EconAir

  Colonial Farm Kitchen. Notice clock in the corner. American Colonial History, 1607-1775   THE 1600s Preliminary Comments   About 350,000 Europeans emigrated to the American colonies in the 1600s. They were risk-takers. They left long-settled communities and societies to get on small, crowded sailing ships to make the dangerous 3,000 voyage to a new land that was mostly wilderness. About 5% died. They had to adapt to a new, frontier environment of forests and swamps. They had to “ tame the howling wilderness .”  A high percent of the European immigrants in this period were from England. Almost all were Protestants.   Emigrants from England came over in three “waves.”  Then a fourth 'wave" came to the North American colonies in the 1700s. They were four distinctly different groups of people from different areas of the English isles.   To understand why these four groups left England and Scotland, at different times and for different reasons, ...

The Future Manufacturing Labor Force   SUMMARY This post is a summary of some of the themes of previous posts on demographic and population projections, with an emphasis on how demographics will impact economic growth. See bibliography at the end of this post. For a list of all blog posts on a wide variety of topics, see  List of Posts by Topic on my blog.   Almost all countries outside of Africa are already facing or will soon face below replacement birth rates. Without immigration, this could lead first to smaller labor forces with greater numbers of retired citizens. Eventually, however, both the number of workers and retired citizens will decrease. During both stages of the transition, there will be issues of how to increase total output, maintain standards of living, and allocate income between the two major age groups. For background, see  Global Demographics and Population Projections .   Population and economies can growth even if birth rates are below r...