The Social and Economic Effects of the Global Flow of Silver Today, silver is precious and expensive and not used as an everyday thing, however, between 1500 and 1750, silver was essential around the world. The global flow of silver produced social and economic effects worldwide. Europe, Asia, South and North America were all greatly affected by this. In China, the Ming Dynasty ordered taxes and trade fees were paid in silver. The heavy flow of the silver greatly affected China's economy.
The flow of the silver trade in the mid 16th through early 18th century was both a blessing and a curse for people of all classes in the regions of Europe, the Americans and Asia. The silver trade provided internal economic and social strife, particularly for those of the lower classes, however, in terms of global interactions, the silver trade provided considerable economic benefits for those who had silver resources and hardships for those countries that did not. Internally, the usage of silver for domestic taxes in Ming China in the 1570s was often an economic hardships for the local people, whether framers, writers, or simply middle class citizens. “The reason grain is cheap despite poor harvests… are due entirely to the scarcity of the silver coin… and tillers of the soil receive lower returns on their labors” (Wang). The authors of a court official in the Ming dynasty, after nearly 20 years of the domestic silver tax, attempts to address the difficulties faced by farmers.
It paved a path that led to the Emerald City, which stood for Washington DC. The gold standard caused deflation in the economy, which hurt farmers. Deflation was good for the banks because the farmers would pay loans back to the banks and they would be worth more money. These symbols were vital to the 1896 election and The Wizard of Oz. The characters in the movie are also based off important people from the 1896 election.
The idea was to protect the owners of companies from lawsuits. Actually the rich saw it as a way to lower their taxes, fool the uneducated, and to be irresponsible for their cheating and lies. Wal-Mart, which started out selling all American made products, soon started selling products made in sweatshops in foreign counties and we the people did not care and we scooped up the bargains. Now, these Super Corporations, who answer only to the board members and owners, cut the employees pay, use part timers to avoid benefits and count their billions while families are starving. We the people allowed these corporations to get the upper
The reason for the people selling all of their stocks at the some time is too complex to explain in the introduction. When they did sell, the buyers would only buy at an extremely low price. Because of this imaginary price drop, the stocks used as collateral for loans were now worthless (in the eyes of the people and the bank owners) and so they demanded real money. The people had plenty of this, but all of it was in stocks...that were rapidly dropping in value because of some ignorant, greedy and bewildered stockholders were buying their stocks for low prices. As soon as everyone found out (thought) the stocks were worth much less, everyone sold and additional cash was needed to pay off all of their debts.
Nixon then devalued the American dollar; he did this by severing its ties to gold. This was initially a gold standard but Nixon felt that gold was holding back the value of a dollar and thus weakening the American Economy (Goldfield). Nixon did many great things in the white house during his terms, but you ask someone about President Nixon and they can usually only say one or two things. That is “Watergate (Nixon)” and or impeachment. Both of these issues took a major blow to Nixon’s life.
The people who were spending money were the poor more often than the rich; the poor were getting poorer and the rich were essentially becoming richer because even though there was no money to make, they were not spending. In the 1980s and 90s, economists argued that the Federal Reserve had caused banks to decrease their willingness to loan money, which lead to a severe decrease in consumption and in investment because no one had any money to spend. (Szostak 2003). Many people also blamed Hoover for the recession. Hoover was the president at the time.
However, they did help unite China and form the Yuan Empire. Additionally, the Mongols moved the capital to Beijing in an attempt to make it the center of politics and commerce in China. They made other improvements to encourage trade, such as reorganizing and rebuilding roads, irrigation, and plumbing, building granaries to prevent famines, and extending the Great Canal. These improvements proved successful, as it helped them export in large amounts and become a lucrative center for trade. Nevertheless, their excessive spending severely depleted China’s economy.
The Labour economy policies are also a reason why they lost. Gaitskell promised to increase public spending without increasing taxes. This put his credibility under question. Another reason is that although voters were happy with the nationalisation of electricity, gas, atomic energy and airline industries they thought public ownership of coal and the railways had been a failure when they were last in government and there was little enthusiasm for further nationalisation which Labour was committed to by Clause Four of the Labour Party Constitution. Another reason why Conservatives won is that in there manifesto they promised to stabilise the cost of living which would close the gap between rich and poor and double everyone’s standard of living.
Looking Backward In Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy argues that monopolies running the American economy was one of the most significant problems in 1887. It was Bellamy’s belief that small independent businesses would not have the ability to succeed due in part to corporate monopolies running them out of business, or just buying them out. He gave an example of the railroads being slowly brought up until,“a few great syndicates controlled every rail in the land.” Bellamy’s opinion was that the monopolies were able to take advantage of their customers and small business owners because they had too much control of the markets. (34-38) Edward Bellamy criticizes the American government system because of the corruption present behind their curtains.