EconAir

A better introduction to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution than Adam Smith is the history of Josiah Wedgwood and the Wedgwood Pottery Company. This is how one company actually ushered in the Industrial Revolution. The revolutionary generation that first adopted steam engines saw the following trends and changes: Manufacturing was being modernized by a small group of entrepreneurs. Much of the new raw material processing and manufacturing was concentrated in a small area in the middle of England, away from London. These modernizing entrepreneurs formed a new economic, intellectual and social network. Modernizing entrepreneurs like Wedgwood tended to be members of Dissenting sects (like Quakers) or Nonconformist churches (not members of the Church of England), Whig (liberals) in politics, and believers in “progress.” They were optimistic about the future, influenced by the ideas of Hume, Rousseau, Locke and Adam Smith. They believed their society could be refor

ADAM SMITH VISITS A PIN FACTORY   Adam Smith’s description of a pin factory is on the first page of  The Wealth of Nations .  (Chapter 1 – “Of the Division of Labour”)  Drawings of pin factories of this period show workers using hand tools. Smith says the process can be broken down into 18 distinct steps, including packaging the pins. Smith mentions that pin factory workers were poorly paid, despite their high productivity.    Adam Smith says he visited a pin factory employing 10 men who produced 48,000 pins per day.  If each of the ten workers had done all the steps themselves, Smith says each worker could produce only 10 or 20 pins per day.  So the pin factory replaces 2,400 to 4,800 pin makers. The increase in labor productivity (output per person per day) is as high as 50 times that of individual pin makers.     This reduction in unit cost or average cost (AC) and the huge increase in quantity produced do not just replace older methods of organization and production.  They increa

Jakarta - 30 million people and sinking INTRODUCTION Since the beginning of the Agricultural Revolution about 10,000 years ago, demographics meant high birth rates, high infant mortality rates and high death rates. Until the Industrial Revolution, starting in the late 1700s. At first, death rates fell faster than birth rates. Then better public health and health care reduced mortality rates from infection, epidemics and diseases. Then a combination of more effective birth control and social and economic change reduced birth rates.  During these transition periods, average life expectancies increased. After World War II, the global population exploded: 1900 – Appoximately 1.6 billion people 1950 – 2.6 billion 2000 – 6.1 billion 2020 – 7.8 billion The industrialized parts of the world now have low birth rates – mostly below replacement – and low death rates. Birth rates are also falling in much of the rest of the world.  GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHICS