If America's wealth were based on slavery, the economy would have crashed post-Civil War and never recovered.
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The South's economy *did* crash post -Civil War. South's generational wealth was wiped out--held in slaves, or in plantations, most of which were bankrupted during or after the war.
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No one can deny that the economy of the South crashed but how much of that was due to ~25% of white males 17-45 being killed/wounded/maimed, according to one source, and the destruction of so much infrastructure? I’m not an economist, I don’t know.
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A rather large percent of the slave population died, too, since there was now very little food and few folks bothered to give them any of it.
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(Seriously, the Union freed the slaves, but didn't bother to think of "okay how are these people going to survive the winter with no jobs, food, or homes in a war-ravaged hellscape?")
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Union did set up the Freedmen's Bureau. Eric Foner is a communist, but his Reconstruction is the #1 reference.
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Thank you for the information!
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If slavery was such an economic turbocharger, then how come the economic output of the Confederate States of America was so much less than that of the union?

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turbolag obviously
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Redlining: When the left tacitly admits that black people are so unpleasant to live around that even other black people shouldn't have to live around them.
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The British realized early on that in order to have industrial capitalism and "open up the markets" in their empire they needed to get rid of slavery/servitude in order to have a larger consumer base.
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@mattyglesias cotton was a lucrative cash crop, like cocaine, but it essentially made the South a third world country.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Many Caribbean islands had some of the highest GDPs in the world in the 18th century. Did that wealth from slavery translate over into industrial success? Nope. America is wealthy today because of what happened after the Civil War, not before it.
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How much of this is related to reparations negotiations? The more responsible for the economic rise of America the more they are owed.
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If only the Wakandans had shared their malaria vaccine, history would have been so different.
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I like to think of it like saying a healthy 49 year-old got that way because he went on cocaine benders in his 20s. You might argue that he's healthy now in spite of that period of his life. But if he hadn't lived through his 20s, he'd be dead. Checkmate.
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Slavery in its American implementation is an excellent example of the economic concept of externalities.
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Not just cotton.. Any and all FREE LABOR, Slave Traders capitalized upon
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