Homespun economics

Lafayette · Aug 6, 2018

From here: The Industrial Revolution could shed light on modern productivity

Excerpt:

Researchers differ on whether rising wages gave the impetus to industrialise

HOW much yarn per day could an 18th-century British woman spin? Such questions are catnip for economic historians, whose debates typically unfold unnoticed by anyone outside their field. But a running debate concerning the productivity of pre-industrial spinners, and related questions, is spilling beyond academia. Each probably produced between a quarter of a pound and a pound of yarn a day, the historians have concluded. But at issue is something much more profound: a disagreement regarding the nature of technological progress that has important implications for the world economy.

Economic growth of the sort familiar today is a staggering departure from the pattern of pre-industrial human history. More than a century of study has not resolved the question of why it began where and when it did. This is a matter of more than historical interest. Weak growth in productivity has economists asking whether humanity is running out of ideas, and whether it is losing its ability to turn new technologies into rising incomes.* A clearer understanding of what exactly happened in 18th-century Britain could shed light on the matter.

The subject of productivity (in this article) is too important for me to encapsulate.

So, if interested under the glaring summer-sun then read it.

And don't say you were never told ... !

*I, for one, do not believe that mankind is "running out of ideas", even if most of the world has been running not-at-all thanks to Uncle Sam's gift to it of the Great Recession. In fact, with the advent of the Information Age, I suggest we are at the cusp of another great jump forward as happened at the onset of the Industrial Age. My only question is, "Will we land on our feet?"

Homespun economics

Lafayette