121–130 of 159 posts
> The problem was that the conquest of the New World left Spain with a lot more money, but not that much more wealth, if you follow me. ELI5, please!
They spent it on war. The Spaniards were fighting the Ottoman Empire and the Relgious Wars brought on by the Protestant Reformation. Funny enough their main enemy for the religious wars was France, who was also Catholic. The Spaniards also went bankrupt multiple times too.
> For the latter part of the 1500s and on into the 1600s Spain was a debtor nation, spending more abroad than it took in. The result was a net outflow of gold and silver. Attempts were made to restrict the export of precious metals, but without much success. In the end it all simply dribbled away. The problem was that the conquest of the New World left Spain with a lot more money, but not that much more wealth, if yo…
Nope. By any objective measure the USA has continued to organically generate enormous amounts of real wealth during that period. We have some issues with inequality and letting foreign countries take advantage of our trade policies but the new wealth is quite real.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And people won't point to the actual causes: - The COVID free-money needed to be less and to end sooner - The COVID restrictions needed to be less and end sooner The disease didn't go away, we just at one point decided we were done with restrictions even though conditions didn't change. We needed restrictions ONLY during spikes and more consideration needed to be given to the long term economic effects of COVID polic…
Everything is easier in hindsight isn't it? Especially with such a complex problem. > The COVID restrictions needed to be less and end sooner What would we have been optimizing for here? GDP? Deaths? ICU Capacity? Lifestyle? Or would we weight them? If so would we take 2nd and 3rd order effects into consideration? > An example graph, when restrictions should have been on or off left as an exercise to the reader I liv…
I wrote the following July 2020:
>And with all of this money being injected into the economy, we are absolutely going to get an enormous amount of inflation... eventually. You could see it as already happening with the valuation of the stock market.
And in January 2022:
>It’s time to admit defeat and plan for what that looks like and stop pretending like anything at this point is going to make this virus go away. It’s here, it’s going to kill about one person in a thousand of those left, and if you choose to not get vaccinated that’s your choice and if you’re not young you’re taking a significantly higher risk of death.
Not so much hindsight as "what I've been saying all along".
>We sit here watching what is effectively a shadow puppet show but are left clueless to what is really going on because if we did know we can't be trusted with the secrets, or wouldn't be able to understand the data, or would object to a course of action as an emotional response, even if what is presented is truthful and the most optimal solution to a problem.
This is a bunch of nonsense. What was happening was quite transparent. The science was out in the open in papers and government statistics for anyone with scientific training to read. Politicians were caving to polarized public opinions on both sides to take advantage of and encourage their chosen pole.
Those of us talking about moderation and common sense reactions were demonize by one side or usually both depending on the venue. Nobody in leadership had the balls to lead and try to make people understand a middle path based on reason.
People STILL fall into their previously chosen polar opinion and refuse to accept that moderation was the correct and untaken path.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside influence heavily distorts local economies and needs to be done extremely carefully or you end up making a few people rich and starving everybody else.
Heifer International presents a good face on doing this by introducing livestock, providing education to the new owners, and imparting an in-kind donation requirement so as to perpetuate and spread the gains.
Where just giving away food or money, especially on large scales distorts and ruins economies. Likewise introducing significant export markets when a local economy isn't ready.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a sibling comment said, gold was effectively money. Having more money, without having more products to buy, effectively triggered massive inflation. Prices went up, but the actual supply of goods and services didn't change much. The Spanish economy suffered massive inflation, as did Europe in general to a lessor extent.
It's interesting that mining gold and silver is similar to printing more money; we usually think of inflation as represented by debasing coinage but there's been a few circumstances where flooding the local economy with precious metals is the same effect.
> The problem was that the conquest of the New World left Spain with a lot more money, but not that much more wealth, if you follow me. ELI5, please!
Spain’s colonies funneled huge amounts of gold and silver into the European economies without a complementary increase in productivity to absorb it, causing massive inflation. A ship for transatlantic shipping might have first cost 100,000 maravedí to build and equip before the treasure fleet expeditions, but afterwards with so much gold flowing into the economy and lots of competition for a limited ship building ind…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was very surprising to see zero mention of the Manila galleon[0] trade route in the linked article, even if technically the question was about gold rather than silver. The simple answer to the question of what happened to the money was that Spain spent it! The impacts on SE Asia were profound and are still being felt today. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon
Would love to read about the impact on SE Asia that continue until today. Do you have a recommended resource?
More directly from the trade itself and the silver it brought permanently altered the demographics, flora and fauna of the region. Southern Chinese traders migrated in greater numbers throughout the region, new world fruits and vegetables such as sweet potato and pineapple are introduced. Chinese merchants in the region are producing Christian religious art for export back to the old world, giving rise to a unique hybrid artistic style.[0] The region as a whole becomes more attractive for the Dutch and the British, which had its own set of downstream consequences …
I’m sorry I don’t have a single source that pulls this all together, you would probably need to pick an area and start reading!
[0] https://artsandculture.google.com/story/ivories-from-macau-a...