The relatively late age at which platers broke even is of great significance and requires further discussion. Two factors are responsible for this lateness. The first is that the cost of capital was high in the South, and planters had to advance capital to cover the expense of rearing slaves for many years before they received a return from the labor of slaves. Second, because of the high mortality rates which prevailed for both black and white in the antebellum era, less than half the slaves lived to the break-even age. Fully 40 percent of the slaves died before age nineteen. Thus a substantial part of the income taken from those slaves who survived into the later years was not an act of expropriation, but a payment required to cover the expenses of rearing children who failed to reach later ages. An additional part of the income taken from productive slaves, much smaller than tat taken to cover child rearing, was used to sustain unproductive elderly slaves, as well as the incapacitated at all ages.... The high break-even age also helps to explain why US planters encouraged the fertility of slave women, while slaveowners in other parts of the hemisphere appear to have discouraged it. The crux of the matter is that child rearing was profitable only if the expected life of slaves at birth was greater than the break-even age. In the US, the life expectation of slaves exceeded the break-even age by more than half a decade [5 years or at least aged 24].... The 12 percent rate of expropriation reported on slave income falls well within the modern tax rate on workers. It has been estimated that about 30 percent of the income of workers at the poverty level is taken from them through sales, real estate, and income taxes. On the other hand, such workers, on average, receive payments and various services from the government which more than offset the tax burden. Were there any services received by slaves which offset the income expropriated from them? The answer is yes, but they cannot be quantified reliably at present. [Time on the Cross: 153-156]
The high break-even age also helps to explain why US planters encouraged the fertility of slave women, while slaveowners in other parts of the hemisphere appear to have discouraged it. The crux of the matter is that child rearing was profitable only if the expected life of slaves at birth was greater than the break-even age. In the US, the life expectation of slaves exceeded the break-even age by more than half a decade [5 years or at least aged 24]....
The 12 percent rate of expropriation reported on slave income falls well within the modern tax rate on workers. It has been estimated that about 30 percent of the income of workers at the poverty level is taken from them through sales, real estate, and income taxes. On the other hand, such workers, on average, receive payments and various services from the government which more than offset the tax burden. Were there any services received by slaves which offset the income expropriated from them? The answer is yes, but they cannot be quantified reliably at present. [Time on the Cross: 153-156]
This book is one of those things, like Economic Institutions of Capitalism, I had to open and read through as if agnostic. Deep zen bath.
Can you guess why I went searching for it? mmmm. My journey began on the web. Here is the path: Veblen --> Kuznets --> NBER (bah) -->econometrics (bah) -->cleometricians (c. 1970) -->Feinstein. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
For more that a decade
Remember Donnan? Forget Donnan. Until you obtain Time on the Cross, vol. II, Evidence and Methods, wherein is revealed, presumably, all the source data omitted in vol. I, or all source data not even footnoted. That's how neolibmetricians do you, so to reconstruct historical truths from the numbers ...
scores of scholars have been exploring every conceivable source of information bearing on the operation of the slave system. The search led them into the deepest tecesses of the National Archives
...although detailed census data prior to 1970 is all county level, as I've commented elsewhere.
and various state archives where the original, handwritten schedules of information collected by the census takers of 1850 and 1860 were stored....
The bulk appears to originate from LA [!], NC, SC, VA, UT, sadly. The largest slave populations were AL, MS, GA. Also, the book makes no, ZERO, attempt to evaluate international slave trade, not even to balance national accounts or adjust price inflation.
As a result of the search, the cliometricians have amassed a more complete body of information on the operation of the slave system that has been available to anyone interested in the subject either during the antebellum era or since then. It is this enormous body of evidence which is the source of many of their new discoveries. Some of the discoveries were at one time as unbelievable to the cliometricians as they will be to the readers of this volume. Indeed many of the findings presented in the chapters that follow wer initially discounted, even rejected out of hand. But when persistent efforts to contradict the unexpected discoveries failed, these scholars were forced into a wide-ranging and radical intepretation of American slavery. [Time on the Cross: 7-8]
Some of the discoveries were at one time as unbelievable to the cliometricians as they will be to the readers of this volume. Indeed many of the findings presented in the chapters that follow wer initially discounted, even rejected out of hand. But when persistent efforts to contradict the unexpected discoveries failed, these scholars were forced into a wide-ranging and radical intepretation of American slavery. [Time on the Cross: 7-8]
Radical in the narrow sense of refuting the claims of economic historian and authoritay U.B. ("who?") Philips, 1877 - 1934.
oh, yes. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Except the screw-ups here are economists.
Even assuming for the sake of argument that their data was correct -- and there is quite a bit of evidence that it was not -- your quote yields you very little by way of Twank's analogy. This is, of course, setting aside the minor issue (ahem) of taking one or two large plantations in one part of the South and deciding they were representative of the entire region and culture of slavery.
The consensus among historians is is pretty solid on the conditions slaves endured.
The one sentence related to elderly slaves is at least in the ballpark, but I fail to see how the rest is at all like Social Security. Rather it seems to be a series of paragraphs attempting to justify expropriation on the part of slave-owners.
Were there any services received by slaves which offset the income expropriated from them? The answer is yes, but they cannot be quantified reliably at present.
As Dana Carvey used to say, "How conveeeeenient."
Maybe we can debate The Bell Curve next. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Have you read the book? Did you listen to Engerman's interview? To what consensus do you allude? Is it the one that proves profitability is not an end unto itself? Or the one that disproves any economictric calculus of economic goods? Slavery is a good thing. Emancipation is for suckers.
Inflation is inevitable. Adjust your attitude accordingly.
I've read many a NBER working paper on hardware and software investment... before the subject was even commercialized popular. I can attest to the rigorous methods of NBER cliometric contributors. My pants, man! Economic historiography was impossible before Kuznets.
Will you insist in my faults, though I merely report the findings of the prize winning economists to those who cannot read?
For shame. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
In the absence of evidence on the market behavior of slaveowners, it was easy for historians inclined to the romantic to postulate a dichotomy between paternalism [cf. Sunstein] and profit seeking. They took evidence of paternalism to imply that slaveowners must have sacrificed profits to other objectives. Now that the profitability of slaver and the overwhelming dominance of business considerations in the market behavior of slaveowners are firmly established, should we assume that paternalism was an invetion of apologists for slavery? That conclusion would be as romantic and naïve as the one we have rejected. There is too much evidence of deep personal attachments between owners and their bondsmen [sic] to deny that this was a facet of the slave system. "Now my heart is nearly broke," wrote a Louisiana planter on the occasion of the death of the principal slave manager [!]. "I have lost poor Leven, one of the most faithful black men that ever lived. He was truth and honesty, and without a fault that I ever discovered. He has overseed the plantation nearly three years
Can you not see yourself take up Leven's crucial role in assuring the value added to the STABILITY and GROWTH of a young nation as you weave through 495 rush hour?
and has done much better than any white man had ever done here, and I lived a quiet life." Would this expression of affection have been quite so deep if Leven had been inefficient, dishonest, and troublesome? While we do not mean to imply that affection for slaves was purely a function of their earning capacity, we do mean to suggest that it was more usual for affection and productivity to reinforce each other than to conflict with each other. Both cruelty and affection had their place on southern plantations. [Time on the Cross: 77-78]
Would this expression of affection have been quite so deep if Leven had been inefficient, dishonest, and troublesome? While we do not mean to imply that affection for slaves was purely a function of their earning capacity, we do mean to suggest that it was more usual for affection and productivity to reinforce each other than to conflict with each other. Both cruelty and affection had their place on southern plantations. [Time on the Cross: 77-78]
