Hot answers tagged economics
12
From "The origin of metallic currency and weight standards" By Sir William Ridgeway (Google books); University Press, 1892
... We saw that the Arabs of the Soudan down to the present day prefer silver to gold whilst in the earlier part of the present century when Japan was opened to European commerce the Japanese eagerly exchanged gold for silver at the ...
9
Geoffrey Blainy, one of Australia's greatest historians, dedicated about 2 pages or so to a chapter entitled The Paradox of Isolation. He said that places like the USA or Australia advance slowly in the beginning because they are isolated: they don't trade with anyone, they don't share inovation with anyone, they don't even have the need to innovate, because ...
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It was illegal to set up business by person or group during that time. The first license to individual business after cultural revolution was issued in 1980. Even in late 70s and early 80s (after the cultural revolution), trading goods by individual was still a crime called 投机倒把罪，meaning "crime of Speculation and profiteering". People relied on a nation-wide ...
6
The United States is one of the five largest countries in the world by area. The others are Russia, Canada, China, and Brazil. Of these five, the United States has the largest amount of land in temperate, agriculturally and industrially suitable climates. Russia and Canada are (mostly) two far north, China and Brazil have much larger proportions of deserts ...
6
While it is difficult to understand what the monks themselves thought on this matter, there is some material on whether they enjoyed their work, were actually put out of work and if there were protests against the printing press due to this.
From: From Gutenberg to the Internet: A Sourcebook on the History of Information Technology, Volume 2 by Jeffrey M. ...
6
This happening is known as The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre. It took place in 1902 in Hanoi, which was a French colony at that time.
At the beginning action was a success, but as the bounty was granted for every rat's tail, soon the town was occupied by rats with cut out tails, that were left alive for breeding, and there were more and more rat farms in the ...
4
Has scholarship shown that persecuted religious minorities have tended to be financially successful?
Here is a relevant example concerning the Jewish minority in late 19th-century Vienna, as recorded by Peter Gay in Freud: A Life for Our Time:
Many of the immigrants from the miserable villages to the east dressed
and spoke and gestured in ways alien and disagreeable to the Viennese;
they were too exotic to be familiar and not exotic enough to be
...
4
I cannot offer definite proof right now, but I'm almost certain (von) Mises was an Austrian citizen at least sometimes before his forced emigration to Switzerland. Consider e.g. this:
He was working for the national chamber of commerce and consulting for the Austrian government. Such roles are usually filled by citizens even today.
Lots of people kept ...
4
You are confusing money supply with inflation. Increasing the money supply can sometimes (but not always) increase prices right along with it - this is called inflation. Inflation devalues the currency, and if it devalues too much, smaller denominations, like the penny in the US, becomes an impractical medium of exchange.
Increasing the money supply is a ...
3
At the end of World War II not only the British and French colonial empires ended, but also France and Britain were dependent and had a huge economical debt towards USA.
During the decades that followed, the United States offered good opportunities to skilled professionals in all the world, and also to not skilled ones. That includes researchers, engineers, ...
2
Historically (and I'm stealing heavily from Stratfor.com), USA was in an enviable position of combining:
economy-friendly geography (large interconnected navigable rivers systems, great safe ports, agriculture-friendly lands)
militarily-friendly (post 1870s) world position (no heavy military threat from east or west and pretty much none from the north)
...
2
From Wikipedia –
In all the French spent 1.3 billion livres to support the Americans directly, in addition to the money it spent fighting Britain on land and sea outside the U.S.
France's status as a great modern power was affirmed by the war, but it was detrimental to the country’s finances. Even though France's European territories were not ...
1
Has scholarship shown that persecuted religious minorities have tended to be financially successful?
Yale Professor Amy Chua makes this case for Russian Jews, Yugoslav Croats, Chinese in Southeast Asia and others, in this book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_on_Fire
Note, however, that she is also the author of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother."
1
Has scholarship shown that persecuted religious minorities have tended to be financially successful?
The Chinese minority in Indonesia is the first supporting example that comes to mind. However worldwide it is far more common for oppressed ethnic minorities to be relatively poor due to the legal and social barriers they have to deal with.
I love Neal Stevenson's work (particularly the Baroque Cycle), but like many authors he's got his annoying quirks. In ...
1
Has scholarship shown that persecuted religious minorities have tended to be financially successful?
Generally I would say "no". The exception of course being the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which prohibits taking advantage of "brothers" (those with the same faith) by charging interest - this obvious opened up a nisce for minorities of other faiths.
But it's not as clear cut, as - to take Europe - Jews didn't only lend money to ...
1
If you wanted to own a business, the way to do so under Communist China was to go into the Army and advance to a generalship. Vast swaths of military-industrial complex in PLA functioned as basically economic fiefdoms subordinate to specific generals. "Hiring" is then of course done by military and civilian personnel assignment by staffing officers in PLA at ...
1
The USA is the world's strongest country because of its military force.
And it is the most advanced military force because it has the most advanced fundamental science.
And it has the most advanced fundamental science because America inherited it from Germany which had been devastated.
Germany was the most advanced nation since about 800 when Holy Roman ...
1
Jared Diamond, a cross-discipline scholar who's work more or less accurately reflects modern thinking in History, Sociology and human evolution and biology, makes a detailed review of their work here. He's pretty enthusiastic about it overall, but he does note some problems. Here's the summary:
My overall assessment of the authors’ argument is that ...
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