[PEN-L:6032] Re: Brad De Long on working hours

["Josh Mason" <Jmason@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine:

>I'm all in favor of freeing the slaves. But it's not an unmixed
blessing. In
>some places in the Caribbean, I understand that the slave-owners
freed
>their own slaves in order to avoid the responsibility of keeping them
alive.

Some thought about the demographics of the Caribbean might lead you to
reconsider your example, if not your broader point. I don't have any
numbers in front of me (a condition of my exile here in DC is that I
only get to see my books on weekends) but I'm fairly sure that
throughout the region, life expectancies increased dramatically after
emancipation, and population growth rates changed from sharply negative
to positive.

I'm not a big fan of world-systems theory, but when Immanuel
Wallerstein says that the shift from dependent to wage labor is almost
always an advance for workers, it sounds right to me.

Josh