Perhaps that's all that's left in amurka, and at least it's a concrete, positive step. Besides, it's damn good for Izzy.
Tough to call someone who's stood up so strongly and so nearly alone against the Bush nightmare of the past "a little weasel." "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
Tough to call someone ...
Not for me. I would have respected him if he had said "I was threatened with no support in the upcoming election from my own party if I didn't cave. I'd be an unemployed weasel and THAT would REALLY scare me. In the end, like 99.9% of all politicians, I'm out for ME! And there's not a damn thing you are prepared to do to stop it."
A caller on Washington Journal (CSPAN) coined an interesting line: "Welcome to Plantation Earth. All you need is a Social Security Number and you're a slave".
My surprise is that we're still treated as well as slaves and not as cattle, YET! Just down the road. Fortunately at my age I'm just one good stroke or heart attack from getting the hell out of here. No need for health care. Just cremate the left-overs. Now where's the fun in that! - Megatron
Don't knock it 'til you really, truly tried it. Paranormal survey results collected by Nobel laureates Fogel and Engerman sez:
Figure 33 show that the average daily diet of slaves was quite substantial. The energy value of their diet exceeded that of free men in 1879 by more than 10 percent. There was no deficiency in the amount of meat allotted to slaves. On average, they consumed six ounces of meat per day, just an ounce lower than the average quantity of meat consumed by the free population. While pork was more important in the slave than in the free diet, the difference was not as large as is usually presumed. Slaves averaged 70 percent of the free population's consumption of beef. The milk consumption was low by free standards, but still amounted to about one glass per day per slave.... The high slave consumption of meat, sweet potatoes, and peas goes a long way toward explaining the astounding results shown in figure 34. The slave diet was not only adequate, it actually exceeded modern (1964) recommended daily levels of the chief nutrients. [Time on the Cross: 114-115]
The high slave consumption of meat, sweet potatoes, and peas goes a long way toward explaining the astounding results shown in figure 34. The slave diet was not only adequate, it actually exceeded modern (1964) recommended daily levels of the chief nutrients. [Time on the Cross: 114-115]
You know, just to prove you're not making that up...
Historian Herbert Gutman and others have rejected several of Fogel and Engerman conclusions task on variety of fronts. Gutman argued they relied on evidence from a single, unrepresentative plantation, and also noted the authors were extremely careless in their math, and often used the wrong measurement to estimate the harshness of slavery (for example, estimating the number of slaves whipped rather than how often each slave was whipped). Fogel and Engerman later acknowledged these criticisms in a later edition. In Slavery and the Numbers Game, Gutman argued that Fogel and Engerman also routinely ignored better, readily-available data. Gutman roundly criticized Fogel and Engerman on a host of other claims as well, including the lack of evidence for systematic and regular rewards and a failure to consider the effect public whipping would have on other slaves.
ahem. pardon. had a twank.
I got mines from the pubic liebary! Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
"Welcome to Plantation Earth. All you need is a Social Security Number and you're a slave".
I'm curious to know where these plantations were that gave you a number, subsidized your health care or put you on a federal insurance program, and cut you a check when you retired at 65. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Facilities for the treatment of the sick generally varied with the size of the plantations. The larger plantations maintained substantial hospitals. On one plantation with 168 slaves, for example, the hospital was a two-story brick building which had eight large rooms. Such hospitals usually contained separate rooms for men and women. A special room was often set aside for confinement cases. One or more of the rooms were "clinics" for the treatment of "outpatients." These rooms contained a pharmacy as well as other equipment needed for ministering to the sick. On smaller plantations, the "hospital" was merely an ordinary cabin reserved for the sick.... Physicians were regularly brought onto the plantations to care for slaves whose health problems could not be treated adequately by the nurses, midwives, overseers, or planters. Some planters contracted for the physicians' services for a year at a time, paying a flat fee that was usually proportional to the number of persons covered by the contract. Others paid for services rendered.... Neither the 1850 nor the 1860 census collected information on morbidity. The only currently available data comes from a sample of 545 field hands who lived on fifteen plantations. This sample provides information on illness rates during 2,274 man years of labor time. It shows that on average each slave was sufficiently ill to be absent from work for just 12.0 days per year. This low illness rate tends to support the impression that slaves were well cared for. [Time on the Cross: 119-126]
Physicians were regularly brought onto the plantations to care for slaves whose health problems could not be treated adequately by the nurses, midwives, overseers, or planters. Some planters contracted for the physicians' services for a year at a time, paying a flat fee that was usually proportional to the number of persons covered by the contract. Others paid for services rendered....
Neither the 1850 nor the 1860 census collected information on morbidity. The only currently available data comes from a sample of 545 field hands who lived on fifteen plantations. This sample provides information on illness rates during 2,274 man years of labor time. It shows that on average each slave was sufficiently ill to be absent from work for just 12.0 days per year. This low illness rate tends to support the impression that slaves were well cared for. [Time on the Cross: 119-126]
Once again, Thank You! Now where's the fun in that! - Megatron
Somehow all I do is piss most people off here
Come on, you don't always do that, and when you do, you must surely realize how you did it...
No?
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]
Just cremate the left-overs. I love the smell of roast chicken in the morning!
get off yer lazy butt and take a walk! ~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.
