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]
