{"id":1074,"date":"2008-08-29T01:02:04","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T05:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2008-08-29T01:02:04","modified_gmt":"2008-08-29T05:02:04","slug":"a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/","title":{"rendered":"A Farewell to Alms, by Gregory Clark, Posting I"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m about to reread A Farewell to Alms<\/em><\/a>, by Gregory Clark.\u00a0 The book challenges the conventional wisdom of economists about how and why economies grow.\u00a0 Ask a typical economist for an economic growth recipe and he or she will say “low taxes, property rights, security and stability.”\u00a0 Clark has assembled amazing quantities of data on wages, prices, and rents going back to the year 1200 in England.\u00a0 He demonstrates that England circa 1300 had all of the things that a modern economist says are sufficient to guarantee economic growth and yet its economy stagnated for centuries.<\/p>\n

Clark starts with a defense of Malthus.\u00a0 In most societies at most times in human history, Malthus was right.\u00a0 The population expanded until everyone was living at a subsistence level.\u00a0 Given an improvement in technology or health care the long-term result was not that people on average had an improved standard of living, but rather a population of increased size living at an even lower material standard.\u00a0 You had to be robust in filthy Europe to survive infections, but even an underfed weakling was relatively safe from disease in hygienic Japan and China.\u00a0 The consequence was that China and Japan were more densely populated and strikingly poor by European standards right up to the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n

If Malthus and Clark are right, foreign aid is the ultimate career path for a young person.\u00a0 Western donors are motivated by images of people living in poverty.\u00a0 Money flows in.\u00a0 Even after subtracting for the overhead of running all of the NGOs, a certain amount of food and health care aid reaches the unfortunates.\u00a0 You might expect the NGOs to suffer a reduction in demand and a reduction in donations as the unfortunates begin to look less unfortunate.\u00a0 Malthus would predict that the former unfortunates will have a lot of children and eventually the larger population will be worse off than before, which will result in more dramatic TV images of starving people, more donations, and more job opportunities for our young NGO careerist.<\/p>\n

Population growth combined with personal income growth is an anomaly, according to Malthus and Clark.\u00a0 The U.S. population has been growing steadily in recent years and our average inhabitant is no better educated than before.\u00a0 Politicians stand up and angrily ask why average personal income hasn’t grown.\u00a0 The real question is why average personal income hasn’t shrunk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m about to reread A Farewell to Alms, by Gregory Clark.\u00a0 The book challenges the conventional wisdom of economists about how and why economies grow.\u00a0 Ask a typical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA Farewell to Alms, by Gregory Clark, Posting I - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Farewell to Alms, by Gregory Clark, Posting I - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m about to reread A Farewell to Alms, by Gregory Clark.\u00a0 The book challenges the conventional wisdom of economists about how and why economies grow.\u00a0 Ask a typical […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-29T05:02:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"philg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"philg\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"philg\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"headline\":\"A Farewell to Alms, by Gregory Clark, Posting I\",\"datePublished\":\"2008-08-29T05:02:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/\"},\"wordCount\":402,\"commentCount\":2,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/448e4e6a0ae9105741a06dcf62cee50e\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/\",\"name\":\"A Farewell to Alms, by Gregory Clark, Posting I - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2008-08-29T05:02:04+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/29\/a-farewell-to-alms-by-gregory-clark-posting-i\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"A Farewell to Alms, by Gregory Clark, Posting I\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\",\"description\":\"A posting every day; 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