首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Between the invention of agriculture and the commercial revolution that marked the end of the Middle Ages, wealth and technology
Between the invention of agriculture and the commercial revolution that marked the end of the Middle Ages, wealth and technology
admin
2013-01-20
68
问题
Between the invention of agriculture and the commercial revolution that marked the end of the Middle Ages, wealth and technology developed slowly indeed. Medieval historians tell of the centuries it took for key inventions like the watermill or the heavy plow to diffuse across the landscape. During this period, increases in technology led to increases in the population, with little if any appearing as an improvement in the median standard of living.
Even the first century of the industrial revolution produced more "improvements" than "revolutions" in standards of living. With the railroad and the spinning and weaving of textiles as important exceptions, most innovations of that period were innovations in how goods were produced and transported, and in new kinds of capital, but not in consumer goods. Standards of living improved but styles of life remained much the same.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a faster and different kind of change. For the first time, technological capability outran population growth and natural resource scarcity. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the typical inhabitant of the leading economies—a British, a Belgian, an American, or an Australian had perhaps three times the standard of living of someone in a pre-industrial economy.
Still, so slow was the pace of change that people, or at least aristocratic intellectuals, could think of their predecessors of some two thousand years before as effectively their contemporaries. Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman aristocrat and politician, might have felt more or less at home in the company of Thomas Jefferson. The plows were better in Jefferson’s time. Sailing ships were much improved. However, these might have been insufficient to create a sense of a qualitative change in the order of life for the elite. Moreover, being a slave of Jefferson was probably a lot like being a slave of Cicero.
So slow was the pace of change that intellectuals in the early nineteenth century debated whether the industrial revolution was worthwhile, whether it was an improvement or a degeneration in the standard of living. Opinions were genuinely divided, with as optimistic a liberal as John Stuart Mill coming down on the "pessimist" side as late as the end of the 1840s.
In the twentieth century, however, standards of living exploded. In the twentieth century, the magnitude of the growth in material wealth has been so great as to make it nearly impossible to measure. Consider a sample of consumer goods available through Montgomery Ward in 1895 when a one-speed bicycle cost $65. Since then, the price of a bicycle measured in "nominal" dollars has more than doubled (as a result of inflation). Today, the bicycle is much less expensive in terms of the measure that truly counts, its "real" price: the work and sweat needed to earn its east. In 1895, it took perhaps 260 hours’ worth of the average American worker’s production to amass enough money to buy a one-speed bicycle. Today an average American worker can buy one—and of higher quality—for less than 8 hours worth of production.
On the bicycle standard (measuring wealth by counting up how many bicycles the labor can buy) the average American worker today is 36 times richer than his or her counterpart was in 1895. Other commodities would tell a different story. An office chair has become 12.5 times cheaper in terms of the time it takes the average worker to produce enough to pay for it. A Steinway piano or an accordion is only twice as cheap. A silver teaspoon is 25 percent more expensive.
Thus the answer to the question "How much wealthier are we today than our counterparts of a century ago?" depends on which commodities you view as important. For many personal services—having a butler to answer the door and polish your silver spoons—you would find little difference in average wealth between 1895 and 1990: an hour of a butler’s time costs about the same then as now. For mass-produced manufactured goods—like bicycles—we are wealthier by as much as 36 times.
A bicycle today, generally speaking,
选项
A、requires more work and sweat because fewer people work to produce it.
B、is comparatively less in real price than a bicycle in the nineteenth century.
C、needs to be considered in terms of "nominal" costs.
D、is cheaper in America than any other western country.
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/BZ2O777K
0
考博英语
相关试题推荐
Theleadersofthetwocountriesareplanningtheirsummitmeetingwitha_____tomaintainanddevelopgoodties.
Thehighunemploymentratesoftheearly1960soccasionedaspiriteddebatewith,intheeconomicsprofession.Onegroupfoundth
Hepassed____hoursinthelibrary;heacquiredinformationrelativetothesubjecthewasgoingtoexpound.
Tidesarecreatedmainlybythepullofthemoonontheearth.Themoon’spullcauseswaterintheoceanstobealittledeeper
OnacoldandrainydaylastFebruary,BruceAlbertsworeagrimexpressionashesteppeduptothemicrophonestomakehisstat
Aschildrengetolder,self-disciplineshouldtaketheplaceofimposeddiscipline.Constrainsbecomeinternalizedandchildren
(66)Applicationfilesarepiledhighlythismonthincollegesacrossthecountry.(67)Admissionsofficersareporingessaysan
Theaccusedmanwasabletoprovehisinnocenceatthetrialandwas______.
Interracialmarriagesandrelationshipshavebecomeincreasinglyacceptedandencouragedbysociety.Sincethe1967legalization
Whyshouldanyonewanttoread________ofbooksbygreatauthorswhentherealpleasurecomesfromreadingtheoriginals.
随机试题
男性,25岁,体健。主诉:牙龈自动出血伴牙龈疼痛、腐败性口臭5天。确诊之前需做如下口腔检查及辅助检查,除了
某办公楼为现浇混凝土框架结构,设计使用年限50年,安全等级为二级。其二层局部平面图、主次梁节点示意图和次梁L=1的计算简图如图1—3(Z)所示,混凝土强度等级C35,钢筋均采用HRl3400。假定,次梁L-1传给主梁KL-1的集中荷载设计值F=22
宏观经济运行中,各种经济变量所产生的作用,集中在()的平衡关系上。
智能化系统的风阀控制器安装前,应检查的内容有()。
下列不属于桥梁桥面系的是()。
表现抽样指标与总体指标之间抽样误差的可能范围的指标是()。
下列关于贷款支付的表述,正确的是()。
在一起存单纠纷案件审理过程中,某金融机构无法提供证明存款关系不真实的证据,但其底单的记载内容与存单记载内容确实不符,在这种情况下,该金融机构( )。
留置权是指债务人不履行到期债务,债权人可以留置已经合法占有的债务人的动产,并有权就该动产优先受偿。根据上述定义,下列关于行为人是否享有留置权的说法中正确的是()。
Inrecentdecades,scientistshavebecomeincreasinglyawareoftheparttheobserver【C1】______inthescientificprocess.Inthe
最新回复
(
0
)