Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 January 13

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January 13

Official Declaration 1

In a printed edition of the Standard Works of the LDS Church, of what does Official Declaration 1 consist? The declaration's page on lds.org includes excerpts from President Woodruff's addresses on the subject, as well as the text of future President Snow's resolution accepting the declaration, and both of these are absent from our article on the Declaration. On one hand, it seems bizarre to say that we should exclude part of the Church's own scripture page from what we consider to be its scriptures, but on the other hand it seems bizarre to attribute part of the text to newspaper clippings (and to abridge them, at that) if the entire text is canonical. I'm unsure whether to believe that our article's lacking or to believe that the Church's website staff included a bunch of additional (non-canonical) resources for background information. Nyttend (talk) 01:26, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article you linked to (via a redirect) contains the full text. What more did you need? --Jayron32 02:04, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Clarification from someone with access to a printed edition of the Standard Works. I already said that I read both pages that I linked; my point is that the two pages appear to provide different texts. Nyttend (talk) 03:27, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Millennials

I know millennials are poor now, but when all's said and done, will they be the wealthiest generation so far? Benjamin (talk) 04:03, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

What is the basis for your premise? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:04, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't have the answer to the question itself, but to answer Bugs, it's well known that the chance of young households (defined in the following source as having a head of household under 40) being in debt has increased substantially over time [1]. The amount of debt, just among those who are in debt, has also been rising. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:15, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Other sources show that the situation has been improving along with the economy, with the exception that student debt is still rising [2]. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:18, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Can you find a source that answers the OP's question for a prophecy on their future? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:45, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Side note, although median family income has been steady in the US for decades, it has been habitually falling for young families [3]. Now, to your question, or the OPs, there are sources that try: [4], but of course it's highly speculative, and also complicated. Each generation generally inherits the wealth of the previous, so I guess every generation is eventually a winner, as long as the world doesn't blow up? Someguy1221 (talk) 06:23, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Is the OP assuming English-speaking Westerners here? Hack (talk) 07:58, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

The OP is from California, so presumably. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:04, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I guess I am assuming the western or developed world, as it seems obvious that the developing economies are rapidly becoming wealthier.

I am aware that millennials are less wealthy when they are young, but I'm wondering if it's true that each generation is, generally speaking, wealthier than the last, and if that would hold true for the millennials, ie, lifetime wealth overall. I realize it's somewhat speculative, but it's reasonable to assume that the economy continues to grow, and there are also some objective measurements, like education. Benjamin (talk) 15:24, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Sources on this are neatly divided: This article calls them the "least wealthy" generation. This one claims the wealthiest of all time. This one also says wealthiest, This one says they are worse off than prior generations. As with any economic idea, whatever political position you wish to take, there's an economist willing to provide data to prove it, even if two different positions are diametrically opposed. --Jayron32 15:53, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for those sources! By the way, do you have any sources for economists justifying any opposing position? User:Jayron32 Benjamin (talk) 08:07, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

[5] --Jayron32 13:43, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

The economics of slave ownership vs cheap "free man" labour

Semi-protection again :( if you have something to say on this and can't, please do post it on the talk page.

Imagine the Southern united states, circa 1940. You're a white plantation owner, and need workers for your plantation.

Now, of course, you can buy slaves. But slaves do not come cheap. From what I once read, the average cost of a slave back then was the equivilant of around $44,000 adjusted for inflation. (Is this figure correct?) And of course, slaves need care (even if you abuse them horribly, you do NOT want your slave to die - cold, hard interests here), and your slave could die or escape, in which case, your whole investment is a write-off.

The other option is to hire "free man" labour. I assume most free blacks in the south did not have many economic opportunities open to them. Presumably, you could encourage them to work for you as freemen for very low wages. Of course, they would be free to quit at any time, so you may not get away with whipping and beating them. But as long as you treated them half-decently, you could presumably effectively get them to work every bit as productively a a slave. As in, ten hours a day or more. Similar conditions to those many modern day workers face in countries like China. Not slavery, strictly, but "merely" exploitation of those without better options.

The obvious advantage for the plantation owner of the latter approach is the lack of the need to sink massive capital into obtaining a workforce. A worker dies or quits, they can easily be replaced. And of course, escapes are not a concern at all - your workers are not prisoners, if they really don't like it, they'll quit, and you'll find a replacement, no major loss. But of course, they're unlikely to quit unless they see a better opportunity, which may be unlikely.

So how would the two have compared economically, back in that era? Why sink major capital into obtaining a slave workforce? Was free-man labour particularly expensive, or in short supply?

