "even if natives did have property rights nevertheless the invading explorers had a different concept of property rights" -- yes, the explorers had the same idea of fair property rights as someone going into a convenience store and shouting "nobody move, this is a stickup!"

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#117

Post by jackbravo »

ransom1538 wrote: post #111
zizek23 wrote: post #34

Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…

Sort of. The big advantage the US had was OCEANS on both sides and only stone age peoples to the south. Attacking the US on it's own soil has been a suicide mission for hundreds of years. Counties in order to attack the US would need to pile men on ships travel for a month(s) then attempt to skirmish on the beaches. On the other hand attacking Poland /Korea/China/Spain/Italy/Egypt is a matter of walking. Once ships w…

stone age people to the south? Didn't Spaniards and Englishmen had the same technology?

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#118

Post by maxerickson »

ransom1538 wrote: post #111
zizek23 wrote: post #34

Let's call it as it is, an entire continent was usurped, a gigantic fertile landmass rich in resources was stolen along with unlimited slave labour and IP from Europe. The consequence is predictable. Using jingoism to spin this into some sort of exceptionalism celebrates the loot and plunder without a hint of self consciousness or remorse, and cements a barbaric ideology that fuels more indiscriminate global plunder…

Sort of. The big advantage the US had was OCEANS on both sides and only stone age peoples to the south. Attacking the US on it's own soil has been a suicide mission for hundreds of years. Counties in order to attack the US would need to pile men on ships travel for a month(s) then attempt to skirmish on the beaches. On the other hand attacking Poland /Korea/China/Spain/Italy/Egypt is a matter of walking. Once ships w…

The British stole the president's dinner and burned the White House during the war of 1812:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington#White_Ho...

A storm intervened on behalf of USA.

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#119

Post by afpx »

losvedir wrote: post #53
Razengan wrote: post #12

Honest question: How much of it is thanks to the US being far away and largely untouched by all the wars in Europe, especially WW2, while still ostensibly profiting from them? And then being the ones to end it with the strongest display of force?

None of it, technically. The U.S. became "the world's largest economy" before WW1.

I wasn't sure, so I had to look it up. But, it seems like losvedir may be correct.

According to these numbers [1], the U.S. was the largest single country economy several years before 1914. And, if these numbers can be trusted, its growth trajectory would have sustained that position even without WWI.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison_statistics_of...

Re: A 400-year story of progress – How America became the world’s biggest economy

#120

Post by seibelj »

maxxxxx wrote: post #92
adventured wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your premise isn't very well supported by the facts. The US added $5 trillion to its GDP in the last ten years, despite the great recession - a time in which the most powerful economies of Europe didn't grow at all, nor did Japan. US wages routinely grow three to five times faster than those in Japan, Germany, France or Britain. Where's the lack of growth? GDP per capita went from $46,000x to $57,000x over those ten…

It seems the US is doing a lot of things right. But I still believe that its main advantage over the last few hundred years was the ability to grow into "empty" land and also the fact that it's protected by oceans. Edit: Based on this the US is not really outperforming: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-europe-outperf...

The vast majority of the United States is undeveloped. No need to worry about land
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