Britain's wars have in fact brought about most of its social change from feudal system to where it is today, by decimating the peasants and sharply reducing the supply of labor. Labor-intensive industries had to up pay and benefits to steal workers from each other. The Great War was a final nail in the coffin, but it all started with the Hundred Years War and Thirty Years War. The situation swung back heavily in favor of employers and landowners when the Industrial Revolution created mass unemployment and labor became dirt-cheap. That was a good time to be rich.
George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë do a pretty shit job of documenting it; the Corn Laws aren't even mentioned in Middlemarch, although the big technological setback to the weaving and dyeing industries is, peripherally. Anne Brontë was far more aware.
Tim, your thesis is historically inaccurate and doesn't hold water. Technology was the bosses' friend.
Working from memory here, but I recall something to the effect that in the US the only times the income or wealth gap declines is during a war or recession/depression. As St. Maggie & Ronald Reagan pointed out, the price of the proles' lives improving is that the stinking rich get richer.
And all that work by Fritz Haber, John Deere, various scientists. Wheat was about 0.5 tonnes per hectare in 1800. By the end of the century is was 2 (not sure why, sounds like a lot of your explanation). It rose a little from there to the late 1930s but in the post-war era it rose from around 3 to 8 tonnes per hectare in 2000.
If you can produce 3 or 15 times as much wheat with a hectare of farm land, a hectare of farm land is going to be worth less.
This is my explanation for (broadly speaking) the end of war in Europe after WW2. Plenty of full bellies, and it just isn't worth doing any of that Lebensraum stuff. I also wonder whether it explains the end of the European empires. That European powers didn't need them for food, other than coffee or bananas. Not worth the cost of troops to keep the Algerians, Jamaicans and Indians in check.
Well, sorta. If yuo can produce more on your acre, your acre is worth more. If everyone can produce more on all acres then your acre could well be worth less.....
Britain's wars have in fact brought about most of its social change from feudal system to where it is today, by decimating the peasants and sharply reducing the supply of labor. Labor-intensive industries had to up pay and benefits to steal workers from each other. The Great War was a final nail in the coffin, but it all started with the Hundred Years War and Thirty Years War. The situation swung back heavily in favor of employers and landowners when the Industrial Revolution created mass unemployment and labor became dirt-cheap. That was a good time to be rich.
George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë do a pretty shit job of documenting it; the Corn Laws aren't even mentioned in Middlemarch, although the big technological setback to the weaving and dyeing industries is, peripherally. Anne Brontë was far more aware.
Tim, your thesis is historically inaccurate and doesn't hold water. Technology was the bosses' friend.
Working from memory here, but I recall something to the effect that in the US the only times the income or wealth gap declines is during a war or recession/depression. As St. Maggie & Ronald Reagan pointed out, the price of the proles' lives improving is that the stinking rich get richer.
And all that work by Fritz Haber, John Deere, various scientists. Wheat was about 0.5 tonnes per hectare in 1800. By the end of the century is was 2 (not sure why, sounds like a lot of your explanation). It rose a little from there to the late 1930s but in the post-war era it rose from around 3 to 8 tonnes per hectare in 2000.
If you can produce 3 or 15 times as much wheat with a hectare of farm land, a hectare of farm land is going to be worth less.
This is my explanation for (broadly speaking) the end of war in Europe after WW2. Plenty of full bellies, and it just isn't worth doing any of that Lebensraum stuff. I also wonder whether it explains the end of the European empires. That European powers didn't need them for food, other than coffee or bananas. Not worth the cost of troops to keep the Algerians, Jamaicans and Indians in check.
Well, sorta. If yuo can produce more on your acre, your acre is worth more. If everyone can produce more on all acres then your acre could well be worth less.....
Good point. What's the population increase, what's the rise in yields, do you improve the transportation of it, use of it in bakeries etc.
It wasn't that long ago that cafes would charge for wifi because it was scarce. Now it's so common, it's the way to get you in for the coffee.