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
64
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.
Commodities in the twentieth century
选项
A、are impossible to compare across centuries.
B、are more expensive than the nineteenth century.
C、are cheaper than they were in the nineteenth century.
D、need to be measured by comparing upper-class essentials such as having a butler.
答案
C
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/IZ2O777K
0
考博英语
相关试题推荐
Theboardofthecompanyhasdecidedto______itsoperationtoincludeallaspectsoftheclothingbusiness.
____,hedidbecomeannoyedwithherattimes.
Forgatheringdataaboutindividualsorgroupsatdifferentdevelopmentallevels,researcherscanusetworelatedresearchdesig
"Betweenyouandme,hesaidyouareagoodfornothing.""_____"
ScienceFictioncanprovidestudentsinterestedinthefuturewithabasicintroductiontotheconceptofthinkingaboutpossibl
Thirty-onemillionAmericansareover60yearsofage,andtwenty-ninemillionofthemarehealthy,busy,productivecitizens.B
TheWorldBankistakingstepsto_______itslendingtoreducingpovertyintheThirdWorldCountries.
Therearesomeearthphenomenayoucancounton,butthemagneticfield,somedayisnotofthem.Itfluctuatesinstrength,drif
Althoughtheaccidentdidverylittle____tothecar,Istillsuggestthatyoudrivemorecarefullynexttime.
BillWinner,asalesmanagerwith10yearsinthemedicalindustry,wantstoshifthiscareerintotheinformationtechnology(I
随机试题
单机试车由设计单位负责编制方案并组织实施,施工单位参加。()
肾小球毛细血管的滤过屏障中,作用最重要的是
新建房地产项目的出租和销售,属于房地产的()。
炼钢感应炉是靠()产生所需的热量。
荣格的内一外向人格类型理论中,内向型的人格特点不包括()。
乡间读书过个年一近年关,苍茫的岁末时分总是格外地撩动着城里游子的心境。一时间周围总像有声音在急不可待地催促我踏上归家的行程,收拾好行李,常常丢三落四地忘却家人嘱咐携带的东西,却总忘不了整理好几册自己要读的书。说真的,再也没有比过年时到乡间,更能唤
认知主义教学理论的教学原则不包括
已知有数组定义chara[3][4];下列表达式中错误的是()。
Istudyinamiddleschool.I’minRowFourNumberSix.ChenHongismyfriend.I’maChinesegift.MynameisLiYing.I’mtwel
HowtoUsetheInternettoLearnaLanguage?Internethasmadecommunicationandlearningalanguagemuchmoreaccessible.Toma
最新回复
(
0
)