(Could you get some sort of "slave insurance" policy, in case your slave escaped or died? It would be a real risk, your financial investment in the slave is significant). Eliyohub (talk) 06:05, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I think you mean 1840, not 1940 :) The key here is that slavery wasn't just an economic system — slavery was a sociocultural expression of white supremacy. To *pay* a black person, even at lower wages than a white person, would be to admit on some level that the black person was remotely equal to the white person, and that was societally unacceptable, because then you have to answer the awkward question of why it was OK to enslave black people to begin with. The slavery system was based on an a priori conclusion that black people were subhuman and unworthy of freedom, and even many churches taught that they were put on Earth by God to serve white people. Once you start breaking down that wall of division, the entire system becomes open to question, and begins to fall apart — much as the Communist bloc collapsed into itself after the Iron Curtain came down in the late 1980s. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 06:08, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

It has been hotly debated for about 200 years whether it made economic sense to keep slaves, and the truth is not likely to be simple. It's certainly true that plantation owners turned a profit in general, and often quite a handsome one. However, it has also been argued, as North suggests above, that slavery was not about profits. In fact, in the long run there is decent evidence that slavery actually depressed economic development in regions where it was commonplace, though often it had positive effects on distant economies by driving supply and demand in other industries. This article gives a brief rundown of the arguments relating to the profitability of slavery, and links to a number of analyses that have been published over the years. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:35, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

For a couple of examples of NorthBySouthBaranof's argument, see Peculiar institution and Cornerstone Speech. The Cornerstone Speech - given by the Confederate VP on the eve of the Civil War - now reads like something a hack writer might put in the mouth of an overwritten villain, yet the politicians of the southern states really did believe that slavery was their moral duty - that they were correcting an error made by the US Founding Fathers and returning the natural order that they believed was ordained by both the Bible and by science. It's a hard concept to get your head around now, how someone could be proud of slavery. Smurrayinchester 11:15, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

NorthBySouthBaranof's comments are not entirely supported (as is often the case on the RefDesk when we fail to cite sources). Obviously racism was an enormous part of the equation, but statements that black people couldn't be paid at all are flatly incorrect: not every black person was enslaved (see Free negro) and of course there were black people who owned slaves (see William Ellison). I think we do a disservice to those who endured that horror when we rely on simplistic generalizations instead of facts. Matt Deres (talk) 14:24, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

• Regarding "slave insurance", as well as the notes above that "it had positive effects on distant economies by driving supply and demand in other industries", there was just an article out very recently (the past month or so) that discusses BOTH of those issues, and shows how many industries in the North, especially the financial services sector (insurance and banking) probably benefited more economically from southern slavery than did the actual southern slave owners. This recent article from the New York Times was also discussed in a recent NPR story I listened to a while back. Wikipedia even has an article on Slave insurance in the United States. --Jayron32 11:44, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

And after slavery was abolished, the south got around it through the Convict lease system. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:19, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Even more directly through sharecropping and wage slavery and other ways where slaves were basically kept in the same conditions though on paper they were "free". --Jayron32 13:21, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

American hero of liberty and slaveholder Thomas Jefferson found out that slavery was profitable once you figure in that the offspring of slave women became part of the capital base. In 1820 he wrote: "I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. What she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption." [6] Cynics might find it more than a coincidence that his interest in abolition became a lot less pronounced after this finding... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:28, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Your statement on what cynics might think is unsupported, and fails to reflect that Jefferson was bankrupt, and six years from death. The fact that someone makes a factual statement about a policy ("Encouraging abortion among single black women will lower the costs of welfare.") does not mean that he supports the policy. μηδείς (talk) 19:25, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

There are absolutely no doubt those who support policies aimed at encouraging women not to have children they cannot afford to care for from their own financial resources and/or that of the child's father (as opposed to relying on welfare), though it's usually wiser and more politically prudent to focus on contraception rather than abortion. Former Judge Judy Sheindlin called on Massachusetts to cease their practice of providing state-funded fertility counselling (and perhaps, fertility treatment) to those not capable of supporting the resulting child without welfare. I would speculate that denying fertility treatment on this basis would be controversial, but no doubt some do advocate it. Eliyohub (talk) 05:03, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

As I discussed here, restricting abortion actually doesn't drive up unintended births, iff women have access to affordable and comprehensive obstetrics care. Though governments that want to restrict the former also tend to want to restrict the latter. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:11, 18 January 2017 (UTC)