Thursday Notes
Victor Davis Hanson,"Why Study War?" City Journal, Summer, makes a case for the study of military history. See also: Dave Stone,"Measuring the Glass Half Full," The Russian Front, 30 August; and Mark Grimsley,"The Study of War: Where to Start?" Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, 3 September.
Brad deLong,"Who Benefited [sic] from North American Slavery?" Economics 113, UC Berkeley, Fall 2007, is the economist's handout for a course. deLong concludes:
Most slaveholders did not gain much economic benefit from slavery. Those who held slaves before the demand for cheap textiles boomed made large profits from their sale. The other major benefit came to consumers who were able to purchase cheap textiles and the clothes made from them, and to taxpayers whose burden was reduced by tariffs on the cotton trade. Textile manufacturers and workers also benefited somewhat.
So economists would say that the standard answer – that slave-holders benefited from cotton-growing slavery – is largely wrong. Initial slaveholders when it became clear how big a deal cotton would be gained, but world consumers gained as well and so did those who benefited from lower American domestic taxes made possible by high taxes on imports financed by cotton exports.
deLong is full of evangelical zeal:
That is why we economists want every sociologist, historian and political science [sic] at Berkeley – and beyond! – to take microeconomics, and then to take it again, and again. If you are going to evaluate what's going on in the economy, you need to be able to make these ‘incidence' calculations. And only microeconomic theory give you the tools you need to do so.
Thanks to Dale Light for the tip.