Labor Scarcity in America

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3500095
AutoresPeter Temin (0000-0001-8132-563X, autor de correspondencia)
Año1971
Volumen1
Número2
Páginas251
Fecha de publicación1971-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of Interdisciplinary History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-1953 • E-ISSN: 1530-9169
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/202643
OpenAlexW2335078389
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas21

Labor Scarcity in America Several years ago I wrote an article attempting to show that the United States had not been vis-a-vis Britain in the nineteenth century, using the conventional meaning of that term., This argument has been widely rejected and even more widely misunderstood, and so I return to it here in order to clarify the central issues involved. I do not want to confound or refute my critics. I want instead to dispel the confusion in my article that gave rise to much of the criticism. Specifically, I want to demonstrate that the model I used-which has been widely criticized as hopelessly unrealistic-is the only model in which what I shall call the Basic Theorem of the labor hypothesis holds true.2 It follows that the conclusions I derived from the model are logical implications of the Basic Theorem, not capricious results of arbitrary assumptions. This does not mean that the model is realistic, that is, accurate in every detail. The purpose of this discussion is not to give a description of every aspect of the American economy; it is to indicate whether or under what circumstances the phrase scarcity can be applied to the nineteenth-century United States. It should be apparent that, when a historian says the United States was labor scarce, he is not trying to account for every feature of the American economy. He is trying to summarize his observations in a simple way, that is, to say something at a very high level of abstraction. It is appropriate therefore to discuss this phrase at a high level of abstraction, as it has been discussed in the past. Other, less abstract and more realistic models will be needed to analyze more detailed questions. The first step in the argument is to state what is meant by scarcity. As applied to American agriculture, it means that labor was scarce relative to land, compared-as always-with England. Specifically, it means that the land-labor ratio in America was higher than the land-labor ratio in England. This is a summary of obvious historical and geographical facts, and it has been a matter of general agreement since the seventeenth century. There is no reason to dispute it now

Development economics · Economics · Market economy · Natural resource economics · Scarcity · Economic theories and models · Economic Theory and Policy · Political Economy and Marxism